Basement Seed Starting
(I’ve been using these single serve yogurt containers with holes in the bottom for over 5 years now and they are the perfect size for starting seeds. – smiles)
The Dear Wonderful Hubby and I have started a gazillion seeds in the basement grow stations.
Woot! It is officially gardening season for us. This is always an exciting time.
Thus far, we’ve planted tomatoes (large and cherry), eggplant, mini bell peppers, lovage, good king henry, thyme (creeping and regular), marigolds, zinnias, peas, parsley, rosemary, basil, chives (garlic and regular), French sorrel, ground cherries, chard, spinach, lettuce, horseradish, watermelon and beets.
The regular thyme has already sprouted (We cold stratified it and it germinated in the fridge. That’s how aggressive these dollar store thyme seeds are.)!
We have some green in the grow station!
We also sourced some Jerusalem artichokes/sunchokes. They are currently wrapped in newspaper in a bag in the fridge. We’re waiting until pea transplanting time (i.e. when all the snow is gone and the ground is workable) to plant them outside.
Woot! It is GO TIME! Yes!
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Gardening – Know Your Last Expected Frost Date
If we start seeds too early, seedlings will be too large to care for inside the greenhouse/home and/or be difficult to transplant outside.
If we start seeds too late, seedlings will be too small to transplant outside when the good weather arrives.
This is why knowing our last expected frost date is key for gardeners in cold-during-the-winter climates. We use that estimate of when our last frost date is and then count backward to determine when we should be starting seeds.
To find out what your last expected frost date is, do an internet search on ‘last expected frost date (your city)’ and then choose a reputable result from sites like the farmer’s almanac or a seed selling company that have that information.
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2025 Gardening Lessons – Warm The Soil More For Warmth-Loving Plants
Some plants like squash/courgettes, zucchini, and eggplant love the warmth.
In 2025, I put black plastic bags on the ground around the butternut squash plants and the zucchini plants when I moved them from the basement grow station to the great outdoors.
These plants did EXTREMELY well (for our garden).
I didn’t do this for the eggplant. And they did EXTREMELY poorly. They dropped leaves. They stopped growing. And that made them a target for insects.
The eggplants only started to flourish when the hot weather came. And in our neighborhood in 2025, that was way too late in the growing season.
In 2026, I plan to put the black plastic bags around the base of the eggplants also. This will heat up the soil, keeping the plants nice and toasty.
And I will remove the black plastic bags once the weather warms.
The black plastic bags will be put away and reused the next Spring.
I’m certain there are many more environmentally-savvy ways to heat the ground around plants, ways that don’t include plastic. And once I’ve researched that, I’ll likely switch to one of those ways.
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Moving Plants Outdoors
The last frost date in my corner of the universe is May 10th. Daily low temperatures are above 5C/41F for at least the next 14 days, according to the forecasts (which are still reliable here in Canada).
We’ll be moving the tomato plants, bell pepper plants, eggplant plants, marigold plants and zinnia plants outdoors. (The squash/zucchinis/courgettes will likely wait for a little bit.)
Every expert gardener will tell you to bring the plants outdoors for short durations to slowly acclimatize them to the sun, the wind, the temperatures. If you don’t do this, you risk transplant shock and could possibly kill your seedlings.
I’m extremely lazy and I usually take the risk. We transplant on a rainy day, preferably the start of a series of rainy days. We have spare plants just in case. And we hope for the best.
(knock on wood)
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Waiting For The Last Frost Date
The Dear Wonderful Hubby and I are impatiently waiting for our last frost date (May 10th) to transplant the tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, marigolds, zinnias and other frost-sensitive plants from the basement grow station to the outside gardens.
(We are also waiting for overnight temperatures to reach 4C/39F.)
It is…challenging to wait. (grins)
The plants are ready and so are we.
But transplanting them before the last frost date would put them at risk. And it won’t serve the plants as it remains too cool for them to prosper outside.
So…we wait.
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