From “Christmas Folly” to seed start display.

Last Christmas I was shopping at a great little craft store in Mill Valley called ”Once Around”  and found tiny (2″ tall) antiqued metal pots.  It occurred to me that the pots would fit perfectly in the cubbies of my advent calendar.

Read “My Christmas Folly”

I would plant a seed every day in March, use chalk to write the seed type on the metal pot and watch the seeds grow from the oldest (and presumably tallest) to the newest  an pre-germinated.

I ordered 31 pots and put them on the shelf and waited.

When March 1 came around I began the project.  After 6 days the first seeds (radicchio for God only knows what reason), germinated.  Every two days I changed seed type thinking that if I ultimately planted the seed in the garden it would be nice to have a 2-3 week spread between youngest and oldest so that my harvest would last longer.

And it worked Great!

Like all “first drafts” it was not without its lessons.  Here they are:

- Buy a tiny watering can.  Watering these with a mister or full sized can takes a surgeon’s touch

- Once they begin to grow, they need to get a lot of sun.  I started carrying them back and forth 4 at a time.  Next time, I will use a serving tray.

- Plant fast, tall seeds (peas, cucumbers, melons…) last. They outgrow the cubby in 10 days.

- Write the day number on the bottom of the pots.  A couple of drops of water makes it hard to tell the difference between numbers on the side of the pots.

- Line the pots with shopping bag paper to make it easy to transplant the seedlings.

$800 and 20 or so hours later… Playskoop no. 1 (the number 03 relates to the number of coop designs built so far).

The new coop is mounted and ready for a floor, ceiling, glass front, “roof”… and chickens.