At the time of writing this I am about one month into my seedlings rolling along, my garden bed it about three weeks old and my worm farm is about to hit two years. I can say I have added to the list of lessons of each of those three stages. I’ll start first with the seedlings.
Seedlings
These little guys have taught me so much in a little time. When I started them I planted about two seeds per pod, some got more if you view the photos. With new seeds I should have just gone one per pod, but hey lesson learned. Most have taken off well and as I transfer I am stuck with separating them for the transferrers. With that lesson learned next is the lighting.
I have wonderful grow lights, sadly they do not have a great operator. I say that because what I did was have the light to high from the soil. As the plants sprouted they longed for the light. Had it been lower they would have been able to grow stronger stems. I have transferred most of them but I am looking to fixing this problem. Steps to take will be on the transfer by replanting them lower and give the stems time to grow strong. I hope this will aid. Also I’m looking to start another batch of seedings to gift out. I should have that batch rocking and rolling. With that all coming together I’m looking at the garden box.
GardenBox
I didn’t blog about this prior but you can find photos on my instagram @ACraftyGarden. I built the box for training purposes in year one. I did not have all the equipment I needed and should have used more patients on it. I used 2X10X8 boards to build the bed. Simply cut them in half lined them up and drilled them together. I thought I had to correct staples for the bottom as I was adding chicken wire underneath to keep the diggers out from under it. I would use more deck screws to secure it.
One thing I was able to do to save on cost was take shredded cardboard and place it under the dirt. This isn’t something I researched, I just have a lot of cardboard and needed to find a use for it. Tossed in some soil and compost with it. I have yet to plant it but I did measure the foot marking to mark that. I’ll have it planted in the near future.
Compost/Worm Life
This had been one big adventure for me. I’m lucky to have access to free cardboard and even coffee grounds to feed my workers however the problem I run into is what is enough and how often. A simple Google search says that it a 1K worms can eat 125 grams, great knowledge that translates to .3 pounds a day. I have 500 worms and they are overfed at the moment, I’m sure I have added more than what is required. Guess I need more worms.
So those are some lessons I have learned in my short gardening life.