2008 Garden Series
Starting the Seeds
As I stated earlier in the Recap 2007 article, Kat and I have purchased all of our seeds from The Vermont Bean and Seed Company. All of our tomato seeds have come from their sister company Totally Tomatoes. Yes we maybe putting all of our seeds into one basket but this basket seems to have great reviews for reliability and as we have found out, great customer service.
Another venture we are trying for the first time this year is that all of our seeds are either heirlooms or of the open pollinated type, no hybrids. Our goal is to now attempt varieties that will acclimate themselves to our climate and soil type.
We have just put into the trays, frames and greenhouse our eggplant, peppers and tomatoes. This will give us eight to ten weeks before they will be put into the ground on May 15th.
Note how all are in trays or frames and covered with plastic wrap to retain moisture and heat up the soil. We have gone to the small peat pots. Our soil fill composes of a non-fertilized soil, peat moss and dried cow manure all in equal parts.
We tried the jiffy pots, were you add water and they expand, but we had experienced bacteria growth from this method.
I first lay out the pots in the trays, fill with soil mix, and then water down the mix and pots. Allow this to sit for around fifteen minutes to absorb the water. I then lay on the seeds to the wet soil and cover with about ¼ inch soil mix. I then cover the trays with plastic wrap and allow to sit overnight. The next morning I will water the trays gently with our homemade water bottle.
This bottle is easily constructed from any large beverage container. Just simply drill small holes into the plastic cap. Filling is easy and you can really control the water volume and placement by the squeeze to the plastic container.
Once the seeds begin to sprout I remove the plastic wrap and keep watered every day. We usually get about fifty percent germination rate on the trays before I remove the wrap. The un-sprouted seeds will usually appear in the next 48 hours. Sometimes we even see later sprouts; this all depends on the depth of the cover soil over the seeds.
