Thinning Beautiful, Healthy Vegetable Seedlings

We are eagerly preparing for the 2016 gardening season and our little vegetable plants are growing under our grow lights...some slow and some super fast.

Besides tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos and a few flowers, we decided to start some of our winter squash indoors this year as well because our garden zone always seems to frost first. Boo! It's a low part of our property so it makes sense, but wasn't something we realized until we lived here for a few seasons. Since many of these winter squash need a long season, this seems the best way to deal with the shortened season.

They might be crazy big by our frost free date of May 15...

We planted a couple of seeds per cell because we keep our seeds in the refrigerator until they are gone so viability tends to go down after a couple of years. Multiple seeds germinated in many cells so today was culling day. I'm not a fan because all the plants are growing so beautifully, but it is so much easier than trying to separate seedlings and repot them. I'm sorry little plants!

I pick the strongest plant to live and with scissors, snip below the soil line on the others.

I think the chickens will like these tasty, culled plants so even though they won't grow vegetables for us to eat, they will give us more eggs.

Even some monster eggs! Go Little Girl. Wow.

Lately, the chickens have taken to hanging out on the porch, which we totally crack up about,

and they also are loving the sunshine - just like us! We can learn a thing or two from chickens...to just sit down in the warm sun, on the soft earth and enjoy the present moment.

P.S. Thanks to all who came to our presentation this past weekend at the Licking County Master Gardener Conference! We really enjoyed chatting with so many cool people and had a blast sharing a photo tour of our place.