Essential Seed-Starting Equipment

After writing about starting our first seeds for the season, I thought it’d be helpful to discuss our seed-starting setup. Although everyone will have a unique set of equipment, the basic items will generally be the same for everyone. The equipment I discuss below is what Magz and I bought, but you’ll want to determine what best fits your needs. That can be based on how much you want to invest in seed starting at this time, how many seeds you want to start, and how large your seed-starting space is.

Necessary Equipment

Regardless of how big or small of a garden you’re planning, these are the essentials you’ll need.

Heat Mat

Although many people will first think of a grow light when buying seed-starting supplies, a heat mat is equally as important. A heat mat warms the soil to the appropriate temperature for seeds to germinate. They are great because they maintain a temperature of about 70-75 degrees Fahrenheit. They are also waterproof and can be wiped clean, so you don’t have to worry about getting wet soil on them.

They’re very easy to operate since the ones we have don’t have a temperature controller. Rather, you simply set them and forget them. Once you plug them in, they stay on 24/7 until you begin seeing your plants poking through the soil. We bought ours on Amazon in Feb. 2022. They are 10 inches by 20 inches, came in a 2-pack, and cost $27.99 at the time. They’re actually cheaper now than they were in 2022 at $23.99. Here is a link to them.

Grow Light

The grow light works hand-in-hand with the heat mat. You don’t need to turn on your grow light when you first start your seeds. That’s because its purpose is to help the plants grow through photosynthesis, and until the seeds germinate and poke through the soil, the grow light has no job. Instead, you wait for germination and see green through the brown soil. At that point, you can begin using the grow light, which you want to mimic the sun by not having it on 24/7. Ours is set to be on 12 hours and off 12 hours. The grow light will be used until you transplant the plants into your garden. Like the heat mats, our grow light also came from Amazon. It was $25.99 when we bought it in Feb. 2022. The exact light we got is no longer sold; however, here is one very similar and is only $23.99. There are different styles of grow lights, but I prefer the ones that clip on tables to the ones that hang. Hanging ones are great because their light is spread across a larger area, but you have to have the right setup to hang them. Meanwhile, the clip-on ones can be attached nearly anywhere and you can angle the lights to fit your needs.

Dome & Tray

You’ll almost always find these sold together as a set. The tray holds your seed-starting cells and will prevent excess water from running onto the table or surface you’re growing them on. The dome, or lid, works like a greenhouse and keeps moisture inside. This is essential during the germination process as the seeds need consistent moisture. The dome can only be used until the plants reach a height where they are pushing up against it. You’ll also want to be careful when using the lid. Keeping the lid on can lead to mildew or mold problems if your soil is too wet. Mini greenhouses are the perfect environment for mold to grow because the soil is warm and wet, and until the grow light is turned on, there are no UV rays to kill said mildew and mold. So, just be sure to monitor your cells each day. The underside of the lid should have condensation on it and the soil should be damp but not soaking wet. If you notice that the soil isn’t drying out within a few days of watering, adjust the lid a bit to allow some airflow. That will dry it out. Seed trays and domes are very easy to find. Your big box stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot will have them, and you can also find them at feed or farm stores, such as Tractor Supply and Agway. They’re very affordable. Here’s one from Tractor Supply for $12.69 that holds 72 cells and includes the compacted soil pellets, so a seed-starting mix isn’t even needed.

Seed-Starting Mix

It’s important to have the right soil mix when starting seeds. It may be tempting to use soil from outside or regular garden soil when starting seeds, but you should resist that temptation. MI Gardener explains it very well in a YouTube video, but the gist is that outside soil and compost will have microorganisms, bacteria, fungus, and bugs in them that can lead to damping off and other diseases in your seedlings. Not to mention, you probably don’t want bugs in your house. Instead, you should use a dedicated seed-starting mix that has things like peat moss, vermiculite, perlite, and coconut coir in it. These give the starting mix a light and airy texture that allows seeds to germinate and grow while also draining well. We look for organic bags of starting mix. Is it necessary? Probably not, but starting mix is so affordable that there isn’t a good reason not to. We bought two bags of Jiffy organic starting mix at Lowe’s. Each was $7.28 for 12 quarts of soil. We’ve used several different starting mixes in our gardens and haven’t found one to be better than the others.

Water Source

This is pretty self-explanatory, but you’ll need a vessel for watering your seeds. In the past, we used small cups to pour the water. This year, we changed to spray bottles and have enjoyed it more. We find the bottles to be better because they don’t spill or flood the seed cells. You don’t want to overwater your seeds, so spraying is a more controlled method. We bought a 2-pack on Amazon that is currently $7.56. Any spray bottle is work, though.

Surface to Set Everything

I’m including this because it can be easy to forget, but you’ll need a good place to set all your supplies. This can be a table, counter, desk, or shelf, but keep in mind that you’ll need to have everything out for several months and there will be UV lights that can be a bit annoying after a while. In the past, we have used a dining table and a collapsible hard plastic table that is nice because it can easily be cleaned. This year, we switched it up and are using a piece of plywood that was left in our basement by the previous owners and a set of sawhorses. It’s working well because the sawhorses keep the seed trays at a nice height and the plywood was free, so it’s not a big deal if it gets dirty. I’d recommend using something you already have. I don’t think you need to buy something new for this purpose.

