Mary, Mary Quite Contrary

Mary, Mary quite contrary

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockle shells

And pretty little maids all in a row.

I remember saying this over and over as a small child when my mother and I would go visit her friend Mary. Mary had a big greenhouse and it is where I learned to love the smell of dirt. After doing a little research it seems that this nursery rhyme isn't exactly nice in its meaning. I'll just go with what I remember.

Today, Gayle's garden grew very nicely, thank you.

Yes, there are four flats on the bottom in the dark. On the other shelves I slide the flats back and forth throughout the day so all the seedlings get light. When we move the shelving each layer with have two lights, no shifting.



There are 62 flats now planted (3 were in the old kitchen, too messy to photograph). My darling Mr. White had to leave town so abruptly that he wasn't able to finish my temporary grow room. I say temporary because we are going to gut the old kitchen and remodel it into a very large grow room. It will hold several times this many shelves. Next year I'll have a grow room that is the cats meow.



Marigolds of some sort getting their second set of leaves.

Alyssum. I'm going to have to start transplanting soon and I haven't even finished the first round of planting!

Snapdragons.

Broccoli. Did anyone catch that I planted 222 broccoli seeds? Do you realize that is enough broccoli to feed an army? I'm going to be giving away a lot of plants when the time comes.

Finally, some of the wave petunias popping up.

Here's another variety with three leaves. At 23 cents per seed I've been stressing over these. I breathed a very small sigh of relief. Obviously, there is still a long way to go before they are in the hanging baskets. I hope I can pull this one off. (This is only my third year gardening).

Soon my love will be home and the other shelves will go up. At that time everything will have lights, but until then this will take a lot of work. I'm going to have to run the lights 24 hours a day and do a lot of shifting. Thirty flats for 12 hours, then switch them all for the next 12 hours. It will be a lot of work, but it's okay. I am way more lucky than most women...look what my honey has provided so far. It will only get better with time.

Here's what I planted yesterday:

60 petite mix marigold, 16 jelly bean tomato, 1 flat viola, 30 dianthus. 60 crackerjack marigold, 60 jaguar marigold, 23 supersweet 100 tomatoes and 30 sweet william.