Starting Seeds

This is the first week for starting seeds!  In the video below, I show the seed starting equipment I use, including peat pellets, trays, a heating mat, and grow lights.  I use Jiffy pellets, which are available from any hardware store or nursery.  Just add water to expand the pellets, plant the seeds, and cover with the lid to keep warm and moist.  You can re-use the trays from year to year (clean them with water and bleach to sterilize before reusing), and you can by new pellets separately in bulk for around 10¢ per pellet!

The heating mat and thermostat are from Hydrofarm, and the grow lights, stand, and timer were purchased from BuyPlantLights.com several years ago.  The heating mat measures four-foot by two-foot, and we have it sitting on a six-foot folding table.  The light stand is a little over four feet long, and has four fluorescent bulbs. The bulbs are made by Verilux, and have a spectrum that's pretty close to that of the sun (at least the plants can't tell the difference).  I'm sure there are more expensive and higher-quality options out there, but these have served us well for several years.  We keep the heating mat thermostat set at 80°F.

The other equipment we use include a space heater and a box fan.  Young plants need a lot of air to grow, and if the air becomes stale, fungus will form and kill the seedlings.  We also heat with wood, and the room the plants are in doesn't get much heat from the stove, but it probably the naturally warmest room in the house.  So we use a space heater (with a thermostat) to keep the air temperature above 60°F, and once the plants are under the light, we use a box fan indirectly to keep the air in the room moving.  We have at times in the past also used a room humidifier when the air got too dry (like after a few cold, clear days).  We keep an indoor thermometer/hygrometer near the seedlings to monitor the temperature and the humidity in the room.

I will post the garden layout next week, but it is pretty much finalized now.  New vegetables this year include broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, beets, radishes, leeks, celery, garlic (in the fall), squash, corn, melons, and pumpkins.  Other new plants this year include several herbs (which will be in 12-inch pots), some flowers (both amongst the vegetables and in pots), and a second peach tree and two apricot trees.  This sounds like a lot of new stuff, but really isn't that many more plants, just more variety from last year.  The biggest change will be putting the corn, potatoes, and vine plants in the back of the garden with the wheat so they have more room to sprawl.  Also, we will have flowers scattered about for companion purposes (I will talk more about this in a future post).

Many of the plants this year need to be started indoors (we only have about a 140-day growing season), but a few (like corn and beans) must be sowed outdoors.  We have created a table of plant spacing and sowing information for our plants, as well as harvest date estimates.  The table is shown below.  The flowers are not included because they are all sown outdoors after the last frost (May 25).

Most of the columns in the table are self-explanatory.  The "Number" column is the number of plants we are planing this year, the "Plant Time" column is the date that I need to plant the seeds (which is the last frost date minus the number of weeks in the "Start (weeks)" column times seven days per week).  The "Indoors?" column says whether those seeds are started indoors, and if so the "Peat?" column says whether the seeds are started in peat pots.  The "Transplant?" column says when the plants should be transplanted (not hardened) if they are transplanted before the last frost date.  The "Germination" and "Maturity" columns are the number of days to germination and maturity of the plant, respectively, and the "Harvest" date is the start date plus the germination time plus the time to maturity.  (Some plants don't have a germination time because they are planted from transplants, and some don't have a time to maturity because they are continually harvested, like herbs.)

For anyone who is interested, the seeding tray layout chart I show in the video is below (kinda boring though):

This week's video is below.  In it I walk through the seed starting equipment, show a time-lapse of the pellets absorbing water (really took about 30 minutes), and show how I plant the seeds (tweezers are a must!).  Please take a look.  Next week there won't be much action (the early seeds take a long time to germinate), but I will talk about the layout of this year's garden in contrast to last year's, and lessons learned from last year.