Dishing With Janet: Growing from Seed

Long time, no blog...it says September, 2011. Wow that is a long time. Well it's that time again folks-time to start thinking about the garden. Poor dormant, mulch covered garden.

This picture is older, I actually have about 80% of the mulch raked back now. I decided instead of raking it into a big pile on a tarp which took FOREVER just to rake it back to each side. I think I lost more mulch in the process and I won't have as much to re-use but dragging it by the bucket full over to another area of the yard just wasn't very appealing to me. Also thinking if it isn't in one large pile for months on end maybe I won't have that little spider issue I had last year. Waiting for the annual Home Depot mulch sale to replenish my stock.

So this year I am trying something different and starting some items from seed. Often I start some plants from seed in my garden like these-squash, cucumbers, beans etc.

This year I ordered some special pepper seeds from New Mexico State University's agriculture program. They are a variety of hybrid species that I hope will really kick up my pepper production. So I picked up some little Jiffy Greenhouses and set to work.

I decided while I was at it and since each of these trays holds up to 72 little plants I would go ahead and plant some additional peppers, some carrots and some watermelon from seed as well. I also went ahead and planted a few squash and cucumbers because I had leftover seeds from last year and wanted to be sure they would germinate when I plant the bulk of them outside.
The tray/seed planting was actually a little tricky. You pour water into the tray and the little soil cubes puff up, then you have to peel back a small amount of netting from each cube, rake the soil back (note my fork, plant the seed/s and smoosh some soil back on top of the seeds.

I also decided quickly after I started that I would need some kind of labeling system-I ended up just making a blank Excel table and writing in what I planted in each spot. Make sure you somehow label the tray as to top and bottom.