Floating lettuce and other goodies!

We are trying various ways to grow plants in our greenhouse. We saw this idea from the University of Florida - floating lettuce. Underneath the styrofoam is a water nutrient reservoir. These have been in there a week and doubled in size.

We also replanted our tubes with broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts. We lined them in black to help with the algie. We have a nutrient reservoir that circulates several times a day.

Here's a close up of the plants. We make our own pots!

Here are some early tomato plants that I started January 8th. I plan on putting these in big pots in the greenhouse soon.

I am trying to produce some carrots, radishes, baby greens and beets in pots. They are looking good right now!

We also have several broccoli plants that we potted. They are so healthy looking and green!

Go to the roots!

The middle of January we started some new plants for the greenhouse and early garden. We started them under lights in the house and took them outside during the day to the greenhouse but this past week has been so nice and mild that they are now living in the greenhouse.

We've had such success growing lettuce in the house that I have started carrots and beets in containers to grow inside under lights as an experiment. I plan to start some more for the greenhouse and then outside in a bed to see how they grow best this time of year.

Last fall when we started our little plants in the tubes, we had the fertilizer mix wrong and the plants had their roots burned. We bought some new type of fertilizer the first part of December and thought we'd keep the damaged plants going to see if we could tell a difference and experiment with them.

All I can say is wow! The plants grew and are deep green and we are actually getting a little bit of broccoli. I pulled these lettuce roots up out of the tube and was shocked at how many roots there were.

Healthy roots make healthy plants. I am transplanting some of the smaller broccoli plants into pots to make room for our new seedlings to go into the tubes. Here is another picture of the roots on the plants.

My babies are 35 years old today!

I can hardly believe it but my baby boys are 35 years old today!

Can you tell which is which?

(Eric is on the left and Ryan is on the right)We didn't know until five days before they were born that we were having twins. Ryan laid sideways below my diaphragm and they didn't ever hear his heartbeat. They also came three weeks early with a lot of medical problems but we are blessed and they are healthy today!

Happy Birthday!