Welcome to the Plant Laboratory

As you may have surmised, we start a lot of plants indoors.  There's a couple reasons for this... first, it can be rather cold in the Poconos (there's a danger of frost here until the end of May), and second, we don't get much natural light.   It's not that the area is totally shady; we actually have a nice mix of sun and shade -- instead, the problem stems from the fact that we live in a gorge along a stream between two mountains (which means that the sun doesn't first shine through until about 10AM, and then it disappears from view around 4:30 in the afternoon).  All this translates into a shorter growing season, and hence the need to start plants indoors as early as possible (normally around the first week in February). 

To accomplish this, we converted a small room into a growing room with a series of shelves and florescent lights.  Also, and very important, the room also has an abundance of fly paper as tiny gnats always seem to emerge from the soil (and nobody likes having gnats in their house).  Because the room is small, it's easy and economical to keep it properly heated.  Here's a few pictures: