Starting From Seed

Over the years, I always had BIG plans for my summer garden. Usually I was way too ambitious, but I did the best I could. I would try and organize everything and start a ton of seedlings early. But life would get in the way, and I would typically end up just buying a bunch of plants from the nursery.

Previous attempts to grow seedlings inside in the winter started well but ended very badly. I’d write down all the different seeds as they were planted, and then wait. It would look so promising as the little green leaves would emerge. But then they would get very long and spindly. When I would move whatever plants remained out to the garden, they would all die. Yeah – not the best track record, I know…

Planting seeds directly into the garden seems to go so much better for me. I could almost just toss a zucchini seed into the dirt and blink before a giant plant would seem to emerge from nowhere and start producing dozens of squash. And don’t get me going on my garlic chives, which are systematically taking over whole sections of my garden.

I love buying seeds and trying different varieties. I highly recommend rareseeds.com as a fantastic place to buy just about anything you can imagine for your garden. But I was really getting tired of buying tomato plants from the store when I had such fun and exciting seed varieties at home. So far, my success rate for growing tomatoes from seeds was pretty much at zero. But this year was going to be different. Things were going to change!

After explaining to my husband my frustrations, he went online and bought me a bunch of supplies to increase my probability of success this year. He got me super nice containers to grow seeds, a heating pad to help with germination and grow lights. I was ecstatic to try them out.

We got them set up and I carefully marked down all the names on popsicle sticks using a CD marker. Then we went on a 4-day vacation where I tried not to wonder how the seeds were doing. When we got home there were so many sprouts popping up! I was so cautiously hopeful but tried to not remember how the seedlings ended up in previous years.

After a few days, they started to get spindly looking, and all stretched out again. I was confused – we had grow lights! What was going on? Then I learned you need to keep the lights within a few inches of the plants. Oops! Yeah, our lights were more like a few feet from the seedlings. A few boxes, a laundry basket and some precariously balanced trays and we were back in business.

The seedlings began to look thicker and healthier. I added an oscillating fan to help toughen up the stems. So far, so good. And the best part? I have a bunch of my weird seeds growing now, and high hopes that I might actually get some of these to survive transplanting to the garden. There are so many different varieties of tomatoes – white ones, green striped ones, etc. I have beautiful flowers started, veggies and so much that I am excited to see how this works out this year.

Don’t give up hope on trying seedlings inside. But I do recommend that you get the right supplies, and actually read how to set them up properly first. Now on to the next challenge – hardening off the seedlings so they don’t just perish in my garden like their predecessors. I am hopeful and really believe this is going to work!