What Is in Your Seed-Starting Kit?

In addition to everything I discussed in this post, you’ll need to determine the best way to get power to your equipment. That’s going to be unique to your situation. We bought a 50-foot 12-gauge extension cord and a 3-prong adaptor to make sure we had enough length to reach the closest outlet. Keep in mind that the heat mats and grow lights can draw a decent amount of power, so go overboard when using an extension cord just to be safe.

What do you use to start seeds? Is there any overlap with the items we use? We’d love to hear from you and see if we can improve our kit for next year’s garden. Happy gardening.

March 13, 2025 0

Weekly Garden Update #1 – Let the Seed Starting Commence

Throughout this year, I am going to publish a weekly blog post with updates from our garden. It will include progress pictures and anything we learned over the past week and will serve as a general update since a lot can change in a week’s time when gardening. I wanted to wait until we started our first seeds, and guess what? We did!

Peppers Have Been Started

I don’t believe that each year’s garden has started until your hands first touch soil in the spring. Buying seeds and purchasing supplies is wonderful, but it’s all still part of the planning process. Getting your hands dirty for the first time moves everything from a concept to a reality. And that’s the step we took Saturday evening.

Earlier in the day on Saturday, we made a trip to the nearest Lowes to pick up a downspout extension and grabbed a couple of bags of seed starting mix, another seed starting tray and flat of cells, and gardening gloves. Brief side story: Neither of us could remember if we needed extra seed starting cells. I would have bet a dollar that we had enough to get us started for the year and only bought the new cells as extra. Boy, am I glad we got them. When we came home, I checked our gardening tote, and the starting tray that I thought had cells in it was empty. It’s funny how taking a two-year absence from gardening and moving can make you forget stuff.

That evening, we unpacked our heat mats and glow light, set up the table we’re using, and ran an extension cord from the nearest outlet. First up on our seed-starting schedule is peppers. (Technically, our mustard greens should already be in the ground, but because they will be directly sown, we have to wait until the ground is tilled). We found our 3 varieties of peppers (California Wonder bells, Scotch Bonnets, and Hungarian Waxes, which I discussed in this post), grabbed our seed-starting mix, and filled a spray bottle with water.

We decided to grow 3 cells each of Scott Bonnets and Hungarian Wax peppers and 6 cells of the California Wonders. With 2 seeds in each cell, we’re confident we’ll get strong seedlings to transplant later in the spring. Determining how many cells of each variety to start is always a fun process. You want enough to guarantee good germination but not so many that you feel overwhelmed if all of them succeed. Hot peppers are particularly difficult for us because we don’t eat a lot of them and will mostly use the Scotch Bonnets for jerk marinade. We went with 3 cells with the goal of transplanting 2 of them, and if all 3 succeed, we’ll give the third plant away. For the California Wonder bell peppers, we’ll probably transplant as many as we can.

What’s Next?

Next week, we will be starting our eggplant seeds. I’ve been using the seed starting spreadsheet that I created to organize everything and started another page to track the dates and expected germination times for each seed. That will allow us to know if a seed is taking longer than expected to germinate.

We’re also going to be buying our rototiller sometime over the next week. We’re big fans of no-till gardening, but our yard is currently all grass, so we have to break ground. We were originally going to buy an electric tiller since they are cheaper than gas models and we won’t need to use it much after the first year. However, after realizing how expensive 100-foot heavy-gauge extension cords are, we have pivoted to a gas model. We’re still narrowing down the exact one, but I’ll write a blog post about it and how we reached that decision when we get it. I’ll also write a follow-up post reviewing the tiller once we use it. Spring weather is finally starting to arrive after a harsh winter, and we couldn’t be more excited.

Happy gardening!

March 10, 2025 2

Should You Buy Seeds or Young Plants to Start Your Garden?

Growing up, I spent many spring Saturdays taking trips with my mom, dad, or grandparents to the greenhouses and garden centers in our area. We would walk around the tables that were full of flats holding vegetable starts and flower transplants. That was how my family typically began each year’s garden. It was wonderful to take in the greenhouse smells of damp soil, fertilizer, and new plants. You’d run your fingers over the leaves and quickly learn to identify the differences between peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers.

Fast-forward to today and seeds seem to be all the rage. There are dozens of seed companies I hadn’t heard of until about a decade ago selling heirloom varieties of seeds that I didn’t know existed until recently. I’m not sure if that’s simply the result of the internet raising awareness for seed loss and advertising for these companies or because people in my circle didn’t talk about heirlooms. Either way, it does seem as though there has been a shift in attitude and approach toward starting a garden.

That raises the question: Which is better between seeds and starts? Based on my previous posts about seeds and catalogs, you can guess which camp I’m in, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t merits for buying transplants from your local greenhouse. Let’s dive into the advantages and disadvantages of both and help you make a decision on which is best for you.

