The stuff I've planted so far....

So I've planted several types of vegetables from seed. I've planted all my seeds using Jiffy pellets. If you're not familiar with Jiffy pellets, they are little pellets of soil that expand when you add water. Then you plant your seeds in the pellets and one plant is supposed to grow in each pellet. I chose to start this way because I don't really have any large containers yet, and there was still frost warnings a couple weeks ago when I started, and these Jiffy pellets are easy to keep inside.

I planted my first seeds two weeks ago (I think, one reason for this blog is so that I can keep track of when I plant stuff). I planted tomato plants in 12 pellets, green beans in 6 pellets, corn in 6 pellets, jalapenos in 6 pellets, and I tried planting some orange seeds from a Valencia orange that came from my mom's orange tree. The picture above was taken about 6 days ago when things were starting to sprout. I also planted some peas last week because my little sister requested some. I planted 12 pellets of these.

So how have these seeds progressed so far, you ask? Well, let me tell you...


This is my corn crop today. I had to move them to these party cups because their roots were getting so long and broke out of their pellets and were invading other plant's pellets. The corn seems to be the fastest growing crop. I read that these can be grown in individual 5 gallon containers. I've also read that you can put multiple corn plants in a single large container. Not sure what I'm going to do yet. For now, they stay in the cups. They are sitting outside on my windowsill.



This is one of my bean plants. I planted "Tendergreen Improved" beans. They are "bush" beans rather than "pole" beans. I figured a bush of beans would be easier to manage than the pole variety. At this point, I'm not sure if multiple beans can be planted in the same container, or if each plant needs it's own container. I'm also concerned that I picked the wrong bean variety for container gardening. One website I found said these are not recommended for containers. I guess we'll see....



The pots you see here are the tomato plants today. They are on a windowsill on the front of my house. I have 12 plants total. I planted multiple tomato seeds per Jiffy pellet, and then removed all but the strongest plant in each pellet. While I was at the Walmart garden center I saw a package of Jiffy peat pots for like, $1.50 or something, which comes with 14 pots. I decided that I should move my tomato plants to these pots before their roots outgrow the pellets. I obviously need to move these to bigger containers eventually, but I'm also not sure if tomatoes need their own containers or if they can share. I also don't know how large of a container I need.

Getting proper containers for all these plants is going to get costly, so I'm going to get more containers each week to spread the cost over time. Yesterday I got some really large containers that I might try putting the beans in, or the peas (they are just starting to sprout).

No life yet from the orange seeds. Maybe they got frozen while on the tree, or maybe I planted them wrong. I'm still hoping they'll sprout, but it's not looking very good.


I planted some herbs (actual plants, not seeds) about three weeks ago. This is a picture of them. I have mint, chives, basil, and rosemary. The mint seems to have the most new growth since I planted these in this container. The basil and chives also have new growth, but the rosemary has pretty much stayed the same. Yesterday I put some basil, rosemary, and chives on a frozen cheese pizza to liven it up, and it was delicious. I've been using the mint in my iced tea, which is has been really good.

I'll be posting again within the next couple days. This has been a fun project so far and my goal is to get some vegetables out of this. I've also been working with decorative plants too, which I will blog about later. Please feel free to leave advice if you have any, I could use some! Also, comments are welcome :)