Seeds started!

My order from The Natural Gardening Company arrived on Saturday. One week turnaround on a holiday week is pretty good! The only issue I had with them is that I got no confirmation of my order. They did send a tracking number when the order was shipped, but up to that point I was wondering if it had gone through or not.

Anyhow, since I had seeds and a 72-cell seed-starting tray, I drove over to Home Depot to pick up a few more seed-starting essentials. I got a small bag of Miracle-Gro Organic Choice potting soil. This wouldn't be my preferred choice of organic seed starting medium, but it's the best I could do on a Sunday in February. I may order some soil from an organic supplier when it comes time to transplant, but the shipping charges are killer on those big bags.

I also picked up a 4-ft. shop light and two fluorescent bulbs to put the seedlings under once they sprout. I would have preferred a 2-ft. light, since I'm somewhat space limited, but they didn't have one that was both small and able to be moved around. In any case, the fixture I ended up with only cost about $8. After standing in front of the bulb selection for a good 15 minutes, I chose one Phillips "Daylight" bulb and one Ott-Lite plant tube (which was about twice as expensive, hence why I only bought one of them). The Ott-Lite didn't have a lumen number on the box, so I'm not sure about the strength, but I've heard good things about the brand, so I'm hopeful. I was planning on getting a timer for the light, but either Home Depot was completely out of simple timers (they had some fancy digital things and lots of outdoor timers) or I wasn't looking in the right place.

One thing I was a little miffed about was that the outdoor garden area was closed. That is, of course, where they keep most of the gardening supplies, including the larger planters that I wanted to check out. So, I still don't know what I'll be putting the seedlings in when they're ready to go outside.

When I got home, I planted the eggplant seeds and some of the lettuce seeds over nine cells each in the seed tray. Then, I covered the tray with the plastic humidity lid and set it on top of the refrigerator. I'm hoping that the heat from the refrigerator plus the ambient heat from running the oven once a day or so will be enough to induce germination.