Cost

There is a wide range of costs when choosing how to start your garden. The cheapest we found seeds in our catalogs was $1.95, which was a broccoli packet from Pinetree Gardens.

Fun fact: That price is actually lower than our local Wal-Mart sells Burpee seeds for. Another reminder to buy directly from the seed company if you can. There typically isn’t much difference in price, you’ll find a larger variety, and you’re guaranteed that the seeds were recently packed.

On average, the lowest price in our catalogs was $1.99 per packet. That was the case for most vegetables. The highest price was $15.00 for a packet of pumpkin seeds from NE Seed. Calculate the per-seed price and you’ll get a range of less than $.01 for some beet and carrot varieties up to $1.00 per seed for heirloom cantaloupe and tomato varieties.

Let’s compare that to the price of starts. I’m not 100 percent sure what starts cost at greenhouses in our area since it’s still too early, but a quick search online showed tomato plants in the $3-4 range from Home Depot. That price is comparable to a packet of seeds. However, when you consider that a start produces one mature plant in the best-case scenario, seeds are far more economical. I know that more than one seed is generally used when starting them, but it’s still cheaper to purchase seeds.

Seeds 1, Starts 0

Variety

When you are shopping for starts, you’ll likely find the most popular varieties for your region at a greenhouse. These tend to be successful, are adapted to your area, and are relatively easy to grow. Some examples you’ll find in Pennsylvania are Amish paste and Brandywine tomatoes, Straight 8 cucumbers, and California Wonder bell peppers. Most greenhouses will have these varieties available as starts. You may find some more “exotic” varieties, such as habanero peppers or a non-red variety of tomato, but greenhouses will stock the varieties that sell. 3-4 varieties per vegetable are typically the upper end of what you’ll find.

When you buy seeds, there are many varieties to consider. Even displays in stores like Lowes will have up to 10 varieties per vegetable. For tomatoes, you’ll find several varieties of cherry, beefsteak, and paste tomatoes. For cucumbers, you’ll typically find a few different pickling and slicing varieties. Just today, the display in Lowes had ornamental corn seeds, something I’ve never seen in a store before. You have a lot of options to find the seed that best fits your needs. Then, when you expand to purchasing seeds online or from catalogs, you’ll have dozens of varieties to pick from for each vegetable, including organic and heirloom.

That many choices can be both positive and negative. If you want the chance to buy heirloom varieties that you’re unlikely to find starts for, it’s a positive. But if you’re just starting out and can become overwhelmed by how many options there are, it’s a negative. Ultimately, I think having more options is a good thing, so I’m going to give this one to seeds as well, but there’s an argument for starts.

Seeds 2, Starts 0

Necessary Equipment

When you buy starts, you don’t really need anything else assuming you have a garden or container. You’ll also need soil, fertilizer, and tools for transplanting and watering. Those are all items that you’ll also need for seeds, though, so I don’t count them for the purposes of this post. So, like I said, once you buy the starts, you have everything you need.

Seeds, meanwhile, need a bit of equipment. You’ll have to have seed-starting cells and a starting mix of soil or compressed and dehydrated soil pods that expand when water is added. This is where the seeds will go. In some cases, you’ll need multiple cell sizes for different plants and to transplant them as needed when growing. Those cells need a tray and potentially a dome to sit in. The cells are placed on top of the tray, which provides a place for water to drain, and under the dome, which holds in moisture, creating a greenhouse effect.

You then need a heat mat and grow light to help with germination. The heat mat is used at the beginning to heat the soil so the seeds can germinate, while the grow light helps the young plants grow through photosynthesis. Neither item has to be expensive: You can get a 10″ x 20″ heat mat for $12 and a grow light for $14, both on Amazon. Finally, you’ll need a surface to set everything on, an extension cord and power supply, and the room for all the seed-starting supplies for several months. None of the items are expensive, but more is needed to start seeds than transplanting starts. In this case, starts require far less equipment.

Seeds 2, Starts 1

How Easy Is It?

Which one is more complicated? This category is an easy win for starts. With them, you purchase them, bring them home, and when the soil and weather are right, plant them in your garden. Once they’re in the ground, it’s the same as starting from seed. You do need to be careful when picking your starts, but most of the hard work has already been done when you buy the start.

Seeds, meanwhile, can be complicated. You have to track a lot of information, including how long each seed takes to germinate, how resistant to frost each is, and whether a seed can be directly sown or needs to be started indoors. This information helps you know when the seeds should be started. With that information, you then need to go through the process of actually starting the seeds. You have to prep your starting cells, choose the proper starting mix, and sow the seeds at the proper depth. After the seeds have germinated, the seedlings will need to be thinned so that plants aren’t competing for nutrients in the same space. A lot of the seedlings will also need to be transplanted into a larger cell before eventually being moved into your garden. It is quite a bit of work and typically requires daily monitoring. As you can tell, starts are much easier.

Seeds 2, Starts 2

Time Commitment

This is connected to how easy each is, but I wanted to touch on how much of a time commitment they are. We’ll go over starts first. The most time-consuming part of transplanting starts is going to the greenhouse and buying them. Traveling to the greenhouse and walking around all the tables is a time commitment, but it is nothing compared to seed-starting.

