Far from skid row, I dream we'll go somewhere that's green

Last night I finally started seeds. Yay me. If I didn't do it, like, TODAY, I'd seriously be pushing that whole "last frost date" thing, and then I'd never get around to it, just like last year and the year before that. I used last year's seeds that I had ordered but had never even taken out of the envelope; hopefully they are still viable.

I ordered these particular batches of seeds from containerseeds.com and seedman.com (I just now googled containerseeds.com, and it seems they are no longer in business).

I've got:

• Baby Eggplant
• Hanging Basket Cucumber
• Japanese Bunching Onion
• Miniature Red Bell Pepper
• Miniature Yellow Bell Pepper
• Miniature Chocolate Bell Pepper
• Silvery Fir Tree Tomato
• Siberian Tomato
• Red Robin Tomato
• Yellow Canary Tomato
• Sugar Ann Snap Peas
• Wonderberry

They are all smallish plants, and most were picked specifically to grow in containers out in the back yard, as we have pretty poor soil in these parts, and I am just not up to digging up and amending the soil of an entire garden-sized plot. Not that I haven't tried before.


I started with a homemade seed-starting mix: 1 part perlite, 1 part vermiculite and 2 parts sphagnum moss. All three are available separately at home centers. There are pre-mixed seed starters available, but they are pretty heavy on the moss and light on everything else, which makes it pretty dense and difficult to drain.


I punched holes in the bottoms of 18 plastic cups and filled them with the starter mix. Keeping them in aluminum roasting trays makes it easy to water them from the bottom. I like to use clear cups because it's fun to be able to watch the roots grow once they get started.


Got my seeds and labels and am ready to go. Most of these seeds are super tiny, and don't need to be buried more than a quarter inch deep, so I poke a hole in the mix with a pencil, about halfway up the exposed wooden point, and use tweezers to drop the seed in.


Everything gets labeled.

Today I'll dig around in the garage and find the grow light, which is basically just a shop light with flourescent bulbs. I'm setting these guys in the office for now, because a) it's just too cold still out in the garage and b) I don't want to have to clear off the workbench out there yet. That'll be an all-day task. I'll have to buy a new timer for the light, though, as my son Jakob at one point over the years found it funny to pull the little red stopper pins out of the timer and do God-knows-what with them. So I am stuck with a timer that never stops. Once the seeds sprout, they will need 14-16 hours of light a day, and a timer is the best way to just set-it-and-forget-it.

Hopefully, all this effort means fresh, homemade salsa later this summer.