Indoor starters week 1 - my urban garden

Last Friday I planted my first ever round of indoor starter plants.  The goal is that they will be able to go into the ground once I am able to dig up a corner of my backyard to serve as a garden plot, and after the last frost.

And looking outside today, it is hard to believe that last frost (roughly May 17 here in Edmonton) is only SEVEN weeks away.

This is winter, month EIGHT.

UGH. Obviously there is just a TINY BIT of warming up and melting that needs to happen before the plants can go outside.

But at any rate, here is a shot of how the starters are doing, now that they are well set up in a south-facing spare room for the last week:

Much potential...

I know there isn't really a whole lot to see at this point.  Most of the seeds require several days to germinate at all, so I'm not surprised that this is how things looked at the end of week one.  What is actually kind of surprising are the two trays of marigolds:

Quite a bit going on here!

I was very surprised that the marigolds starting popping up after only THREE DAYS!  This is how they looked a week in.  I'm happy that I have multiple sprouts in most of the pots, once they get true leaves I will pick off the weaker ones and the strongest seedling will take over the entire pot in time.  This eventual step is very important, each cube or pot can only have one plant in it to prevent over-crowding, which is detrimental to the growth of the plants.  But we are still quite a ways from this right now.

You can't see it in the picture, but both the forme de coeur and early annie tomatoes are also starting to sprout, but just barely.  I'm sure I will have a great deal more to report next week.

Happy (indoor, preseason,) gardening everyone!