My First Seedlings of 2022

  Every year my two great joys in life collide in an almost Armageddon-like battle.  My beautiful, delicate, sprouting seedlings meet my cats.  Not just my cats, but specifically Cringer the Battle Cat whose alias is the Plant Terminator.  Cringe is my princess.  At least that is what my vet calls her, so it must be so.  She is a beautiful medium hair tabby who is also highly strung.  OK, let us just say she is our neurotic cat.  

Cringe pays no attention to me or my planting efforts.  In fact, if anything, she completely ignores the entire process - that is until my plants start to emerge from the soil.  This is when Cringer goes into the Plant Terminator mode.  She swoops down into action batting the poor little sprouting seeds into submission.  By the time Cringe is done, most of my poor little seedlings are no more.  I have to admit it can be quite heart-breaking to come home after a long day at work only to see the cat-created devastation.  None the less, I cannot be angry with Cringer.  After all she is my little princess.

This year, I enlisted a new plant growing system to try and dissuade any cat-astrophe (excuse the pun).  Enter the NanoDome humidity dome complete with two indentations on the top designed to neatly fit two tandem SunBlaster LED grow lights.  I found these at Johhny's Selected Seeds which is one of my favorite purveyors of all things garden.  This seed starting system allows me to light 4 regular size flats with ease.  The dome is made of a rigid plastic that, so far, has withstood a cat standing on it with ease.  

The photo is a flat of germinating Cosmos.  I planted the seeds on April 7th and this photo was taken on April 12th.  So far, so good.  The seedlings are growing quite erect which speaks volumes about the lighting system.  Each 48 inch LED light tube only needs 54 watts!  I think this would be a great option for those living off-grid and using solar power.  My homestead is located in a power-outage plagued area and the wattage usage is what attracted me to this product.  These lights are very generator friendly.

I find myself endlessly admiring my little seedlings.  I go back to that kindergarten student who was enthralled by his pumpkin seedling Mother's Day gift so many years ago.  Yep, I think another gardening season has begun.  

Cheers!

Tom

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