Seed Starting Success Story
I've been wanting to start my own seeds for about as long as I've been gardening. Until this year I hadn't been successful really. my seedlings usually peter out around the first set of true leaves and I don't talk about it again until my next attempt.
This year I tried winter sowing, and it seems to have been the difference between success and failure for me.
Winter sowing is where you sow all of the seeds the previous fall or early in the new year. It's done in repurposed plastic containers so that there's a slight greenhouse effect. The containers are placed outdoors, usually in direct sun, and then forgotten about for the most part. In the spring, when temperatures rise enough the seeds will germinate and begin growing on their own. The plants are a couple weeks earlier than they would have been outside, because of the favorable conditions inside the container
There's a good guide on it here.
My seedlings usually die from either lack of light, or lack of water. They generally lived on my windowsill and had their most delicate time during finals, or at the tail end of my pregnancy (while I was writing my senior thesis).
Winter sowing has solved my problem because this is the quintessential "no-work" way of raising your own seedlings. They're outside, so they get all the sun they need. There's also a hole in the top of the container, so they should also get all, or nearly all, the necessary water.
Usually to plant seedlings out into the garden you need to take the time to harden them off. The littles aren't used to the intensity of the outdoor sun, wind, etc, so they need to spend a little time each day outside to gradually become stronger. My seedlings were outside their entire lives, so transplant shock really wasn't a problem.
I started everything in February, and planted two types of tomatoes, three types of flowers, and some old sweet pepper seed I had lying around. The containers lived at my mother-in- laws's house because she actually has a backyard where they could hang out.
One tomato and one of the flowers got knocked over in a windstorm and everything in those containers died. I replanted the tomato and added another pepper last month, even though it was kind of late to do that.
About a month ago I potted up the larger tomato seedlings, the single pepper, and the flowers.
At this point I had already been more succesful than I ever really have been before. I had about twenty healthy seedlings in each variety. I could taste victory
so I was super careful I watered them regularly at this point and checked on them at least once a day.
Gwendolyn took to carefully moving the seedlings from one side of the patio to the other. It was the cutest thing. Of course if I didn't watch her carefully she would devolve into carefully uprooting the plants for snuggles.
In fact, here's a somewhat blurry video of her playing with some of my seedlings.
A couple weeks ago I put everything in the garden. Everything seems to be doing okay so far. So I think that this is my new favorite seed starting method.
Do you start your own seeds? What do you do?
