Not-so-rosy apple blossoms

So forcing blooms on an apple branch really works. It took two weeks, but there are three buds open now and many more on the way. Their color is a bit funny, though. Not pink, not white, but...green. But that's not necessarily a bad color for the first day of Spring tomorrow!

Rosy apple blossoms

I feel like a zombie today (other than that I'll pass on eating people, thanks), but this is what I have to look forward to this afternoon: forcing branches to bloom. It sounds kinda cruel, but they are just apple branches! And they will make me very happy.

Mystery Plant

My best green thumb success this winter has been with a tropical-looking plant that I don't know the name of. My neighbor Lana brought it over the week we moved in and it's since doubled in size. It also has really cool "flowers" on it -- I think technically they could really be flowers, but they look more like some kind of seed capsule.

If you know what kind of plant this is, please share! :)

Sprouts

The radish seeds sprouted already and have doubled in size since I took this picture on Thursday. (I love plants!)

The Grow Lights

Earlier this month I got a crazy idea. Why not try growing plants from seed indoors this winter? Lettuce likes cold weather and not too much sunlight anyway, so it seems like a good crop to start with. Sometime I want to try tomatoes, but I think lettuce will be enough of a challenge for right now.

I bought some heirloom lettuce seeds online since they were reasonably cheap and just sound good. Here is a not-so-good picture of jar # 1 of lettuce sprouts. Sorry for the blurriness of the picture; I definitely haven't mastered taking close-ups inside an oversized jar.

This is after about a week or so - plants are 3-4" tall

The grow light apparatus

I found some grow light bulbs on Amazon, thinking they could work with lamps we already had, but Jason came up with a much better idea. We got shop lights at the hardware store (the kind with clips) and he made a wooden upside-down T to clip them on. We run the the grow lights for a couple hours in the morning and the evening -- only when we're home, because those suckers get hot -- and so far our plants seem to be doing well with them. We've also got some basil and pineapple sage from Rita that we're trying to get through the winter. And cilantro, but that hasn't come up yet. It didn't when I planted it in Norfolk either, though, so the seeds might just be duds.

Anyway, that is how you make a fairly economical growing light system. MUCH cheaper than the other options I looked at, but I think it'll work just as well.