Indoor Salad Greens Experiment: Part Two
Sowing The Salad Seed: Round One
So, in my previous indoor salad greens post I laid down my methodology and reasoning behind what I am attempting to do with this series of posts. My ultimate goal is to have a consistent supply of salad greens to eat every day throughout our long winter. Oh, and the production method must be simple, economical, and not require specialized equipment. I'm aiming high!!
And here we go:
Yesterday, I started a tablespoon of sunflower seeds and a tablespoon of snow pea seeds soaking, just like you would do if you were going to sprout them.
Notice my fancy seed soaking apparatuses!
I placed the seeds into the cups and put a couple of inches of lukewarm water over them. A soaking time of 6-24 hours should be sufficient.
I then strained the water off of my seeds.
As this project is all about frugality and on hand item utilization, I used two old bread pans for my growing pots. I think inexpensive foil bread pans would work really well for this type of project too!
For my planting medium I went with what I had lying around the farm. Next to my barn are two huge compost piles. One has finished cooking and one is sauteing nicely. As all of the early snow that we received a couple of weeks ago has melted off, I rolled my wheelbarrow over to the done compost pile and filled an animal feed sack with beautiful black gold. I also stopped by my equipment shed and filled another feed sack with some sphagnum peat moss that I have had forever.
I sprinkled some compost into the bottom of my bread pan about 1/3 of the way up. Then, because I have a bit of an obsession with it, I poured some diluted Neptune's Harvest Fish and Kelp Emulsion on that bottom layer. The only mixing bottle I had lying around was a small sports drink bottle, so I put a teaspoon of fertilizer into the bottle and filled it with water. Normally, I would recommend mixing this particular fertilizer up outside, but bailed on that notion as 1. It's cold outside, and 2. The smell was no worse than pre-teen after Thanksgiving intestinal emissions (Feel pain for me people, the struggle is real...).
Just look at that lovely vintage! Emulsified fish offal and kelp grindings, the plant drink that fuels!
Next I filled bread pan potential salad green vessels full of a mix of sphagnum and compost, reserving a bit to sprinkle over the top of the seeds.
I layered the seeds evenly over the top of the bread pans.
Then, I covered them with the reserved soil and pressed it down slightly.
Finally, I watered the seeds well and topped the trays with some damp newspaper.
My strategy is to really force these little seeds to sprout like champions, so I placed the covered trays up on top of my fridge underneath the cabinets that cover the top half of my fridge. I want the seeds in the dark until they have sprouted up a bit. Then I will place them in my kitchen windows to chlorophyll up a bit. Time will tell if this strategy will be effective. Tomorrow's batch I am going to place on a shelf that I have next to the dark cave, er part of my living room that houses my wood stove. Anywhere that is dark and warm will be a great place to place your gestating salad seedlings.
It must be noted that it has been incredibly dark and gloomy around here lately, so being able to plant some plants was both surreal and monumentally therapeutic. I have high hopes for this experiment, and I am so glad to be sharing my progress with you all, many thanks to those who are following along!
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seems yummy
That is my great salad garden hope, yummy!