Let the 2015 Grow Season Begin

When people think of snow they usually think of snow shovels, charging batteries, emergency groceries, etc.. me... I think of starting seedlings.

This year my goal is to start one tray of peat pellets a month (actually I am using coconut coir pellets) from July through April then up that to one tray every 2 weeks through the end of July. Lets see how it goes.  One tray holds 25 pellets, not sure if I'll have room to start all 25 pellets in a tray but we'll see.

So we are starting off January with onions and basil... I know they look a little dense... but let see how it goes. I was inspired by this video from the Rusted Garden where he grows onions very dense. So I am going to give it a go, last year I purchased transplants from Dixondale Farms. Those worked out great and are my back up plan this year in case the seedlings don't work.  It is much more economical to grow onion transplants from seed... I spent less on four different onion/leeks seed packs than I did on one bunch of onion transplants from Dixondale. These are the onions/leeks I am trying out this year, are all varieties are from Johnny's Select Seed:

•  Red onion variety this year: REDWING (F1)
• Storage onion variety this year: PONTIAC (F1)
• Leek variety this year: KING RICHARD
• WALLA WALLA SWEET OG (I had such a great success with this last year I had to try this one from seed).

The front row is basil.... I was rummaging through Agways after season seed racks and found a packet of Franchi Sementi brand basil seeds which are a mix of 12 different basil varieties including cinnamon, limone, thai siam, classico and red rubin. (only online link I could find is this one from New Zealand, is it the GLBA13/15 seeds).  I will probably be planting these up only once to 16 oz cups. In my experience Basil really won't "grow" till you get summer heat, so I will just be keeping these going with dilute fertilizer. I am hoping that the large lettuce leaf basil makes it from these seedlings... I'd love to be able to do a basil salad. I am interested to see how these tolerate being grown so densely and not thinned out, given the nature of the seed packet (a large mix) it seems as though these seeds are intended for just broadcasting them out and no thinning.