just watchin the dew drop

I've decided to keep the lights in the greenhouse on during the day, so everything cycles with the sun as the sky wheels around and will sun my kitchen (eventually).

There's a constant condensation on the plastic around the layer that has the seeded plugs. I thought it was because it's so chilly in my apartment, but it's keeping up the damp all the time. Even when the lamps are off.

I had a lot of errands today, so I was gone for a good part. I came home, fed the cats, and looked in on the seeds. The lettuce is gangbusters. Ok, well, gangbusters for seeds that were put in 5 days ago and are now a few inches tall.

The b.sprouts are still coming along. I noticed with a little closer look, that the amaranth, cosmos, and coleus have sprouted too.

I'm going to start a few more plugs of wheat grass and oat grass. I hope to transfer the plugs I have now into some pots the cats can get at, but there's just not much there yet. I don't think I planted dense enough. The blades of grass are getting taller than 4"! I'll give it a couple more days to see how tall it will get.  Until then, I'll watch the grass grow. It's the only thing I can see when I'm sitting in my favorite chair in the living room, and the tip of almost every blade has a dew drop that catches the light.

Trying to find the light

My little apartment faces west and I've got 2 windows.  Big in the living room, small in the bedroom.

I can't block the window with shelving, it's considered a fire hazard. In the past, every horizontal surface in my living room was covered with starter cells. Emma the Cat was frustrated. And every time I started moving things around to rotate them in the light, she thought she was finally going to get her spot back.

I bought an indoor greenhouse to start seedlings this year. My brilliant idea was to put it in the space between the living room and kitchen on top of my kitchen table to catch as much of my western light as possible.

This is the first time I've had seeds in pots in the greenhouse. As the day passed, I watched the sunlight rotate through the room. At one point, the bathroom was brilliant with light. But then the sun went down. Direct light didn't get near the greenhouse. It's too early in the season for the kitchen to get direct sunlight. I've never paid attention to that before.

So I got my three bulb reading lamp pole from the bedroom, arranged the seed trays and pointed the lamps and got some really bright light going on the seeds. The lights aren't perfectly arranged. From what I read, it's best if the lamp is 4-6" above the soil shining straight down. This is supposed to prevent "seed stretch" which I've had problems with in the past, but I didn't know how to fix it. Now I know how to fix it, but I'm not sure I want to spend money on a few horizontal florescent shop lights that I'll only use a few months per year. So it will be reading lamps for now. Eventually, the sun will catch up.