Welcome little seeds. We are so very happy to see you!
We have some new house guests. They are small, but mighty… and they’re taking over our kitchen.
Step 1: Ordering, Determining Planting Times, and Planning
The first step to having these tiny houseguests is PLANNING. It is SO important to plan what you will plant, when you will start each seedling, what kind of additional materials you need, etc. I ordered my seeds back in December, as you may remember from this post. It’s always an exciting time for me as it is the beginning of new things.
Once I have ordered, I begin making a list of the sowing times. I tried making a spreadsheet to help in this planning, but in the end I purchased Homestead Planner from Etsy that includes a sowing calendar. It’s perfect! I entered our average last frost date and the calculations were set. Then, I organized my seeds into containers by sow date. Some seeds will be sown indoors to get them a head start. Other seeds will be direct sown into the garden.
Later, once it gets closer to planting time, I will draw up my garden plan in a grid format (as mentioned in my previous gardening post). That’s basically the last step of my planning. The rest is up to hard work and careful observation.
Step 2: Starting Seeds Indoors
Once I know WHEN to start the seeds indoors, I typically then have to wait anxiously for the first date to arrive. Today was my lucky day as it was day one of planting. According to my plan, the first seeds to start indoors are onions, rhubarb, cauliflower, broccoli, milkweed, blueberry, brussels sprouts, asparagus, and thyme. This year I am starting vegetable seeds, but also herbs and pollinator flowers. I’m looking forward to the herbs for culinary purposes, and will try to dry them this year for use throughout the year. I am also VERY MUCH looking forward to the wildflowers for our bees and butterflies!
Soaking
First, I soaked the seeds overnight, with the exception of the TEENY TINY Blueberry and Thyme seeds. They are so small I thought I might lose them when soaking, or not be able to get ahold of them to plant!
Last year I made a mistake. I planted everything all at once so there was one big harvest, then certain plants were done. This year I am going to try doing some successive planting to lengthen the growing season for plants like radish, lettuce, and carrots. Anything that’s harvested once and it’s done can be successively planted to allow for a longer season. For this reason, I did not soak all of the seeds from certain plants. I held back some onions for successive planting later.
Homemade Potting Mix
Next, I mixed up a custom planting mix that is actually SOIL-LESS. I found the recipe on this site and decided to give it a try. The ingredients are Coco Coir (derived from coconut hull), Perlite and Vermiculite. I ordered each item from Amazon per the links in her post. It was reasonably priced and will make a LOT of potting mix.
I placed the Coco Coir in my garden cart and added the water to let it expand and loosen. This was a simple process and it’s amazing how much the material expands with water added!
In a 5 gallon bucket, I then mixed the the formula of 8 parts Coco Coir, 1 part Perlite, and 1 part Vermiculite. For this first planting, I ended up mixing 24 cups Coco Coir, 3 cups Vermiculite and 3 cups Perlite. These materials are supposed to help with keeping the soil moist and draining. It’s a nice looking mix. I hope it works well.
Last, I put the mixture into these Seedling Starter Trays I had purchased on Amazon. (NOTE: In hind sight, I wish I had planted directly into these 4″ Plastic Pots in the beginning. My seedlings didn’t all handle the transplant well.) I placed the seeds on top of the soil. Soaking the seeds makes it really hard to grab ahold of them. Using tweezers, I planted a few in each pot and labeled the pots with plastic labels. Then, I used the tweezers to gently stir the top layer of soil/seeds to cover the seeds slightly.
Grow Lights
I placed the trays under the LED Plant Grow Strips I purchased from Amazon (I love Amazon… can you tell?) The lights are on a timer that will be on for 15 hours per day, off at night. The seeds are in our kitchen where it is nice and warm, so I am not going to bother with any sort of heating pads. I’m hoping the temperature of our house will be enough to help the seeds germinate and begin to grow. Once the sprouts emerge, I will likely need to thin the plants or transfer some to other containers. It’s so hard to just put one or two seeds in a space… so I put several. I hope that doesn’t come back to ‘bite’ me!
On a day like today (60 degrees) it really gets me excited for being in the garden getting my hands dirty. In the meantime, it’s the waiting game. My next batch of new plantings will be March 5, which is 2 weeks away. This will include lavender, sunflowers, radish, spinach and lettuce. The last three will be direct sown in the garden under a hoop house for protection from snow and wind. One week at a time, this garden will grow!
Sarah says
I’m getting ready to start our first round of seeds. It’s the best time of year!
Jenny Hollibaugh says
I agree Sarah! I really love thinking about and planning for my garden! Good luck!