Fill your pots plantimg trays with seed Seed planting tips and guides mix. Stream plantinf below, read the illustrated transcript or subscribe free. Melina February 12, at pm. The Ultimate Seed Starting Guide For Canadian Gardeners by Maggie on January 25,

Seed planting tips and guides -

Botanical Interests offers more than varieties, including more than heirloom varieties and Certified Organic varieties.

Our store has soilless mix potting soil, cell packs, fiber pots and much more to help you get started. Here are steps necessary for starting, maintaining, and preparing for your outdoor garden bed.

Getting Started Planning is the most important step. Spend some time looking at what areas you have room for. Pick appropriate colors and understand the potential size that the plants will grow to.

Light requirements are important shade vs. Understand how long the seeds take to grow and when it is safe to plant out doors. Some seeds germinate better by direct sowing into the garden in the spring.

Planning will alleviate the problems of wrong plant — wrong location comes spring. Plastic pots or containers are preferable to clay pots when starting seeds, as they retain moisture more consistently. Wide, shallow containers prevent both overcrowding of seedlings and excessive moisture around fragile, young roots.

Plants that resent root disturbance when transplanted are best sown into small, individual containers like cell packs or plug trays. Spread the mix evenly over the top of the seeds to the depth of two times the seed diameter. Very small seeds and those that require light to germinate should lie directly on the surface.

Whether covered with planting medium or not, each seed must be in firm contact with the moist surface to begin germinating.

Use a pestle or even the bottom of a glass to gently tamp down the surface. Seeds are very sensitive to the extremes of over watering and under watering.

Excessive water and poor air circulation will cause a fungal infection often referred to as damping-off. Cover trays with plastic wrap to keep the moisture level constant. In addition, heavy-handed watering can disturb newly germinated seedlings. Securing plastic wrap over the surface of a freshly sown seed pot can help to keep the moisture level constant.

However, the pot must still be checked daily for moisture and germination. If you find that you need to rehydrate your seed container, place the entire pot in a basin with 2 to 3 inches of warm water and allow the planting medium to wick moisture from the bottom.

This post will break it down for you simply, step by step. Before you start working with soil and water, get those seed packets and markers ready to go. The last thing you want is to spill water all over your seeds and damage the viability of them in future years. Write out your markers so that you can place them in the calls directly after planting.

Once those seeds are out of the packet and in the soil, without marking, it is going to be impossible to tell which varieties you planted, possibly until they begin fruiting, many months later.

We like to use these plain white markers. This step is SO important!! Please, please, please moisten your soil BEFORE adding it to whatever pots, trays, or cells you are using.

The soil is not going to be able to absorb the moisture without pre-mixing it. You are going to notice a huge difference in the quality and health of your seedlings if you pre-moisten the soil before adding it to your cells.

Cake-like in consistency is just right! If it is dripping, it is too wet, if it crumbles apart easily, it is too dry. If you are still confused, I covered all of this in the video above, and even show you detailed shots of what it looks like when it is too dry, too wet, and just right.

Once you have your soil mixed with water and at the right level of moisture, go ahead and add your soil to your cells or trays. level out the soil, but avoid pressing it into the cells. Instead you will want to tamp the tray or pots, which brings us to the third step for seed starting!

You have two options for this, either a high quality potting soil, I use organic potting soil from the Coast of Maine. You can find seed starting mix. Often this is quite similar to a high quality potting soil.

It can be harder to find organic seed starting options that are high quality. Avoid Miracle Grow or brands like Burpee, which tend to lack the high quality compost. One great option is Espoma Organic Seed Starting Mix.

The particles are often not broken down enough or fine enough for seeds to germinate. In addition to your baby plants will not be able to absorb enough nutrients quickly to grow strong root systems.

There are so many options when trying to decide which cells and trays to purchase. You can purchase pots, large cell-type trays, bottom trays, or even supplies to use the soil blocking method. If you are just getting started, I recommend buying cell trays with bottom trays to go with them the often come together.

I recently purchased new cells and trays that I am really happy with! Previously I used the standard cells and trays that you can purchase at the store, but these are cheaply made, quite flimsy, and will bend and break easily.

I purchased very durable trays from the Bootstrap Farmer and they ROCK! They hold a lot of weight, do not bend or snap, and make it much easier for me to move them without everything spilling out.

These also came with 5 additional bottom trays. So what in the world is tamping and why is it better than pressing?

What happens when you put soil into a pot, is even though it looks like it is filled to the top, there are still air pockets throughout.

These air pockets are going to deprive your plants of nutrients. This is where tamping comes in. If this is not making sense to you, I demonstrated it in the video above for those who are visual learners.

Tamping is better than pressing in the soil, because it naturally settles all of those air pockets, and levels out the soil; whereas pressing, forces the soil to be more compact than it should, while also missing some of those air pockets.

Now it is time to make your little holes for planting! Make these shallow. You generally only want to plant seeds 2 times the diameter of the seed. So if we are talking about beans or corn, you can plant them a little deeper, but with a tiny little pepper seed, or maybe even a teeny tiny lettuce seed, think SHALLOW.

You really just want to ensure good contact with the soil. My favorite way to make the indentations for planting, is using the back of a sharpie!

It makes the perfect little shallow hole with just a little pressure. Plus I can use it to write out my markers. Place your tray on a heating mat if desired. This is especially helpful for plants that need or like heat in order to germinate. Onions, peppers, celery are just a few plants that will really benefit from a heating mat.

Humidity domes are frequently used in the germination process to support a moist environment in which seeds can quickly germinate.

They are not necessary, but many growers like to use them. At the moment I have chosen not to use humidity domes, and instead to bottom water my trays so that the soil stays nice and moist. If I do decide to use humidity domes in the future, I am going to be purchase them from the Bootstrap Farmer, or another similar brand, that offers domes with ventilation, to decrease the risk of mold or fungus growth.

You may have heard to place your trays near a south-facing window or on a windowsill. The exception would be if you have a sun porch, sun room, or other interior space that receives substantially more light than your average room.

You can find expensive grow lights online, but you can also use less expensive LEDs at the right Kelvin color temperature and with enough Lumens Light output. I will dive deeper into this in another blog post, but for now here are the specifications on the 4ft.

LED shop lights we chose:. We have four, 4ft. shop lights on our DIY Black Pipe Seed Starting Station.

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