Life In the Time of Covid

We were going to be planting big this year (as mentioned in previous posts), but now, we have upped our game a bit. We started lettuce seeds 2 weeks ago. They are a little leggy, but we have an oscillating fan blowing near them, and we turn the tray every morning, so hopefully they’ll get it together. The lettuces are for us, so that we have fresh greens to eat, and we won’t have to go to the store for salad mix.

We planted tomato, pepper, and brussels sprouts seeds this past weekend and they sprouted after 3 days. We assume it’s because the room gets lots of sunlight all day and it’s consistently about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. When I lifted the lid off of the trays, I could feel the warmth and humidity on my hand, so our wee greenhouses are performing well.

We normally buy tomato and pepper seedlings from our local greenhouse, but with our state of Minnesota on a shelter-in-place order, we didn’t feel comfortable assuming we’d be able to purchase what we need in May.  Tomato and pepper seeds need to be started indoors here 6 to 8 weeks before the danger of the last frost has passed. We usually don’t plant until after May 15th, so we needed to get moving on this. We’ll be setting up a small portable greenhouse outside this coming weekend. As soon as the seedlings are ready, we’ll put them in the greenhouse where they’ll have more room to grow.

No one knows when the virus situation will be over, but we wanted to be prepared to get our expanded gardens in, no matter what. Luckily, we can maintain social distancing with our friends, and still get the gardens in. We’ll be able to see our neighbors and communicate with them, but we don’t have to risk anyone getting sick.