preparing to grow

this year I've decided to really get my hands dirty with all sorts of food growing, mostly just out of curiosity to see what can be grown in this climate :3

I'm used to farming potatoes in the backyard (because that's what faroese people want to grow the most and because fresh potatoes are most delicious :9) and rhubarbs have been there as long as I remember, but other than that I hardly ever see fresh (local) produce in the kitchen :'( and I love fresh tasty things! /foodie

and even tho I wanna run out and buy all of the seeds and grow tons of everything, I'm just gonna try a few things that I'm hope will be easy enough to start with LOL

basically, I'm hoping that beets will do well since things tend to grow well underground here :9 I just picked them up at the grocery store, along with the squash seeds in the left corner (which I have no hope will do anything useful, but at least it makes tasty flowers)

the upper right is just sweet basil that I'm gonna try and grow indoors, and THEN we got the ones in the foil pack which are caraway seeds from a really old semi-wild species in Iceland which I've gotten from Nordgen (fancy!)

anyway, I haven't even started that many seedlings yet even this late in the season but it's cold enough here that I've got time to sprout them at my pace :3

hopefully this is gonna be a loooooooot of beets 8) several seeds in each pot of course

and here's my low-tech setup :3 the radiator and the sun will heat the seedlings, and the plastic baggies are to created a greenhouse effect (and to keep in moisture so I don't have to water them that much lol)

and here's a few days progress on how they've grown<3333

the brown stuff in the soil is powdered cinnamon that's supposed to preven damping-off disease, ie help keep them from dying. idk how effective it is, but doesn't hurt to try :9

the latest photo really shows that they love growing towards the sun, so I need to rotate the trays once a day hahaha

anyhow, so far the ones that have been doing best are the ones in the boxes to the left which are the round root beets *q* idk if it's because the seeds might be newer, or they're just easier to grow, but the long beets haven't shown as much growth as fast at these cuties :3a

can't wait to transplant them into the garden when they've grown up a bit more<33