If you’re anything like me, you’ve been dreaming about getting your hands back in the soil for the past few cold months. The long wait is finally over! *weeps with happiness*
Why Seed Starting Matters
Before we dive into the nitty-gritty details, let’s take a moment to talk about why seed starting can be a game-changer for you. Not only does it give you a head start on the growing season, but it also allows you to be more selective with plant varieties. Since we are being real here, another major benefit is saving money over store-bought transplants! Seed starting indoors can also extend your growing season by months. Plus, you can cultivate a deeper connection with your garden from the very beginning and you have control over the health of your plants.
Selecting the Perfect Seeds
The first step in your seed-starting journey is selecting the perfect seeds! From heirloom tomatoes to spicy peppers, the possibilities are endless.
- Growing Zone: Before you get carried away with visions of a bountiful harvest, first you need to identify your growing zone. You can do a simple web search for “what growing zone is (insert your city and state)?” I like the free tool available at https://www.almanac.com/gardening/planting-calendar It gives you so much information on historical frost dates, moon planting dates, transplant dates, and direct sow dates. I would personally love to grow tropical fruits like guavas and mangoes, but it just gets too cold in my growing zone. Maybe one day I’ll get a big greenhouse and make my tropical fruit dreams come true. 🤩
- Personal Tastes and Needs: Next step after narrowing down plants that will grow in your area is what do you like to eat? If there are 72 varieties of beans to choose from, but you don’t like beans, you may not want to grow any. Or maybe you do and your friends will love you for giving them your harvest! What do you buy a lot of at the grocery store? If you buy $5-10 of tomatoes every week, you might want to grow tomatoes! Then there is the cool stuff that you can’t find in the grocery store. I’ve become obsessed with the beautiful colors of heirloom tomatoes, and the amazing range of sweet and spicy peppers, sweet bonnets are amazing! And if every time you go in to the grocery store, you eyeball the fresh fennel but hesitate at the price, that may be something you want to try growing!
- Seed Reviews: The gardening community seems to be full of passionate people willing to freely share their knowledge. I’ve read reviews on seeds that say things that have made me reconsider a variety, like “low germination rate” “long time to ripen” “low fruit yield” “prone to diseases” and great things like “my favorite tomato!” “super large yield” “so sweet” “cellared well.” So check out what your community has to say from the beginning!
- What You Already Have: Have you been guilty of buying 17 new varieties of tomatoes, only to find your seed box full of last year’s cool varieties that could have saved you money by not buying more? 😂 Honestly, if you’ve been gardening for more than a few years, it’s probably happened!
You do NOT need fancy equipment to grow your own food.
Dirt, seeds, water, and light are enough, the rest is extra and can be helpful. Don’t let fancy setups intimidate you away from gardening.
Starting Your Seeds
With your seeds in hand, it’s time to get down to business and plant them with precision. Now I’ll tell you, I’ve done everything wrong with seed starting and still had the plants survive in spite of me. So don’t let the lack of the absolute perfect setup deter you. If you watch my seed starting video, you will see that my set up is literally an old desk top for the base and grow lights strung up across two tripods so that I can adjust the height. It is NOT Instagram perfect. But it has two things really going for it: it didn’t break the bank and it works well. I work on improving each year and one day it will be ✨ aesthetic. ✨But in the meantime, here are some details that can make a big difference:
- Seed Trays: I like seed trays that have a hole or holes on the bottom to allow for bottom watering. This encourages the roots to reach down.
- I saw on Pinterest many years ago that you can sprout seeds in an egg carton. That did not work for me. Everything got moldy and had to be started over. But if it work for you, stick with it!
- Seed blocking is all the rage these days! I see people swear by them, but I haven’t personally tried them, so I can’t give you pros or cons.
- Soil: There was a marked difference when I switched from regular garden soil to seed starting mix or coco coir. My success rate probably doubled overnight. I can’t recommend trying a seed starting soil enough.
- Warming Mat: This was a game changer for me. Especially when it came to hot peppers, who like a warmer environment for germination. Check your seed packet to see if there is information on the ideal soil temperature.
