Lindsey's Whimsy's: Getting Ready for Spring

I love spring, the fresh flowers, nice weather, veggies from the garden and all the other things that come with it. What I do not love is how much it cost to buy the plants so that I can enjoy flowers and veggies throughout the summer (I found out just how expensive plants were last year as I tried to start flower beds from scratch...). I decided try my hand at growing plants from seeds. This seems like it should be a simple process- buy small containers for growing plants from seeds, fill with dirt, put seeds in dirt filled containers, water, and wait. It's not quite that simple though. It can actually be quite daunting.

I started the growing plants from seeds process this afternoon at Lowes. Walking it I see about 20 different versions of the containers to grow the seeds it. There is environmentally friendly (I'd rather go wallet friendly), some that you just have to add water to (the dirt grows when wet, kind of like the sponges that would grow from little pills I used to love to play with growing up), containers that are actually in the shape of small pots, and plain containers that are like the 6 pack you can buy at the store that already has plants in it (except the plain containers I was looking at had 72 spots to grow plants from seeds). Then they have all the types of containers for about 3 different brands, each with slightly varied offerings. After walking around the two different parts of the store that these containers were on display, I chose the plain container style with 72 spots to grow plants in. My particular package had 3 trays, each with the 72 spots. This means I have 216 spots I could plant plants in from seeds. I know, its a lot of spots but as I mentioned earlier, I really like plants.

Then it was off to choose my seeds. I thought I had a lot of choices with the container to plant the seeds in, I had was vastly unprepared for what was to come... There were literally hundreds of seed packets to choose from. I have always walked past the seed section(s) and never really paid a whole of attention to it. I've even bought seed packets before but never on this level. My goal was to fill my garden with plants all grown from seeds. Pretty ambitious right? So I'm back at the seed section and I first look at tomatoes. Then the peppers, then various squashes, then beans, and on and on. It would not be so bad if I just had to choose between the color or size of my future vegetables but there were so many varieties of each of the veggies- there were at least 15 types of tomatoes alone to choose from. I actually was sitting on the floor, choosing between the perfect for slicing and the excellent flavor varieties of tomato. It was pretty ridiculous but I finally made it out of the store with about 15 seed packets and a plan for the rest of the afternoon.

I filled 2 of my seed trays and decided to leave one empty - I know I will end up at the store wanting to try out just a few more plants before the planting season is over. This way I can avoid the whole buying the container to grow my plants in process later on.

So as of now, my fingers are crossed that baby plants will actually grow from all the seeds I planted. I know people do this every year but I am pretty skeptical. We shall see!

Here is what I've got so far-