Adventures in Gardening (and Composting)

So last you heard of my gardening skillz, I had just planted some heirloom tomato seeds fresh off the internet and was crossing my fingers that I would a) germinate them and b) not kill them after the fact. 

SO.  The results of the experiment so far are as follows...

After one week:

Cute!  I was so happy that they existed.  An artsy closeup:

After about 2 weeks:

Another artsy closeup:

Up until today I had planted 4 seeds in each little pot under the assumption that probably a few would not germinate... however they pretty much all did except for two (and one of those two looks like it might come up yet).  So today, I separated all the plants into their own little pot (with the intention to transplant these into bigger pots outside eventually, probably in early June when all danger of frost is long gone).

However after transplanting all of the little guys this afternoon, I noticed that they had all wilted pretty badly! 

I took them back in the house and set them in a sunny spot and gave them lots of water (because plants like sun and water, right?) and each half a spike of plant food and hoped that they would come back to life!

Poor little guys!  Luckily a few hours later they are almost all wilt-free.

I currently have 22 individual tomato plants, 21 of which I grew from seeds (I bought one from the greenhouse yesterday just in case I somehow killed these during transplant etc.) and are doing great!  I'm excited about this because it was super easy to do and I will have more delicious tomatoes than I know what to do with this summer.  I'm lucky I have a house with a lot of sun though, otherwise this wouldn't have even been worth trying.

ALSO!  In other fun news, today I went to the Farmers' Market and bought a vermicomposter from some kids that were raising money for their class to go to an academic competition and were part of a program trying to get vermicomposters into every classroom in Saskatoon.  I have wanted to start vermicomposting since a couple departments at work started doing it so I was excited to be able to pick up a kit today!

Vermicomposting, if you don't want to click the link, is composting using worms to speed up the process.  So basically I have a Rubbermaid bin full of worms and dirt in my garage, where I can put my compostable materials.  The worms will eat the compost and poop it out, resulting in really fertile soil for growing things.  We actually had one of these at home when I was a kid for a year or so (until we accidentally left it outside in the rain and it filled with water and the worms all drowned, oops) and it is a super easy way to compost without having a huge heap somewhere and without the smell.  Hooray!