Starting seeds can take months when you factor in the time it takes to look through catalogs and wait for the seeds to arrive. Peppers are a perfect example of how long seed-starting can take. Because they take a long time to grow, need hot weather to mature, and won’t survive a frost, they should be started up to 10 weeks before the last frost. Around here, that date is May 15, so they can be started now. That is a major time investment and requires a lot of planning.

Starts will win this category, but to be honest, a time aspect of transplants that I’m not a fan of is how long you have to wait to buy them. A pepper start shouldn’t be purchased until after the last frost, and waiting that long makes me nervous. What if the greenhouse doesn’t have the variety you want?

Seeds 2, Starts 3

Control

This category is a bit weird, but I like knowing everything I can about the plants I’m growing. With starts, you don’t have control over how they were started as seeds. That means not having knowledge of the starting mix that was used or if the plant was transplanted before, and if it was, did it experience any root shock? If you’re interested in seed-saving, has the plant been isolated to avoid cross-pollination? That level of control may not be important to some, but I value it.

I like the peace of mind that comes with knowing that our starting mix has proper drainage, that the seedlings are always in the proper cells, and that the strongest plants are kept when thinning them out. I also like being able to transplant the young plants into the garden after a hardening-off process and when they’re smaller than you find at a greenhouse. When plants are younger, there is a reduced risk of root shock when transplanting. Therefore, I’m giving this category to seeds.

Seeds 3, Starts 3

Do What Is Best for You

I have to admit, I was surprised by how this post progressed. I fully anticipated at the start that this would be an easy win for seeds and that I’d be looking for ways to make it more even. Instead, it ended in a draw based on the number of categories each won. I still give seeds the edge because I place more value on the categories they won, though. I think cost, variety, and the peace of mind that comes with seeing the process through from sowing to harvesting are more important than how easy it is to buy starts.

Choosing between seeds and starts is a personal preference. If you’re just starting out and unsure if you want to invest in seed-starting equipment, transplants are a great option. However, if you want to grow heirloom varieties and are confident you’ll want to garden on an annual basis, seeds are the best bet. You can also buy a combination of seeds and starts. My dad has done that for years. Do you have a preference between seeds and starts? I’d love to hear from you.

March 9, 2025 0

(HOP) SKZ HOP HIP TAPE: a Patchwork Quilt of Music and Family

This album was a slow burn for me, as I expected after it was released on December 13, 2024. I was still enthralled with Stray Kids’s recent Japanese release, Giant, which was released on November 13, 2024. This was on the heels of their collaboration with Tom Morello and Young Miko for Arcane’s Season Two Theme, “Come Play” which was released in October 2024 before the show’s release. “Come Play” was the crescendo of soundtracks being released in the fall for Stray Kids with “Night” and “Falling Up” announced for season two of the anime, Tower of God.

But this was two months after we in the STAY fandom were processing the quiet release of “Slash” for Deadpool and Wolverine’s soundtrack in August 2024, a month after their July 2024 release of ATE. ATE was their big release of the year so far after months of waiting for an album after the drops of “Lose My Breath” and “WHY?” a soundtrack for the J-Drama Re:Revenge being released in the first quarter of 2024.

L to R: I.N., Lee Know, Seungmin, Hyunjin, HAN, Changbin, Felix, and Bang Chan

Did I mention this was a busy year for Stray Kids and their listeners? In this year of endless highs, Stray Kids announced their contract renewal a year ahead of the deadline, confirming that all eight members would stay at JYP Entertainment, making music together for years to come. It’s fitting then, that the last release of the year “HOP” was a title with a little wordplay, using the Chinese Hanja character “Hop” which means unity. In K-Pop, groups come and go, just look at New Jeans (2022-2024) and their possible disbandment after leaving ADOR. Contract renewals by all members to the same label are not guaranteed, look at the current state of Blackpink with each member taking their solo careers to various labels.

There is also the logistics of Stray Kids being a boy group with 6 out of 8 members being Korean citizens heading into their mid-twenties. Mandatory military service completion looms, which comes with a period of complications for music production, tours, and storytelling. Currently, BTS is completing their military service as a group (J-Hope and Jin have completed their service as of writing this). NCT 127 is following a different path, sending their members in a delayed fashion, (currently their leader Taeyong and member Jaehyun are completing their service) while the remaining members have released an album and performed tour dates. Although the military service question comes up a lot in K-Pop fandoms, more than I think we should dwell on it, the impression “HOP” and Stray Kids’ contract renewal left on STAYs I would say is like a comforting hug.

I didn’t understand this fully until Stray Kids’ account shared moments from their SKZ 5 O’Clock fan meet where the members performed each other’s solo songs on stage. What does this have to do with SKZ HOP HIP TAPE? Well, HOP was different kind of album from their usual format. On a Stray Kids’ EP or full album, there is usually a title track or several and then B-Sides with all eight members or songs performed by sub-units, affectionately called Rachas. For example – 3Racha (Bang Chan, Changbin, HAN) is their production unit and rapline, vocalracha (Seungmin, I.N.) supply lead vocals, and danceracha (Lee Know, Hyunjin, Felix) the lead dancers of the group. Instead of following this format, HOP is more like a patchwork quilt in my opinion.

