Water.

That little seed tray needs frequent watering.  I’ve been watering my lettuce patch, but sparingly.  Yesterday when I went to check on my seedlings, they looked terrible.  Like, I thought I was going to have to start over terrible.  I decided to give them a good soaking- and it was definitely a good soaking, I probably poured a full gallon of water in this little flat.  But look what I have today:

They’re thriving.   Now if we can only get past this sub-zero frigid temperatures outside, I can start to think about setting the lettuce outside in the screen porch.  My plan is to put them in my greenhouse rack with the plastic cover on, in the plastic covered screen porch.  That should put them at around a zone 7, and I expect the lettuces will grow wonderfully, and in no time we’ll be eating salad.

I need more lights too.  Because I want to start another flat of lettuces, only I need my trays and lights to start actual seeds.

Here’s a quick pic of my onion flat.

You can see the alliums all came up nicely- including the 50% germination Tadorna Leek.  They came up with better than 50% germ, so I guess you never know.  Far to the right you can see the parsley seedlings.  Still no artichokes.   If they don’t come up in the next week here, I’m going to dig them up and see if the seeds are doing anything.  Maybe they need to be scarified? The parsley I’m going to have to pull out soon and plant in bigger spaces.  The onions should be doing just fine here for a while, as long as I give them a haircut from time to time.   If I end up pulling the ‘chokes, when I pot up the parsley, that square of starter tray will be filled with thyme, marjoram and lovage.