Starting your own seedlings is fun and easy.  This year I will have two gardens, my container garden and aquaponics system here and a co-op garden with a friend who lives down the road, so I’ll need more plants than usual.  I’d also like to sell a few seedlings here at the local farmers market, so I’ll be growing quite a few different seedlings this year…things you won’t find at the local big box stores.  I spent a good deal of the morning shopping for these items at a new seed store:  www.botanicalinterests.com.

They offer a very nice selection of heirloom plants in small quantities, ideal for the container gardener! For more great seed catalogs, check out the February Edition of Carolina Gardener magazine. 

Back to planting, I can’t plant the seeds I mail ordered today.  Even if I had them I wouldn’t be planting them today.  Typically here in the Midlands we don’t want to put summer transplants out until April 1^stin our container gardens and about two weeks after that for our in-the-ground gardens, so I’ll be planting more spinach, lettuce, onions and maybe a few snow peas to replace the ones knocked down by the cold winds we’ve been having.  I must say the winds have done horrible things to my normally most sheltered spot:

The peas are not as bad they look though…most of the plant is just hiding behind the container where the wind blew it down…I do need to pollinate the pretty blossoms.  Not many pollinators out there in this cold wind.

But back to the seedling starts:

First, sterilize the seed starting trays with a solution of bleach or vinegar and water.  I just put a splash of bleach or a cup of vinegar in my mud sink, fill with water to cover the trays and let things sit a bit.  VERY excited about my find at the Master Gardeners sale last year…I have a slightly used bio dome seed starter this year.  It has a taller lid than most seed starting kits and a vent you can use to regulate humidity levels.  

I bought sterile planting media instead of the bio sponge refills, which is another reason to start early to try things out. What I didn’t notice until I started cleaning the bio dome is that the foam insert has holes all the way through the foam, so the soil goes in and comes right back out…oops!  If you don’t follow directions exactly, you can’t expect exact results, right?  The planting media I bought doesn’t hold together like the bio sponges, so instead of putting my planting media in a bucket and covering it with just enough water to make it evenly moist, I will be putting the planting media into the foam insert and watering it well in there. All of this can be done while the seed starting trays are being sterilized.

Once your trays are filled with planting media, add your seeds (don’t forget to label them as you go…you will NOT remember what they are, at least I never do and a surprising number of seedlings look quite alike!).  You can put the spinach, onion and lettuce seeds on top of the unplanted holes and pat them down into the soil.  Sprinkle a little dirt over the onion and spinach seeds but leave the lettuce seeds uncovered. 

Now, just a word about onions: here in South Carolina, you should not plant onion seeds at any time other than fall; so I’m just experimenting a bit.  I want bunching onions, so I’m planting bunching onions, which technically should grow anytime.  We’ll see, won’t we?  Another word on onions: they can be short-day, long-day or day neutral.  Long-day varieties will not grow here in the south.  According to Clemson, my onions are going to bolt as soon as the weather turns warm, but I’ll probably be chopping them up for omelets way before then!  Happy Planting!