Walkin’ On Water
Bounce Back
U (feat. TABLO)
Walkin’ on Water (HIP Ver.)
Railway (Bang Chan)
Unfair (Felix)
Hallucination (I.N.)
Youth (Lee Know)
So Good (Hyunjin)
ULTRA (Changbin)
Hold my hand (HAN)
As we are (Seungmin)

These solo songs, the members perform on tour through solo stages, were songs I was not sure about upon the first listen. Instead of appreciating the music, all I could think of was – is this the end of eight as one? Is this signaling them “growing up and growing out” of their collaborative style?

How silly is that? But in 2025, in our current friendship recession and drought of healthy communities, having deep friendship feels like something you have to “grow out of” to become a lonely “successful” adult. I think it says more about my life and my culture more than the album, to be honest. (Am I okay?) But then, I listened to the album again. And again. I watched the craftsmanship of the music videos and dove into the lyrics and I was impressed! The layers of talent – vocal range, dancing ability, lyricism, concept, etc. Each song has a personality unique to the member, you can clearly see them in the song but you can also feel Stray Kids in each song too.

This is not how I would describe most K-pop solo releases. Take NCT for example – Taeyong has released two EPs, Shalala (2023) and TAP (2024) which are not NCT 127 music. They showcase Taeyong and his unique talents – dancing, vocal range, and visuals. Mark of NCT 127 has released two singles, 200 (2024) and Fraktsiya (2024) which are again vastly different from NCT 127’s musical style. 200 is a casual love song and Fraktsiya is a rap focused song. Yuta of NCT 127 released an album in 2024 that deviates into J-Rock to celebrate his Japanese culture. Blackpink is another example of this, with Rose, Lisa, Jennie, and Jisoo going in completely different directions where they feel like different artists from their Blackpink performances.

For Stray Kids, their solos have range but through their 5 O’Clock Fan Meet performance swaps, it showed me that these songs are fully solos and fully Stray Kids which makes me interested in what the future holds. Will they release solo albums? Will they do sub-units? Will they do these solo mix tapes, like SKZ Replay of 2021, that featured previously unreleased solos and subunit songs? I think they truly just love creating, producing, and performing in an organic way that is synergistic in an unforced way. It’s like a harmony, even when they do their own things, they are still part of the whole without losing themselves. It is a family, a beautiful patchwork quilt, it is as the name “HOP” declares, unity. They do their own thing and some people hate it, but I love it. I’ve never had a band bring me as much musical joy as well as a sense of community as being a STAY.

All the releases of 2024 felt like a present for the fans, each one more exciting than the next, and that is why I think at first HOP did not grab me. There was an embarrassment of riches, too much to process, appreciate, or focus on. Three months later, I see the wonder of it all and hold HOP in regard as a unique experiment I’d enjoy listening to more of. They are always working on something new, what will 2025 hold? I look forward to finding out.

March 6, 2025

Yesterday, Today, and Forever

Tariffs. Bird Flu. Ragebait. Clickbait. Speculation. Social Media. Everyone has an opinion. Eggs. But you’re telling me no one has a solution? Anger. Tears. Can no one else see the Ha Satan clearly?

Closures. Monopolies. Let’s spiral. Small business. Big business. DOGE. AI. Algorithm, subscription fatigue. The death of personal style. Kindle downloads. Call BookTok, this 1984. The world is full of NPCs. Could you wake up from your main character energy?

Quiet the voices speaking lacking wisdom. Who knows no good deed. I’ve had enough. Power. Riches. They are for fools. Feel a calling, verses come into focus. So perfectly timed. Elohim. YHWH. Passing over. Lent is upon us. Cling to truth.

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
Hebrews 13:8 NIV

March 4, 2025

My Three Favorite Sewing Tools

What are three objects you couldn’t live without?

I’m modifying this prompt slightly to focus on one aspect of my life – sewing. These are the three tools I can’t imagine working without. After four to five years of sewing clothes and trying out various tools and techniques, these are the cream of the crop for me. This is my just opinion. Depending on your sewing style and personality, this list would probably change. I’m sure if I was a sewist who went to design school, I would also have a different list.

Fabric Clips –

When I started sewing, I had no idea fabric clips were an option. I bought a Dritz tin of straight pins and a pin cushion. This is where things began to get uncomfortable. No matter how careful I am when I use pins, I stick myself. When I use pins for a fitting, the pins slip out of the fabric and scratch my skin. I find the pin tins spill easily which is terrifying if you don’t notice it because you are then surrounded by pins in a spill around your feet. When I found fabric clips, my sewing experience improved 180 degrees. I don’t get stuck and the clips stay in place. I can try things on my body and the dress form, without the discomfort of pins sticking or the annoyance of the pins slipping out of place.

