Seedlings and seeds

The seedlings in the closet are coming along great!  The tomatoes are huge and I'll probably start hardening them off soon.  All but one of the peppers have sprouted and I've thinned them to one in each cup, like I did with the tomatoes.  I've also thinned most of the chia.  The chamomile is coming up, but it's so small!  I probably should have started it sooner.

The plants in the egg cartons are not doing nearly so well.  I don't think I'll be using the egg cartons for planting again.  There's not a lot of room for dirt and roots in each section and the material itself is drawing water out of the soil, making it necessary for me to water more.  Most of the new type of marigold came up, but I only have one left.  Five parsley sprouted, but only two remain.  The cumin didn't come up at all, but I wasn't entirely expecting them to, since I didn't buy seeds from a seed company, but just planted some from the kitchen.  They were probably treated in some way to keep them from sprouting.  The other thing that didn't come up at all was the marigold seed I saved from my garden last year.  The plant I took them from was a volunteer.  I'm thinking that it might have needed a second plant nearby in order to produce viable seed.  It looks like I might have to buy some marigold plants at the nursery.  There is already parsley in my garden that survived the winter.  Hopefully, it will go to seed this year and I'll have some volunteers next year.

My new seed order came in today!  In addition to my primary herb and nightshade garden out back, I was going to grow a lot of vegetables in the front yard and have a cottage garden on the side of the house.  Judging by how little time I've had so far to work outside this year, I decided that was a little ambitious.  I'm going to do slightly less veggies and fit them into my current garden space, leaving the front yard intact.  I am still going to pursue the cottage garden idea, though, and those were the seeds that arrived today.  I got hollyhock, poppy, larkspur, cosmos, bachelor buttons, calendula, nigella, amaranth and sunflower.  All of these flowers are self-seeding and all but the poppy are good cut flowers.  Most of them are also good for attracting beneficial insects.  I'm going to plant these along the side of the house and I'm going to mix in some herbs, like parsley, cilantro and dill.  I'm also going use this area for the cayenne peppers I was planning on putting in the front yard, and any tomatoes that don't fit in the back.