seedlings!

yesterday we started the tomato seedlings! i just started all of them because i hear tomato plants are tough to get going, and don't transplant all that well, so i figured the more the better. so, i put maybe 4 seeds in each little egg spot (i'm using egg cartons to hold the dirt and seeds), and i'm using 2 1-dozen egg cartons. hopefully i'll get too many hardy little tomato plants and i'll be unloading them on our poor neighbors. i can dream at least!

in other seedling news, the peppers haven't germinated yet. i was reading online that it can take up to a month for pepper seeds to germinate, but i'm trying to keep them nice and toasty so i'm really hoping ours will go faster than that. today marks 8 days since i started the seeds, so we'll see.

yesterday the girls and i also made our berry patch. we're going to plant strawberries!! we're not starting those from seed though, too difficult. we'll buy small plants at the greenhouse. it's a great little strawberry patch though! it's in the front of the house on the left side where they'll get plenty of sun. the girls and i dug up some soil, put in some compost, put back the soil all loosened up, and topped it off with a few inches of nice black forest topsoil. full of worms! the sandy stuff off the side of the house had maybe 2 or 3 worms in the whole 2.5 x 2.5 foot patch, but the forest soil had at least 20 in just those few inches. it feels pretty heavy and clay-ish, but no soil is perfect, and at least it's got a lot of organic matter. i think i might dig some more up for the garden too. we're going to sow the spinach into the garden as soon as we hit a 50 degree spell in april, and i'd like to get some rich topsoil for that too.

i have some cute little girl stories to tell, but i'll do that in another post and leave this one totally devoted to the garden. i promise i'll take some pictures soon!