Seed Starting

Early Spring is a good time to start your seeds indoors, especially vegetable that have long grwoing seasons and flowers for early blooms).   I start tomatoes and eggplant in aluminum trays and make pots from newspaper using a potmaker.  I bought a bag of miracle grow potting mix and burpee seeds and set to work. Try to keep your hands very clean washing with soap and water when working with seeds and avoid handling the seeds directly.  This will help prevent mold or yeasts growing in your pot. First I form the pots from newspaper, then fill approximately 3/4 full with potting soil and line the pots in the tray. When the tray is full, I wet the pots and soil with water. Then I carefully sprinkle three to five seeds per pot directly from an opened seed envelope.  after the seeds are added to the pots, i use a watering can with a diffuser so as not to disturb the soil and seeds.
Then the seed trays are placed in the warmest room in the house to germinate, they do not need sunlight yet so a sunny window or lights are unnecessary. Within about two weeks, your seeds should be growing and will need light.

Starting tomatoes by the middle of March should result in July fruit.  I also start a tray of flowers too,  this year I planted zinnias, snapdragons and poppies.  Zinnias are the easiest flowers to grow from seed that i have found. The seeds are large and easy to handle and the flowers are large and colorful.  Zinnias grow tall and fill a garden with color. Marigolds are alos easy to grow for the same reasons. Zinnia and Marigold flower produce seeds that are easy to harvest when closing the garden for winter and can be use to grow next years garden.

the first planting of seed trays went so well, the seedlings are about two inches tall and are in a sunny window growing, I decided to make more seed trays with Bell Peppers, NUMEX Hot Peppers and Marigolds. Its a rainy day, so no outside work today, so I am making more pots out of newspaper with my wooden pot maker. So i filled an aluminum cooking tray with 24 pots each filled a little les than full. Then I water the soil to moisten it with a watering can with a diffuser. Next I carefully add three to five seeds per pot. Lastly, I use a tablespoon of soil to cover each pot and water again with the watering can/diffuser. The trays I bought today from shoprite had clear plastic covers and I put the trays in my laundry room which is the warmest room in the house.

The Marigolds popped up within a few days, whereas the hot peppers sprouted about two weeks after planting and the bell peppers have still not sprouted. The bell pepper seeds were a few years old, but i expected a few to germinate. Seeds packaged for the current season have high germination rates and depending on storage, the seed pack’s germination rate will drop over time. I generally go by the rule that seeds were found in egyptian pyramids that were stil viable so a seed pack a few years old shouldd have a germination rate of at least 30% but I could be wrong but I don’t have a pyraamid to sstore my seeds in (yet).