The Starters are Starting to GROW CRAZY!

I started my 2008 bushels, martins and swans indoors around the tenth of March; it's now been about 30 days, and I'm STILL about 30 days from "safe ground planting time" (May 15, though I'll most likely do as I did last year: plant around May 1 or 2, and just hope I won't have to cover anything, for frost, more than once or twice if at all)...

Check this out: I've previously mentioned that last year I dropped some sickly seedlings into a PILE of dirt and gravel in my driveway area (backyard, where a garage used to be before I bought the place). Within days, those wimpy, stunted 'starts' sprang up and started growing like gangbusters... It was this set that ultimately produced my pair of "bigguns", as well as half a dozen average sized bushels...

So the "babies" of that pair have been "started", and I have a pic to share... (up to April 8, almost 4 weeks from planting, using good quality starter mix in 4" peat pots under grow lights with reflector "clamp" lamps...)

Now, yesterday, April 11th, just a few days later, I took those rapidly growing starters (little "vine" shoots had started appearing!) and migrated them into plastic milk (gallon) jugs that I had cut to suit. I also removed a couple "runt" starters that were hopeless; several, however, were "maybes" that I placed into new peat pots of their own (they're doing just fine now)...
I went out back, scooped up several bowlfuls of the SAME dirt and gravel mixture these babies' parents loved so much last year, and ADDED it to equal parts of Miracle Grow potting mix. I wet it down real good, packed it into the plastic jug "planters", and then tenderly moved the bushel starts, peat pots and all, into their new home. I "tore down" three or four sides of the (very soft, by now) peat pots as I did so, to help facilitate unimpeded root growth.

Watered everyone, then put them all back under the growlights/reflectors. A few of them were wilting, several leaves and stems seemed droopy, but I crossed my fingers the guys would pull through.

TONIGHT I was astonished to see just HOW WELL everyone pulled through... there's about one to two inches of NEW GROWTH on the gravel-dirt/milk jug starts! Several have already "hit the ceiling" of their area, with healthy tendrils going in all directions, and tonight I HAD to add STAKES to everything just to help keep things from overcrowding and getting tangled up, for the time being...
Not shown are two other, upper shelves with their own light: some miniatures that are healthy but smaller and easier to manage, and some Cannonballs I just planted in peat pots several days ago...

EEEEK! How will I ever keep these crazy things from taking over my window/shelf, at this rate??? (happy sigh).... I SO BADLY need that GREENHOUSE... next year...

How is everyone else's "indoor" progress? Know most folk here are south and west, so are probably already outdoors...

SO embarassed...okay, you all saw it...

The DIRT. omg, the DIRT...

... I have cats, and one of them had a fight with me a few days ago over the windowsill behind my gourd shelf, and a potted (top shelf) philodendron fell (it'll be okay).
In the previous pics, we can ALL see the "reminder" for me to get back there and sweep off the windowsill.... (blush)
It's just.... well.... ummmm, the GOURDS' welfare has been MORE of my priority, the past few weeks, putting "housekeeping" on the proverbial "back burner".... LOL

Hey! GARDENERS here! We don't see dirt as a bad thing! And the cat people among us see dirt on a windowsill as just a part of life! ;}