Adventures, Stew style

Yesterday I dragged my wire shelving out of the shed to make a setup for starting seedlings. Ooops. Somewhere along the line the black plastic thingies that keep the shelves from falling down had done got lost!

Thus begins the chase. I went to Lowe's, where I had a nice gift card left over from Christmas, when my Dad bought me a beautiful bird feeder that was too big to carry home. I meant to just go get another one, but that didn't happen. Good thing!

Here's the rub. Places sell this shelving, right? Apparently, though, they expect that you'll actually hold on to the accessories and not lose them in a move. Duh. So I couldn't find any. At first. Then the incredibly helpful folks* at Lowe's actually took the parts off of a display model and sold them to me separately for like, $6. So unnecessary and so nice of them. There weren't quite enough to make all of my shelves fit, but I did a little jerry-rigging with some non-slip rubber pads to complete the job as best I could.

Then I went and puzzled over shop lights and which florescent bulbs to put in them. I ended up getting two 4-foot lights, and four full-spectrum "sunlight" bulbs. Another guy then helped me realized I didn't need to buy any chains for hanging. Why don't they say on the outside of the packaging what exactly is included??

Over to the garden section. I went hog-wild and picked up some more seeds, blood meal, bone meal and potting soil, in anticipation of some fab seed coddling. I realized when I got home that I probably should have gotten seedling starter instead of potting soil, but eh. This should work.

I assembled it all with only a little tweaking necessary (don't you love zip ties?), pulled out my seed box and then went outside to do a little potting.

Look!!!





So much fun. If you can't read the tags, I've begun:

Tomatoes:
Sungold
Brandywine
Better Boy
Pink Beefsteak (which I collected from last year's plants. I'm hoping they're not a hybrid!)
Cherokee Purple
Ground Cherries

Peppers:
These came from a packet of "rainbow mixed" sweet peppers. It's always nice to have a surprise, I guess.

*I KNOW! I didn't expect them all to be so so available. At least three people helped me multiple times.