Chewbacca and My Yogurt Plants

 Before DH and I headed to Florida for our short warm-weather get-away at the beginning of March, I got out my seed starting supplies and sowed tomato and pepper plants.  I used my time-honored method of starting them indoors: put (reused) plastic cell packs into (reused) large foil baking pans, add starting mix to the cells, sow seeds, water, and slide the whole thing into (reused) giant reclosable clear plastic bags.  All that then gets placed on the (hydronic radiant heated) floor of my living room in front of the sliding door.

Shortly after we returned, they sprouted.

At the end of March, most of the tomato seedlings had their first set of true leaves and were starting to get leggy enough that it was time to move them into larger quarters.  So I brought in my little greenhouse and a bunch of plastic containers from the shed, bought a giant bag of potting soil--on sale! (having none left from last year) and set all that in my mud room for a few days to warm up.

Then, once everything was warmed to ambient household temperature, I grabbed the tray of tomato plants and proceeded to transplant them into (pint) sour cream and (quart sized) yogurt containers, where they will contiue to grow until it's time to install them in the garden around the end of May.

my kitchen island-cum-potting bench

If you hadn't guessed, I'm big on reusing stuff to keep costs down.  Something else I've been reusing for at least the last decade is a plastic spoon in the shape of Chewbacca that came from a cereal box (Lucky Charms, I think) long ago when my kids were little.  Chewbacca changes color depending on if he's in room temp air or cold milk, which is how he managed to stick around while they grew up and eventually went off to college.  At which point, with no kids around to object, I drafted him into duty to gently scoop seedlings (and a 'rootball' of soil) out of the plastic cells when transplanting my tender tomato and pepper sprouts to their sour cream and yogurt containers. 

During the off season, he lives in the garden shed with the rest of my seed starting accoutrements.

Chewbacca reporting for duty.

I had assembled the green house and put it in front of the living room sliding door where the seed trays had been sitting.  Now it was time to put all those (reused) containers of tomatoes on the shelves, as well as the tray of (still tiny) peppers--no longer in its humidifying plastic bag-- into the greenhouse and zip it shut.

Several days later I repeated the drill with my (now leafy) pepper seedlings.

Faline and Buck came and spend a few hours with us not too long after that.  They were curious about the pipe and plastic structure (the greenhouse) that had appeared in my living room since the last time they'd been here.  I told them it was a little greenhouse where my baby tomato and pepper plants could stay warm and grow until it was warm enough outside for them to go live in my garden.  

"And your yogurt plants!" Faline piped up, reading the label on the larger containers but not being tall enough to see what was inside of them.

So this year I'm apparently growing yogurt plants too.  I have a feeling this Faline-ism will now be a permanent part of our gardening vocabulary.