Our Adventure with Gardening Seedlings

At the beginning of the year I decided that I was going to stop waiting to do new things. I used to always wait to try something new until I felt comfortable with what I was doing. Now I've decided that I want to just jump in and learn as I go! I've always liked to research and truly understand all the components of something so that I can hopefully dodge any bad hiccups along the way. However, guess what kind of learner I am? Hands on/visual! So tell me, how does this makes any sense that I am always so timid to start things without having all the pieces? So here I am, jumping in this year!

One of those things included taking more responsibility of our garden. I want to be involved from start to finish, SO guess what we have been doing?? Yup, that is right: SEEDS! We have tiny little seedlings sprouting in our basement and I am so excited to (hopefully, successfully) say we grew our whole garden by ourselves from the beginning. Normally, we buy starter plants for about 3/4 of our garden. By starting the seeds ourselves, way we will know everything our plants will have been exposed to, which is something we are very passionate about when it comes to our food.

I have been so surprised at how excited the kids have been about all of it. I knew they would love helping as they do in the summer when I am in the garden, but not THIS excited. Every day they HAVE to go down and check out the progress of growth.

We have already transplanted once and (so far) it has been a very smooth process. I am trying my best to take record of everything so that, as we move forward in years to come, we can learn from past years. Even still, I am sure there will be a hiccup or two that comes in the learning process. Everyone who has done this before offered this advice: “Just jump in and start!” “It is so rewarding” “Just know some will live and some will die”

Here are a few tips I want to share so far:

If you want 3 of a certain plant in the end, then plant a few extra for safe measure.
There are a lot of fancy/gadgety things out there on the market, but you do not NEED any of that to be successful.
There are about 1,000 different ways to do it, so go with your gut.
Johnneys is where we ended up ordering our seeds from and they (as a company) are phenomenal to work with. Super fast shipping too.
Don’t over water your little babies (a mistake many make).