Ready, Set, Grow!

At first, I considered being crafty and making my own seeding station with toilet paper tubes, but seriously, ain't nobody got time fo' that.  So I bought a clearance Burpee Greenhouse Kit with 72 cells at the Home Depot and I am planning on using that.  The kit comes with the growth medium, chart to organize what is growing, self watering tray, and greenhouse top.

The directions came with the kit and I should have read them more carefully, because I did have a couple of disaster cells.  The directions warn you to make sure the growth medium pellets are flat and facing up when you poor water on them.  They expanded so fast that the ones that were sideways got stuck and I had to painstakingly crush them to finish the process.  So lesson learned: read the directions!

Before

(you can see the unruly pellets turned sideways...)

Once the growth medium soaked up all the water, I just poked holes in the cells with my finger, dropped the seeds down, and covered them back up.  The chart made it easy to keep track of what seedlings I could expect to see in the next couple of weeks.

The kit directions and all of my garden gurus stress that heat is important when starting seeds, so I brainstormed where I could keep the mini-greenhouse for the next couple of weeks.  Unfortunately for my husband, the dining room closet won that contest.  The closet in our dining room has heating ducts running through it in one corner, so the closet is always nice and cozy when the doors are shut.  Bad for heating bills, but good for germination!