Celebrate the culture of agriculture & share skills (Growing! Cooking! Eating!)

Cheap Seed Starting Setup

A week ago, I officially started my seeds. There are lots of new additions and my entire list is here and a rough schedule for starting seeds is here. I'm not neat or fancy when it comes to projects, but I can get the job done. All of the planting took place in my dining room and later the pots were hauled upstairs for their dedicated growing spot. I'm really thankful for my bamboo floors throughout the house for tasks such as this. All I needed was a bucket of hot soapy water and the room was good as new.

So here they are a week later.

Don't you love my table, a section of board over two saw horses. Like I said, it may not be pretty but it works. The window is east facing, but the room receives plenty of indirect light all day.

This our normal light with full spectrum compact fluorescent bulbs. We have them in every in fixture in our home. The light is switched on first thing in the morning and turned off when the kids go to bed.

Pardon my flash, but I wanted to show you the extra supplies stored under the table: a laundry basket with the rest of the seeds, a clear box holds more containers (used yogurt containers, save them and have your friends save them, you can NEVER have too many), and the tote has soil. The soil is from the woods behind our house,

mixed with a small bag of organic potting soil and half a bag of vermiculite.

And if you look closely you can see even if it's inexpensive and unattractive, it can still work.

Chamomile. The package said it may take a long time and sprout erratically, but here they are!

Our first planting of broccoli. We start some every 4 to 6 weeks so we have a constant harvest.

This is my first year growing some ornamentals and flowers.

A pepper already! I'm a surprised as you are!

As the sprouts get bigger I am sure to pass my hand lightly across them daily to create a stress so they don't get leggy. Occasionally on a warm day I will also crack the window a couple of inches so a breeze can provide a stress. This works for us.