Planting for Spring

Last year I planted seeds indoors on April 20th in a collection of toilet paper tubes, egg cartons, with no grow lights and not a lot of planning. It was a very wet and dark spring into summer, so my plants didn't have much of a chance anyway. My results, well, were leggy seedlings that didn't have much of a shot and died quickly.

This year I'm starting quite a bit earlier. Now. I've been holding off getting supplies until now so I wouldn't plant too early, but I can't wait any longer! The new supplies I bought for seed planting are:

Jiffy-Strips 10 - 50 little peat pots Jiffy plastic planting tray and lid Hoffman Seed Starter Mix - 10 quarts Burpee Vegetable Starter Garden seed mix Burpee Viola Helen Mount flower seeds

How to Plant Seeds

1. Place peat pots in the plastic tray.

2. Spray down the peat pots a bit so they're damp.

3. Fill pots with seed starter mix

4. Water thoroughly - I sprayed the seed mix from the top and sprayed all the sides of the pots as well.

5. Make markers for the seeds and place them in pots to lay out where to put the seeds. When making tags for seed labeling, make sure the tags will fit into the peat pots and you can put the lid on! I read a tip a while ago about using plastic knives for markers. I collected a bunch from the junk drawer at work, and wrote on them with a Sharpie, and went about putting them in the pots, and then I realized there's a lid...

 

6. Sprinkle the seeds in each pot on the seed started mix, being sure to read the packets to find out if you need to presoak or nick any seeds.

7. Lightly cover the seeds with a layer of the starter mix and spray again. I also poured some water into the tray. There are ridges in the bottom that will keep the pots from sitting in the water, but hopefully they won't dry out during the day.

8. Put the cover on tray, put in a warm place, and wait. I turned the lights on my seeds now to give them a little more warmth.