Better late than never

I finally got my seed starting light stand made, only about three weeks later than I had wanted to. Oh, well, it's all a learning process, isn't it? The wood was scrap wood from my garage, and I already had the heat mat. The fixture cost me about $40 with shipping and included two T8 bulbs. The tray, peat pots and dirt were probably another $20. It's probably wise not to calculate the per-pepper cost of these endeavors, right?

I'm pleased that Mr W and I worked together on it, and I will admit in hindsight that I held my breath as he sawed the pieces of the 1 x 4. It's probably taller than it needs to be, but we'll see. The stuff has weeks of growing to do yet.

I also received the brackets the I'll use to make my raised bed, and they looked bigger in the picture, you know? I can still get a 14" high bed out of them, and that will still mean plenty of dirt to haul to fill the thing. I might go out yet and get the lumber today, but otherwise probably tomorrow. There is still snow in the yard, but I'm eager to get going. I was hoping to grow some peas and cool weather stuff before summer hits in full force. This shouldn't be a problem.

I am going to try the lasagna approach, although I don't have as much organic-y compostable stuff as I could. My neighbor, on the other hand, has a big pile, and I'm pretty sure they wouldn't mind me taking the leaves off the top. I want to have about 6" of soil, 4" of finished compost and and the rest will be the organic stuff in progress. Obviously I'm still mulling the proportions over, and I'll probably have some kind of minimum amount of topsoil and compost that I need to order for them to deliver it.

Yea! It's windy and cool today (although sunny at the moment) but we're slated to have some really nice weather over the next few days.