We did let them each plant some seeds, with a great deal of help from me.
Then once they went to bed, Tom and I planted the rest.As promised, I'll show you how we set things up. (Disclaimer: there are all kinds of explanations I could give for what you'll see in my laundry room. But I'm resisting the urge.) We have florescent shop lights suspended from the ceiling on small chains, this way we can raise the lights easily as the seedlings grow. These shelves are in our laundry room, which is probably the warmest room in our house thanks to running the dryer nearly every day. This picture shows one side:
And here's the whole set up:
Right now I still have the covers on the seed trays. I'll leave those on to keep in warmth and moisture, then when the seeds start to sprout I'll remove the covers and lower the lights.This year we're also going to run some fans, in order to strengthen the stems and prepare them for real outdoor breezes. In the past I've had some trouble getting my seedlings adjusted to the outdoors, so I'm hoping this will help.
It works well for us to keep our seedlings up high. Not only does it save space, but it keeps the trays out of reach of our children who are so eager to see the little plants growing. As much as we want them to be involved and learn from the process, I've found that their involvement needs to be highly supervised. Otherwise, it's quite easy for little hands to very quickly harm the seedlings.
This system works for us! I'll be sure to keep you posted on how things progress.