Sashiko Adjustable Ring Thimble –

I’ve tried two kinds of thimbles. The first was the cylindrical metal thimble, which I found hard to use. It fell off my finger or I simply struggled to find the correct finger to place it on for my sewing. I tried another metal thimble that looks like a fencing mask, with an adjustable back. It stayed on my finger just fine. I could make it tighter or looser or move it to a different finger but it still felt odd. I noticed the thimble wasn’t providing the support I needed to push the needle through the tough fabric and in turn, was putting stress on my finger joints.

I was introduced to the Sashiko-style ring plate thimble through the account Geri In Stitches and was hooked. The idea of pushing the needle through dense layers by the palm of your hand instead of your fingertip made more logical sense. This has transformed my hand-sewing experience! I can sew longer without hand fatigue. The ring is comfortable. I hardly notice I’m wearing it until I’ve walked into another room with the thimble still in my hand. This is a Japanese thimble, for the sashiko technique, I am using it for general sewing, but the thimble and sashiko have a rich history of their own that you should check out.

Hand Sewing Needles –

I started my sewing journey by hand sewing before I purchased a Singer Heavy Duty Sewing Machine in 2022. It was my preferred method until my hands started showing stress and my mind was fed with how long garments were taking on a deadline. The switch to a machine was fantastic! I quality garments quickly. The only wrinkle was sewing machine maintenance and gremlins in the machine. Sometimes machines have attitudes. Sometimes you can’t get in sync without your equipment. Sometimes you drop the small screws into the machine and you are in a panic. It’s a wonderful asset but also a source of great frustration for me. For that reason, hand-sewing needles will always be by my side because they are easier to manage, and sometimes you and your machine need some therapy. Also, some projects call for the delicacy of hand sewing. It’s an art form that cannot be fully eclipsed by the machine. For example, how can you attach a button or hook and eye closure without a hand-sewing needle? It’s best to keep them handy.

March 3, 2025

#70 – The Cold, Patience, BBC Pride and Prejudice

This winter, it’s wildly beautiful with it’s near constant snow accumulation (uncommon for where I live) and icy drops in temperature where we spent a month or so below 32 Fahrenheit. These rhythms of snow, ice, and cold fronts entering the atmosphere on a Friday and lasting all weekend led to many weeks of waiting, being still, escaping to my Stardew Valley farm. Waiting for the winter to pass, knitting away my boredom.

Time Passing Marked By Candles

We made a balloon arch for my birthday, a Brooklyn 99 high honor, and I decorated the living room with Stardew Valley garlands, making the time lost to snow and ice marked with something to remember.

In this waiting, I’ve had unwelcome house guest of Winter, the lingering cold. I had a troubling cold over Christmas, with sinus pain that kept me awake through the night. I thought it was gone as we entered January but I realize now the cold retreated but hovered in the shadows throughout the long mid-winter until Valentine’s Day when it re-animated and gave me some of the worst congestion, ear-aches, and sinus pain I can remember. I couldn’t lay down without the sinus pressure pain building, I couldn’t sleep. I felt miserable.

The Grim Night

I think the hardest part of feeling sick is the mental part. The patience to do nothing, and let go of the goals in your mind. It’s boring! There was a few days of utter boredom. Knitting felt like too much, taking naps would trigger the sinus pain, and I remember feeling useless, empty, and void of joy.

I felt deeply frustrated. Why was I going through a second round of this? Why is this happening to the point that I can’t write, or work on my projects, I can’t even keep up with my share of the housework. How long until I feel normal again?

When we lack health, it is the only thing we crave. It truly is more valuable than money. As I go further into adulthood, I growing in appreciation for the little things like health, a boring day where you feel great, and you tend to forget this feeling looking back on it. It blends with the others, but those ordinary moments are what give us such rich life.

Like those mild days of the year, those 60s or low 70s and sunny days, they blur in the background of the weather extremes, but really those days were probably the most mood boosting of the year.

Shall the Shades of Pemberly Be Thus Polluted?

One of the few things that gave me joy during that week of sickness was BBC’s Pride and Prejudice 1995.

It was my first watch. I’ve read the book and watched the 2005 version, but this series had escaped me. I think I put it off because I though it was a hipster scheme. How could this one be so much better than the 2005 movie? With its soundtrack and cinematography? The hype was real, it’s spectacular.

It’s a series I could watch again, and again, for those nature shots and the beautiful furniture. The costumes are true regency in design, compared to the 2005 version. Each character is flushed out like book and it is simply a treasure. 😍

Nothing Nice to Say

February and January to be honest have been a challenge for me creatively. I haven’t known what to write about without it sounding like I am complaining. There is a lot of crap going in the world and it’s been a struggle for me to keep my eyes fixed on the good.

When I’m in this mood, like I was during our house buying process in May 2024, I struggled to write on here as well. I didn’t want to complain and also didn’t feel inspired because of the distractions. And so, time passes.

In this time I’ve been listening, reflecting. I’ve been enamored by the latest Bible Project series. I’ve been waiting for the final blow for Joann’s which happened. I’ve been researching new sources of yarn and fabric, keeping my eyes and ears open for new brands to fill the void.

