With February only three weeks away life on the homestead is getting busy. There is so much prep in planting and with our winter having brought us an extreme cold snap we have decided to start our early seedlings inside to ensure they do not freeze and we loose out on plants. At the same time we are designing our greenhouses and watching the sun daily in order to find the exact location in which to build. Remember if building a greenhouse you need an area that receives the longest period of sunlight in order to keep it well heated, but an easy way to ventilate if it gets too hot. We just leave our door open at times like this. Now some may ask why would you start your planting in February? I did myself a few years back and was told that some plants are slow starters so to get a good harvest they must start early. So on February 1st we start planting our onions, celery, and pepper plants, sometimes we add a few tomato plants so we have early tomatoes to eat. Now don't be like many people we know and rush out to spend a tone of money on all the planting trays there is no need, you will find that you can find everything you need right out of the recycling bin now a days...so lets re-use! To start seedlings you can use anything from small plastic baby food jars, yogurt containers even pop bottles. Last year we started all our seedlings in 2L pop bottles and yogurt containers. We cut holes in the bottom of each yogurt container, then cut 3/4 of the way around the middle of the pop bottles in order to make our own little greenhouses! We placed the yogurt container with soil into the bottle with our seeds and closed the lids and placed in our windows. These worked wonders, just remember to rotate your seedlings and water but do not over water, if there is too much condensation lift the lids. I found these as dual purpose because after we transferred the seedlings into the ground I cut the tops of the bottles off and placed them in the soil as a funnel every so many feet down my garden so if there was a drought I could simply place water into the funnel and it would go into the ground for the plant to absorb. Also you could use the tops as little greenhouses in your garden to help those seedlings that are in need of a little extra warmth, by placing them over top of the plant and into the ground a bit in order not to have them up and blow away ~
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