How is your garden looking today?

heqt gets the seeds germinating and light gets em growing. The ,more light, the less leggy they get. You must increase their light levels a lot more if they are getting leggy.
What kind seeds are you trying for? many seedlings can be clipped and trimmed like a lawn.

I tried bok choy, chives, tomatoes, bell peppers and a few flowers like marigolds, butterfly bush and blanket flowers.

Some didn't sprout at all, others got very leggy and died. The dome always had a film of condensation on it so I thought that meant there was enough of both heat and moisture to generate the condensation. I figured the problem was light.

Sounds like I should try again with a heating pad under the flats.

This year I'm going to do a lot more direct sowing and just buy one or two head start plants at the nursery for backup if the seeds don't do well.

Interesting. Heat gets them germinating. That I knew. But you are saying that lots of light gets them less leggy. That I didn't know.
I have never had good luck with starting plants indoors from seeds.
Say I wanted to do tomatoes...
I got my new Burpee catalog and am starting to thumb through it. Hope springs eternal.
NPR this evening had a story on how the planting time maps may have to be revised.

hemp is much easier to start from seed than tomatoes, rjb.

but it's still too early yet...

youre hooked mon. Seed catalogs are covered in gardening cocaine and it gets on yer hands.

Yeh, light is wht keeps seedlings just right , you can also , once they are up, see about how they could be kept in a coldframe on the south side of your building . I hve one of those coldframe lids that has a bimetal bar opener, so when the inside temp gets above like 80 degerees, the lid opens and lets the air in.
But yeh, light is the key to stocky seedlings.

These are the seeds I'm going to be direct sowing at differing times this year. Some are leftovers from last year and others are new for 2012.

lincoln peas
little marvel peas
bodacious corn
kentucky wonder beans
Blue Lake 274 bush beans
kentucky blue pole bean
leeks
Danvers 126 carrots
Sweet salad hybrid carrot
Scarlet nantes carrot
Heatwave blend lettuce
Jalapeno pepper
Bush Champion cucumber
Hollow Crown parsnip
Sweet Basil
Tomato, Bush Early Girl Hybrid
Tomato, Burpees Early Pick Vf Hybrid
Tomato, Roma VF
Watermelon, Bush Sugar Baby
Onion, Short Day Collection
Pepper, Sweet Gypsy Hybrid

Did you build it or buy it?

Any chance of taking a photo of it, inside and out to show the structure and the mechanisms?

ACtually I had some AMISH kids build me two of these cold frames. . I took em down last fall and put em in the barn but Ill be putting them up if this weather stays as nice as its been. Then Ill take some pix for you.
I built these log framed planting terraces about 10 years ago and I had the Amish kid make these two cold frames to fit exactly inside the terrace borders . The terraces face south and are permanent fixtures. The cold frames are temp and allow me to extend the growing season each direction.

Remmember to interplant. Beans and corn and squashes are the three sisters. Tomatoes and basil are excellent together. Watch peas and onions..
Early girl and early pik tomatoes are best started indoors , that gives a longer season producing fruit.
Also, watch where youve planted tomatoes before, even if you have VFNT resistant or immune. Its like peonies, never plant a peony (or a tomato) where you planted one in the last 2 years

I mowed my lawn, picked up the remaining fall leaves from my yard, and watered the plants.

Yep, rotating crop locations, continuing the companion planting and am expanding into other areas of the backyard after I amend the soil with manure, peat moss and some compost.

I have to rearrange my bean and pea trellises in a couple locations. I had them in the middle of the planting area and was planting on both sides of the screen. The peas and beans on one side got knocked off the trellis by the winds last year. This time I'm going to move the trellis to the back of the area and just plant in front of it and add the companions in the front rows. Hopefully the winds won't decide to change directions this year and the plants will lean up against the trellis support and have a better time of it.

Do you use tomato cages? Would love to see pictures of those too if you've had them custom done.

my tomato cages are a bit more rural leftovermaterial. We renew some sections of pasture fencing every few years and I save a roll or two of theold fencing and use it for cages and pea vine ladders(its woven wire). I will roll out 11 feet exactly and then cut it an make a round cage . The extra segment ofwire is used to wrap aroun the upright metal (heavier duty) wire.Theseworkoutgreat.Ioften have enough for my neighbors to make cages also. We let our chickens run free so they are always in the garden getting bugs. BUT, if the fencing wasnt around the tomatoes, the chickens would oweck a red ripe tomato for flavor I guess.

COmpost is somethng I keep as a huge pile of sheep manure whenever I clean the barn. I get about 20 pallettes and pile the manure onto the palletes and make a fairly sizeable mountain. I load up a big cart with my loaderand then truck it to the compost center out in a distant field. I will use the compost in its second year of decomposition and it is great stuff for the garden. I also have local gardeneres filling up their pickups for their gardens too. Ill be renewing my garden compost this year in late spring as I plant my tomatoes.

Under snow.

It's an improvement.

I did pretty much the same thing except I had to buy a roll of the welded wire fencing material. I bought 8 ft. 1x1 wooden poles and wove them through sheets of the wire fencing and then stood them on end and drove them into the soil to use as a trellis for my peas, beans, cucumbers and eggplants. It worked well except for the pea plants the winds blew off the trellis on one side.

I also made circular shapes with the wire fencing and used them for some of my tomato cages but haven't had as much luck with them. The winds here keep blowing the whole thing over. I'm thinking I'll have to get more of the 1x1 poles and use them to brace the cages.

This is the stuff I'm using except it is 5ft tall rather than 4ft.

1010 good.

I plant a few cherry tomato plants along the pasture fence on the north side of our house. I always tie my cages TO the pasture fence because we live on a windy hill and overturning is always a problem. IN the main garden, I use two long bamboo poles on each side of the tomato cages and link them from cage to cage. It makes a sort of fence out of thecagesandthecageswontblowover(Inahurricanemaybebutnotin some summer storm blasts that are 60 to 70 mph)

I guess I should explain that - 6 x 6 (or other dimensions) 1 0 x 1 0 is a routine spec, probably available at farm stores.

what the hell are you talkin about osso. Are those dimensions of planters?

I thought it was a CB code....

1010 good buddy!

I'm talking about welded wire mesh. We specified a lot of it.

Like here -
6x6 W1.4/1.4 6x6 - 10/10 152x152 MW9.1/9.1 21