This last spring, we tried to start some zinnia seeds indoors. Now, I’m painfully aware that gardeners start seeds indoors all the time and it’s not anything special. Except, I’d always failed miserably. This year was different and the difference was the shop light – just an ordinary LED shop light we bought at a big box store, with 4500 watts of bright white light.

The baby zinnia plants actually grew! I actually transplanted them to my gardens and they actually grew! They were a little spindly in the shadier places, but they bloomed. I also learned that I could pinch the seedlings back to promote branching.

Now, I’ve always had to be a frugal gardener – because I was a single mom with two kids, there wasn’t a lot of extra money for necessities like plants. So, I focused on perennials, which came back every year, begging starts and divisions of plants from other gardeners and even digging up daylilies from roadside ditches.

So, since I had this lovely shop light and all the seed starting supplies from my zinnia experiment, I got inspired to grow herbs indoors this winter. To be honest, I bought two Genovese basil plants, two parsley plants and a common thyme plant. I rummaged through my stock of empty flower pots and gathered up some terra cotta ones, all about the same size. MATCHING POTS! I was so pleased.

After transplanting the herbs into their matching pots, I placed them proudly on my porch railing until cool weather. Unfortunately, one of the parsley plants didn’t make it – I really don’t know why.

“No worries”, I thought, “I’ll just start some more parsley from seed.”

So, I sprinkled some five year old seeds onto the soil in my matching pot, watered them and waited. And waited. And waited, and finally saw some tiny bits of green poking up! My five year old seeds had not let me down!

All my herbs are inside now, under my shop light and are doing great. I bought another shop light, just getting ready for this next growing season, and can’t wait to order more, NEW seeds! Wish me luck!

Stay Green, Good Friends!