Just when I got started planting the seeds, we had a week of really hot weather. It was almost 100 yesterday but has cooled off some today. When the weather is scorching, which isn’t uncommon for a few days in the spring, it is easy for the little seedlings to dry up and die. Most of mine survived, but I did search around for a shade cloth to throw over the little greenhouse thingy for future hot days. I like to calculate how much money I save starting plants from seed. For example, today I potted up 47 cucumber plants. When they get a little bigger in a week or two, they will be the same size as the $2.99 ones in 4″ pots at the nursery. They would cost over $140 if I bought them. I already have the pots, so for about $3 worth of potting soil and $3 worth of cucumber seeds, the little bit of work I do is worth a lot. The picture below shows my cucumbers, some winter squash, and the first peppers to sprout.

Here are a few views inside the little greenhouse:

The picture above are my green onions. I don’t have much luck with bulb onions, and they are cheap to buy, so I stick with green ones. It is really handy to always have green onions in the garden. The picture below shows some winter squash babies, some sweet peas (flowers) and some lettuce.
I buy the flats and inserts at a nursery in Sebastopol where they are very inexpensive. We save them from year to year in big plastic garbage cans which also hold all the pots, hoses, shade cloths, and some other stuff. I have always liked babies, and baby plants are no exception.
Today, I was grocery shopping when I saw that the store was selling fresh herbs. They were called ‘Living Herbs’ and came with roots wedged into a little plastic container. The thyme was thick and healthy looking, so I bought two of them (they were only $1.99 a package) and opened them up to find that many little thyme plants were included in the bunch. When I got them home, I divided them up and potted them. It will be interesting to see if they grow, because that was about a fourth of the cost of buying a thyme plant from the nursery, and starting thyme from seed is a very long process.