Ready, set, seedling!

It's been a bit of a dramatic week.  What may have been a small drain blockage in my complex ended up a watery mess in my apartment.  Tuesday night my sink and dishwasher overflowed.  The front desk came knocking when it started raining downstairs.  In the midst of trying to rescue some items in my kitchen, I knocked over a few pepper seedlings that had been limping along.  Perhaps it was for the best.  They have gone to a better place where they can decompose back to nature.

What remains is from the first set of plantings and most of them are healthy.  The pea plants are growing fast, so I hope the cool weather this weekend is the last.  I may need to learn the art of cloches  because the peas are quickly outgrowing the plastic cell trays.  This essentially would mean planting the peas in a container outside and covering it with the top half of an uncapped soda bottle to keep it warm.  Also doing well but growing much slower are Carnival multi-colored bell peppers and small sweet peppers (to the left, in the brownie-looking soil blocks).  I have the cotyledons going strong but not much else appearing.



What isn't doing well is lettuce (leftmost two rows in the picture to the right).  Although they were the first to pop up, the lettuce sprouts are sadly limping, with stringy weak stalks.  I believe this is due to poor light.  I have been using a grow light, but the short sprouts would need the light right on top of them.  Luckily, my package of lettuce seeds has plenty more.  I may try another round sewed directly into soil in a planter on my balcony.