I started reading again – beginning with an attempt to re-read Crime and Punishment which I shelved for now after Semyon Zakharovich Marmeladov‘s long rant in the bar. I was feeling too sick at that point to envelope myself in that misery and pivotted to Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim.

I have filled my days with the soundtrack of Aespa, Stray Kids, and Red Velvet. We even started a new K-drama, Crash Landing on You, which I’d like to write about along with Business Proposal and Extraordinary Attorney Woo.

We’re re-watching Only Murders in the Building and laughing our way through Impractical Jokers. All the while I’ve been working on several knitting WIPs that I look forward to sharing! Along with a Mia update, she is one happy bun, and has become a cuddly little friend who desires our company. My heart is full. 🥰

I hope wherever you are in the world, you are feeling healthy, loved and know how much I appreciate you, reader, who spend time with me here. I wish you a lovely weekend!

March 1, 2025

Using Spreadsheets to Plan Our Garden

Confession time: I love spreadsheets. Dating back to middle school when I first took a Microsoft Excel class, I’ve enjoyed using spreadsheets to organize things, including addresses, finances, birthdays, and more. I love being organized but don’t always take the time to be organized. Thus, I’m very thankful that spreadsheets exist because they help with sorting, filtering, and searching through information much faster than we can do ourselves.

How does this apply to our garden? When we started looking through catalogs and initialing the seeds each of us wanted to grow, I quickly realized that we needed to figure out a way to keep track of everything. In a previous post, I mentioned that we looked at over 5,800 seeds and probably initialed over 1,000. Because of that, it’s really easy to feel overwhelmed by an abundance of choices. I’d like to share the system I came up with to help you if you too have felt overwhelmed by garden planning.

Initial Marking of Seeds

I’ll keep this section brief because I’ve touched on it in other posts, but our planning process started with both of us flipping through the catalogs and marking the seeds we were interested in. We went through all sections in every catalog and marked any seeds we even had the slightest bit of interest in, flowers included. Some of the choices weren’t all that realistic because they don’t grow well in our area or are above our gardening ability at this time, but we didn’t want to miss anything.

A helpful note: Use a pen rather than a pencil and choose one with an ink color that will stand out from the text and page color of the catalog. I made the mistake of using black ink on the Fedco catalog, which is all black and white, and it was easy to overlook some of our marks. I also recommend giving each person a different color of pen. That will make tracking everything even easier.

From Catalog to Notebook

The next step in the process was figuring out what seeds we initialed the most. A lot of the seeds were found in multiple catalogs, so it was important to know which ones we marked more than once, which would indicate the varieties we were most interested in. Eventually, the goal was to track this information in a spreadsheet, but I started with a notebook so that I didn’t have my laptop and all the catalogs in front of me at one time.

I devoted a page in the notebook to each vegetable and went in alphabetical order, beginning with beans and ending with tomatoes. I combined some together on one page to make it easier:

Watermelons, canteloupe, muskmelons, and honeydew
Radishes, turnips, and parsnips
Cabbages, mustards, Asian greens, spinach, and bunching onions

From there, I looked at all the varieties of one vegetable in each catalog, taking note of the ones we initialed. I wrote down the seed name and what catalog we found it in, using an abbreviation for each company. Using beans as an example, it looked something like this:

Blue Lake 274 – RS (Rohrer), PG (Pinetree Gardens), NE (NE Seed), BC (Baker Creek)
Provider – FS (Fedco), HMS (High Mowing Seeds), PG

Here is the corn page from the notebook I kept. My handwriting isn’t the best, but as you can see, all the varieties are written on the left and the seed companies to the right.

I did this for every vegetable/fruit. And by tracking how many catalogs we found the seed in, I could see how interested we were in that seed. So, if a seed was marked in 7 of the 10 catalogs we looked at, it indicated we were more interested in that seed than one we only marked in 3 of the 10 catalogs. That didn’t mean we always purchased the most popular seeds, though. Some seeds were only found in 1 or 2 catalogs, but we were so interested in them that we were going to buy them anyway. Finally, being able to look at a notebook page and see trends across the most popular seeds (such as picking a lot of bush beans, pickling cucumbers, or paste tomatoes) would give us an idea of what we were most interested in even if it wasn’t always the same specific seed.

After I wrapped up tracking everything in the notebook, I moved everything to a spreadsheet.

