Okay. I'm starting with the beginning. My seed starting ingredients include: seeds, grow cups, plastic trays, water, vermiculite, and soil.
Seeds
I've gone through my wish list, my available space, and my planting calendar. That's an entire subject all by itself, so here I'll just stick with saying I've picked out my seeds.
Grow Cups
I've been saving toilet paper and paper towel cardboard rolls for awhile (my family thinks I'm a little crazy). I've also been saving cardboard egg cartons. These are great materials for growing seedlings; once grown enough and hardened off to be transplanted outside the entire bit of cardboard can be placed in the ground. This is far cheaper than using peat moss 'grow cups' but the principle is the same. It leaves the root system undisturbed and increases the chances of transplant success.
The rolls are getting chopped up. The paper towel rolls are 11" long, the toilet paper rolls are 4 1/4". I'm just going to divide them up pretty evenly; the precise end length of each piece doesn't matter as long as it isn't over 1 1/2" long, so cut them for the least amount of waste product. These tubes will be used for growing and transplanting individual plants. The egg cartons will be trimmed out to strips of three depressions (so 4 strips per dozen egg carton). These will be used for growing flowers and herbs, as these plants can be planted in groupings.
Plastic Trays
I need something to hold all this stuff in. Anything that isn't water permeable will work. These trays were salvage from a stack left by the dumpster but anything with an edge will work. When choosing a tray, consider the final overall weight. You'll need to be able to pick these trays up and move them around as the plants grow. Ideally, the trays will go outside with you for transplant to minimize the number of times you have to handle the growing cups.
Water
When planting anything, it's important the growing medium is wet BEFORE putting the seeds in. Sowing seeds (and planting transplants) in dry material means a lot of watering catch up.
Vermiculite and Soil
Ideally, I would love to be using the Square Foot Gardening (SFG) medium (known as Mel's Mix, or MM) for every stage of my planting. But I haven't gotten all of my compost materials yet, so I'm making do with an organic garden soil with nitrogen and soluble potash (healthy fertilizers) and vermiculite. The vermiculite will go a long way with water retention - as long as I property wet the material before sowing seeds. I'll be using 1/3 vermiculite and 2/3 soil mixed then added to the growing cups.
Now that I have all my ingredients, it's time for the first stage of sowing, cutting my growing cups and mixing my soil and vermiculite.
The plastic trays need some water retention factor in the bottom. I'm using the lids from the egg cartons, shredded, and leftover pieces from the cardboard roll cutting. The egg cartons need to have a hole in the bottom to encourage drainage and, later, degradation in the ground. Other cardboard, paper, or paper towels will work as well. Avoid heavily inked papers. Soak this layer before building on top of it, this is a good opportunity to make sure the material will soak up water and stays ahead of the watering.
Once all those are cut and set, I mixed my soil compound and added it to the grow cups. Be gentle and remember to water the mix before adding it to the cups. Shake or pour the mix into the cups, do not pat it down. A loose soil is very important to good plant growth. And since the whole cup will be put into the ground, there's no reason to encourage dense root development.
I then labeled everything in code. Experience has taught me that seedlings can be difficult to tell apart, identifying stakes can be easily misplaced or made unreadable. So instead I labeled the trays with a grid - letters down one side, numbers across the top, and then I'll make a separate list using grid coordinates. The list goes in my garden journal, so I can keep up with it all later.
Possibly, depending on germination times and plant development, I should be very careful of what I'm all putting in each tray. But this is all still a little new, and I can't seem to process all that right now. So I'm planting what I want all together and we'll see what happens!
Once the tray is ready, I sow the seeds. For deeper seeds I use a pencil to poke a hole. The key is to keep the soil loose. The trays I have (conveniently) work together to create a greenhouse. This will maximize the warmth from the sun in my window. Other options include grow lamps, plastic sheeting, and black seed covers. Before placing on the cover, I give everything a light watering with a spray bottle. Once a day and that should provide enough water for the plants.
Now, we just wait for the seeds to do their thing!
I set up the plastic trays in my sunniest window. Because the window drafts a lot I went ahead and dug out my waterproof heating pad and set the trays on top of it. A seed mat works, as well, but I didn't want to make an additional purchase. When I was home, I left the heat setting on low during daylight hours. It's immportant to lets plants have a resting period, and it's easy for me to connect the extra warmth and the actual daylight. Within 3 days I had my first signs of sprout (a lettuce variety).
ReplyDelete...
It's been almost a week since the plants went into the trays and I've got sprouts all over the place. I've been taking advantage of the portable trays to rotate the trays to ensure a straight plant growth. I've also been able to take advantage of the weather to begin the "hardening off" stage. This is a process that acclimates young plants to the stresses of being outside. I put away the heating pad and when it's at least 50 degrees I've set the trays (no lids) in the sunshine on the deck. Doing so definitely slowed the growth rate for the sprouting seeds but that's OK because I've got plenty of time to let them finish before planting outdoors. A warning, though - the trays dried out VERY quickly when outside requiring multiple waterings during the course of the day as well as a good soaking when I brought them in. You can adjust for this using hoop houses, coverings, and other types of sheltering for hardening off. I didn't bother because 1. I was home anyway and 2. I wasn't convinced the weather was going to hold. I didn't want to waste the time setting everything up outside only to haul it back in to avoid frost damage.
One thing I've noticed: I'll need to pay more attention next time to my seed map. I just sort of planted the lettuces in the tray according to whatever packet came into hand next. The result is that the earliest germinator (a lettuce variety called Grandpa's Best from Seed Savers Exchange) is stuck in the middle of my slower growing seeds. I'll need to remove these from the tray before it's neighboring seed pots and it will require some careful rearranging. Next time, they'll go on the edge.
Update #2, 3/7/2012
ReplyDeleteNext year, I'll definetly focus on my germination times! My broccoli, spinach, and nasturtium are doing very well. They've outgrown my greenhouse setup... but the other plants in the trays haven't. To accomodate all the growing rates, I had to move the faster growing sprouts into new trays. I have the trays, no problem. And the egg cups were pretty easy to move. Lifting it up gave us a great view of the long root system; the plant used the hole in the bottom of the egg cup to escape into the tray. This is not a problem, since the whole cup will go into the ground. The paper roll cups were much harder to move. The glue has come undone and the whole cup wants to unravel. This would be fine if I were moving the plants from the tray to the ground but it's too early, yet, so it was just into a new tray. It will make planting in a few weeks much harder. When planning again, I'll separate based on germination dates, so the tray all comes together at once (or, at least, a lot closer).
No sign of the parsley, but it's a very long germinating plant so there might be hope yet. Otherwise, the whole seed packet is dead. Of the 7 broccoli plants I started, 5 made it large enough to move out of the greenhouse. For constant harvesting of spinach, broccoli (until summer) and lettuce, I'll need to sow seeds every 2 weeks. That's a new crop to get started in just a few days. It might not happen - I'm pretty swamped with other commitments. But I'm making notes for next year.
I also stumbled across this site. Great resource for seed starting! http://www.chestnut-sw.com/seedhp.htm