even when the weather is perfect, it’s not always the best idea to start your seeds directly in the garden. small seeds can blow away, birds or bugs might get your bigger seeds, and bad drainage or too much wet weather might cause your seeds to rot in the ground. by starting seeds outside the garden, you can try to control the conditions your seeds are growing in. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

usually i start my seeds in my office, where the windows don’t open and the sun is only directly shining in for about 3-4 hours every afternoon. it’s warm and light enough for the seeds to sprout, but once they’ve sprouted they really need to get more light than just a windowsill. that’s usually when i bring them home. when it’s not windy out, i like to put them up on the roof of our apartment building.

this isn’t a perfect place to leave them. if it gets above 80 and i didn’t water the plants enough, then chances are when i get home the plants will be completely shriveled up and probably blown halfway across the roof. (this has happened several times; my next big post will be about repairing the damage when this occurs.) if it’s windy at all on the ground, it will probably be twice as windy up there. if it rains, the little cups will fill up and my plants will drown. i’ve gotten very diligent about checking the weather several times a day.

this is what happens when you let a sprout grow in low light for too long - they get very tall. sometimes people call them “leggy”. (this is chinese cabbage, which is not supposed to have much of a stem at all above the soil line) the stems tend to get weak and can bend pretty easily. these always end up being the plants that accidently dry out or drop or get stepped on for some reason. i’m proud to say that i still haven’t actually killed anything. i’ll get plants real close to the point of no return, but then they’ll make it through somehow. not sure if that makes me a sadist or a really great gardener.

sometimes i will do something stupid and set the plant at an angle and forget it’s there for a day or two, and it will grow unevenly or at a weird angle.

this also is something i seem to only do exclusively to the ones that have gotten too tall or damaged.

sometimes, in spite of all the mistakes i’m making, stuff will grow perfectly.

on january 2nd 2010 (2 months and 1 day since i started) i picked my first radishes, baby lettuce, and baby bok choy! only some of the radishes were ready - mirabeau (an early slender french breakfast radish) and a couple of the easter egg radishes (a variety of pink, white, red, purple, and lavender radishes).

i got about 3 ounces of radishes this time once they were cleaned up.

i also got the 4 biggest baby bok choy out. i think next time i will let them get a little bit bigger.

i finally had enough time to start thinning out the lettuce, so i brought home everything i pulled up to turn into salad.

also i grew some shrimp

(i padded the salad out with the last of the lettuce from costco, some shrimp, and cherry tomatoes.)

sweet peas, day 19

carrot sprouts, day 34

marigolds and lobelia sprouts in the office (and a collection of domokun)

chinese cabbage and a stray radish, day 29

“miyashige white” daikon, day 20

calendula sprout, day 9-ish

(this one didn’t sprout with the others for some reason, so i pressed the soil down a little and watered it and just noticed this around 11am today)

calendula sprouts, day 9

baby bok choy, day 40

setting up netting during a breeze is not fun. i hope none of this blows away next week, because it ended up being like 30 bucks for 2 nets and 2 sets of poles. there is something called “landscaping staples” that are in the mail to secure the edges of the nets but they probably won’t get here til christmas. i’m pretty sure this will keep the birds away for the time being.

my daikon are doing pretty well, considering i didn’t even really dig up the soil under them that much. i think the nets are keeping the bok choy and radishes safe so far. hopefully the rain will encourage some growth to make up for what the birds got.

i planted some lettuce here around the tomato cage. there’s a cucumber planted in the middle of the hill, but i think a bird must’ve gotten the seed. i didn’t want the cage to get thrown out, so i’m going to keep it here for when i start my cherry tomatoes in a few months.

you can just barely see the chinese cabbages coming up in the centers of the little circles. behind the cabbages are my carrots and radishes. i’m looking forward to purple carrot salads in february! it’ll be neat to have all this stuff that i would never buy at the grocery store.

in other news, i finally measured my garden. 18 by 18 feet! (it’s 6 of the 3-foot long bamboo poles) that’s much bigger than i thought! i guess i’m no good at estimating. i’m hacking away at the edges of the little dirt paths i wore down so i can plant more lettuce and things in what space i have left, and i’m already trying to figure out what i’m going to plant in february and march when i’ve harvested everything in there. i bought a tray of peat pots to start seeds in, and my first batch of starts will be lobelia and marigolds for the borders around the veggies. next batch will be orange and purple cauliflower, a couple more chinese cabbage (i think i can use them to fill in space at the end of rows), and “freckles” lettuce. i keep swearing up and down i’m not ordering any more seeds, but it seems like i keep finding more space to plant things in. ideally, i’ll always be planting something new, and always harvesting something.

“lattuga quattro stagnani” lettuce, day 15

radish and carrot bed, day 20 - december 5, 2009

i spent too much time setting this up. we’re supposed to get a week of storms starting tomorrow night, but in la that doesn’t really mean anything. as soon as the sprinkles start, it’s STORMWATCH 2009 and all the anchors are out on the street in fishermans’ raincoats. it might get maybe 2 inches over a week. (everybody who doesn’t live in california can stop laughing thank you) it doesn’t sound like we’re supposed to get wind, but i’m going to go check on the nets if we get any breaks in the rain before next weekend. in the back you can see i kind of made a tent over the sprouts that are up, and in front i just sort of stretched it really tight. i think i need to go back tomorrow with some sort of mallet to hammer in the stakes a little more.

the peas have definitely been pecked at, so i think this will give at least the ones towards the middle a break. i don’t see anything from any of the carrot seeds i planted, and it’s been almost 3 weeks. the radishes are all thriving, so at least i’m doing something right there. my lettuce is slowly coming up, and maybe around christmas i’ll be making salads. that would be pretty awesome.

peas, day 18 - december 3, 2009

i think there were supposed to be 5 plants here, but 2 of them have snapped off stems. i’ll get a better look this weekend.