Building the Spreadsheet

Figuring out all the columns to include in the spreadsheet was the most difficult part of this process. I started by determining the goals of the spreadsheet. I knew that I wanted to be able to visually see which seeds we picked the most from the catalogs, compare the price of the same seed in different catalogs, and have links to quickly access the seeds’ pages on the companies’ sites. With those goals in mind, I set out to create columns that would include the most important information. I created columns for the following:

Seed Name
Variety/Type – This column wasn’t used for all vegetables. I used it for beans (bush/drying, long beans, edamame), corn (flint/dent, popcorn, sweet, ornamental), cucumbers (pickling, slicing, specialty), husk tomatoes (ground cherries, tomatillos), other greens (cabbage, onion, mustard, spinach), melons (cantaloupe, watermelon, honeydew, specialty), peas (snap, shelling, snow), peppers (sweet, hot), potatoes (early, mid, late, fingerling), squash (winter, eggplant, specialty, kabocha, yellow, zucchini), and tomatoes (beefsteak, cherry, paste, pear, plum, slicing)
Organic? – This was a drop-down with “Yes” and “No”
Seed Company – This also was a drop-down with an option for each of the seed companies we were considering.
Page Number – The number in the catalog where the seed is found. The goal here was to make it easy to find the seeds again.
URL – The link to the seed’s page on each site.
Price – How much does the seed packet cost?
Quantity – How many seeds do you get in a packet?
Special Notes – This was the place to add a note if the seed is an heirloom, if it’s sold out or is back-ordered, or is a pollinator in the case of flowers.

This is the Husk Tomatoes page of the seed information spreadsheet. This is one of the smaller pages, so everything can be viewed.

After that, I started filling everything in. If figuring out what to include in the spreadsheet was the most difficult part of the process, filling it out was the most time-consuming. I tried to get through one vegetable per day, but the whole process took roughly 10 days. Once I was done, though, I was able to quickly access any seed, either its webpage or in the catalog, and I could sort by seed name, variety or type of vegetable/fruit, and price, among others. Being able to do that when it was time to make final decisions was priceless.

Lessons Learned/What Did & Didn’t Work?

There were a few things that ended up not being ideal even though there was no way to plan for it or nothing that could be done about it. One was receiving two seed catalogs in the mail after I started filling out the spreadsheet. This meant that the drop-down menus were missing the two catalogs, and I didn’t want to change the drop-down rules and potentially mess up the entire column. Instead, I manually entered the seed company’s name, overriding the drop-down menu entirely.

The second not-so-ideal thing is how big the spreadsheets got. Before starting, my plan was to use the drop-down menu for the seed companies and select all the companies where a seed was available. That wouldn’t have been an issue. The issue would have been adding the URL, page number, price, and quantity for every seed since they all would have had their own line. So, if we found the seed in 8 catalogs, each cell would have been 8 rows tall. It also would have been difficult to compare across the columns.

Now on to some things that I didn’t think about including or messed up and will fix for next year’s spreadsheet. The biggest oversight on my part was not including the price per seed when I originally built the spreadsheet. I only included the price of the packet and the seed quantity, not realizing that it’s more important to know the price per seed since there were large quantity differences. For example, consider the Ping Tung eggplant. We found it at 3 companies. NE Seed sold 750 seeds for $8.95, MI Gardener sold 30 seeds for $2.00, and Baker Creek sold 25 seeds for $3.00. Given the difference in price and seed quantity, it was hard to figure out what was the most cost-effective. I eventually used a blank column to the right of everything to calculate the price-per-seed cost. In this case, NE Seed was the cheapest at $.01/seed. MI Gardener was $.07/seed, while Baker Creek was $.12. Funny enough, we actually bought the seeds from Baker Creek because we weren’t buying anything else from MI Gardener and we didn’t need 750 eggplant seeds from NE Seed.

Similarly, I wish I had created distinct columns with yes/no drop-down menus for heirloom, if flowers are pollinators, how much sun a flower requires, and a separate special notes column where I could write if a seed was out of stock. In general, it was a great first edition of the spreadsheet, but there is always room for improvement.

Bonus: Tracking Growing Information

After we ordered our seeds, I created two more spreadsheets. The first is a general growing guide with information that serves as a guide that we can quickly access, sort, and search. Initially, it was just to track the start dates of everything so we could sort and know the order of when each seed needs to be sowed. It expanded to also include columns for germination time, distance between seeds, soil PH, fertilizer needs, watering information, and any other helpful notes. I want to keep much of this content in a field notebook that we can carry out to the garden with us, but this is helpful because it can all be viewed on one screen.

Seed starting information currently sorted by direct vs. indirect start.

The second spreadsheet I created was a companion growing guide. Companion planting is when you grow plants close to each other that benefit one another. The plants can be all vegetables or a mixture of vegetables and herbs or flowers. The idea behind companion planting is that some plants are natural pest or animal deterrents that reduce the need for pesticides or barriers and keep said pests or animals away from plants that normally attract them. Companion planting also works to put certain nutrients (such as nitrogen) back into the soil so that heavy feeders (like corn) will have quality soil throughout the growing season. This can reduce the need to fertilize as often or as much. In the future, I will likely write a standalone post about companion planting, so I don’t want to go into too much detail here, but it’s something Magz and I are interested in. So, I created a spreadsheet to track what plants should be grown in close proximity and which ones should be kept far apart.

A small glimpse at the companion planting guide.

How Do You Plan Your Garden?

I probably overthought organizing and planning our garden, but spreadsheets greatly helped me keep track of everything. Do you use any tools to organize and plan your garden? If so, what is your go-to method? I’d love to hear your thoughts, and if you found this information helpful, please let me know.

March 1, 2025 1