Farmer in Training!

Well it was around the end of August, so I thought... perfect time for planting Spring vegetables! Unfortunately, everywhere I went looking for seeds & advice, I got the same responses.

"Why are you planting Spring vegetables now?"
"It's too late in the season."
"The plants are gonna die."
"What is wrong with you?"

What the others didn't know was that I was a farmer in training, and I needed to get those seeds to practice for next Spring. Thankfully one of my colleagues told about this store called Tractor Supply Co. and they still had a bunch of different seeds!

I bought one pack of each. Sunflowers, Corn, Carrots, Tomatoes (2 kinds) & Muskmelon (Lady at the counter told me it was a kind of cantaloupe).

Next I headed over to Wal-Mart and got the last two seed starter cells that they had, spray bottles, seed starting potting mix and some vegetable food. Then I got some Popsicle sticks from Michael's so I could label each group of vegetables. It was like $3 for the sticks. What a rip!

Anyway, on August 22nd I planted every one of the seeds I had (probably about one hundred in total) in hopes that at least some would grow. Then over the next week, I obtained even more things to plant!

Seeds
Cucumber
Red Pepper
Cilantro

Seedlings (Given to me by my family friend)
Cucumber
Peas
Spinach
String Beans

All in all, I was able to plant about twelve different types of plants.  This picture on the right was taken about three days after planting and it shows the six seed types I initially planted. The Sunflower was my very first seedling that sprouted! If you look very closely it is in the third plastic box from the left. It's been about a week and a half since I planted the majority of these and so far some have been growing better than others. New pictures of the plants will be included in my next post.

Unfortunately, some unidentified wildlife dug up and ate four of my corn seedlings! I'm down to only two now. One of my sunflower seedlings was destroyed as well.  It may have been my sister, but I'm not 100% sure. One my colleagues suggested that I install some security cameras. Hmm, but now I'm thinking maybe a scarecrow is the answer.

Another status update will be coming soon, but in the meantime I will try to protect my crops the best I can.