- Humidity: I keep a little humidity dome over my seed trays and then remove it once they have sprouted. I’ve also used plastic wrap, and that worked well, but if there isn’t space between the soil and the plastic, seedling sprouts can get too damp and mold quickly, so be vigilant! Remember that seedlings go from nothing to sometimes a pretty large set of cotyledon leaves in the matter of an hour! After I remove the humidity dome, I have a humidifier near my seedlings since I’m starting seeds in the winter months when the heat is running and drying out the air.
- Light: As soon as they emerge, you want lights on your seedlings. Unfortunately after years of trying, I’ve given in to the fact that even a south facing window sill doesn’t get enough light to keep my seedlings from getting leggy. There are many brands, sizes, and varieties of plant lights that range the gamut of pricing. Don’t feel like you need the most expensive light on the market. You’ll most likely want Fluorescent or LED Lights. Look for high-output, full-spectrum (sometimes called “daylight”) bulbs that emit a high number of lumens (at least 3,0000 lumens). And you’ll want to be able to adjust the height of these lights easily as your plants grow, keeping them about 4-6 inches from the grow light. You’ll quickly see if your plants start getting “leggy” or reaching for the light, that they aren’t close enough or getting a bright enough light.
- Wind: The icing on the cake is an oscillating fan to help simulate wind and get those stems and roots ready to face the world! Optional, but I found it helps!
Caring for Your Seedlings
Once your seeds have sprouted and begun their journey to becoming strong, healthy plants, you may find them doing so well that they outgrow their first home! Make sure to really keep an eye on them. They are babies! 😂
For plants like tomatoes and peppers, I find starting them in small trays to see which are the healthiest, then selecting and potting those up into larger pots is a great method. It saves space until you have the very best candidates to keep for a month or two in larger pots until they are ready for the garden. When you pot up tomatoes and peppers, you can take the opportunity to plant them deeper in their new pots and get additional roots. Check out the chapter in my video on potting up for a visual.
Some plants like cucurbits (cucumbers, gourds, and watermelon plants) don’t like to have their roots disturbed. So you’ll want to be selective in potting up, or start in a larger pot that it won’t outgrow from the outset.
The hardest lesson that I ever learned when it came to seedlings? Pinching flowers. If your plants are not ready to go outside, they are definitely not ready to start putting energy into producing fruit. Pinch those flowers and encourage the plant to put that effort into creating strong roots. They will flower again!
Hardening Off and Transplanting
The ultimate goal here is to get strong and healthy plants that are ready to spread their roots in the great outdoors. But before you send them off into the wild world of your garden, it’s essential to harden them off gradually. Depending on the variety, I do this over the course of a week or two. I find a “goldilocks day” and take them on a field trip to the garden for an hour or two and bring them back in. Each day, I extend the time by an hour or two, acclimating them to the harsh realities of sun, wind, and fluctuating temperatures. Once they’re tough enough to handle whatever Mother Nature throws their way, and it is past the last frost date, it’s time to transplant them into their permanent homes and watch them thrive! 🥹
When you transplant, you’ll want to be careful to not pull your plant from the base of the stem. Tip your container on the side and push from the bottom, squeeze the sides, let gravity give you an assist. I’ll be sharing more about this in the future when my plant babies are ready to graduate to the garden, so come back soon!
Conclusion: Let the Gardening Adventures Begin!
And there you have it, folks – the ultimate guide to realistic seed starting! Remember that you don’t have to be an industry-leading expert or full-time stay-at-home gardener or homesteader to have and enjoy a productive garden. (If you are a full time, industry leading gardener and found your way to this post, please drop any additional tips in the comments!) I hope you’ve found these tips, tricks, and techniques helpful as you embark on your own gardening adventures.
Have you started seeds before? Are you going to this year? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!
Don’t forget to check out my accompanying video for a visual walkthrough of the seed starting process, and stay tuned for more gardening goodness in future episodes. Until next time, happy planting!
PS: If you enjoyed this post, be sure to subscribe to my blog and YouTube channel for more realistic gardening tips, tricks, and inspiration!
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