Grow lights station, seeds and salad table

In mid-March, I finally made my grow light station!  I bought two basic two-bulb fluorescent light fixtures and put one warm and one cool bulb in each fixture. They came with hanging chains, so all I had to do was screw in some eye screws to the top of the shelf on each side and voila, I had a growing station!  I used one whole shelf in the garage--it's about 2'x4'.  The actual shelves are wood, so it was easy to screw in the eye screws.

On March 16, 2011, I planted my seeds!

In three trays, I used 6-cell packs collected over the past several years.  In the fourth tray, I used 3 inch pots collected from fuscia starts over recent years.  I also used my Jiffy warmer pad in the fourth tray (although two months later I can say it really didn't make a difference--in fact, my zinnias and impatients did better without the heat).  Also, for the first time, I used seed starting mix instead of soil and I actually washed every little pot out with soap and water.  I must admit, it was a pain trying to remember to water the seedlings with fertilizer and after all the fuss, I didn't notice any difference using freshly cleaned pots and seed starting mix.    

Here's what I seeded (all seeds are Humes):

• Early jalapeño
• Delicious 51 cantaloupe
• Sugar Baby watermelon
• Lemon cucumbers
• Green Marketmore 76 slicing cucumbers
• Blue Lake Pole green beans
• Jackpot Bush zucchini
• Summerpac squash
• Jack O'Lantern pumpkins
• New England Pie pumpkins
• Sweet 100 tomatoes
• Beefsteak tomatoes
• Evergreen White Bunching onions

By March 29, most of the seeds had sprouted!

In addition to the indoor seeds, on April 7, 2011, I also seeded (or is "sowed" the proper term here?) some bunching onions, Danvers Half Long carrots and Olympia Spinach in the cold-season bed. Here's how they look now:

On that same day, I seeded my salad table with Perpetual Spinach-Green Leaf Chard, Little Finger baby carrots, Red Globe onions, Walla Walla onions, Salad Bowl lettuce, Great Lakes lettuce and green and red Romaine lettuce.  Here they are now:

The nice thing about this salad table is that I can move it around (with help-it's heavy!) when the weather starts getting too warm.  I can keep it in morning sun and then move it into shade if needed.  Also, I practically have no bugs to contend with.  Or weeds.  Plus, no bending!  I am considering constructing a few more of these for those reasons.  Next time though, I'd use a lighter soil mix--maybe put the true square foot gardening mix (1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 peat moss or coconut coir and 1/3 compost) because it would be much lighter and easier to maneuver.