Step by Step: A Simple Guide to Starting Seeds

If you’ve never gardened before, you might be intimidated by all of the supplies at your local supermarket or garden shop.  You really only need a few things to start seeds.  A container, soil, water, and the seeds.  That said, to increase your chances of success, there are several things you can do.  Here’s a step by step guide to starting seeds in a way that has proven successful for me in the past.

I usually start with coconut coir.  It’s a fiber extracted from the shell of a coconut, and they compress it into tiny pellets that expand when you soak them in water.  It comes in a variety of sizes, and while I usually like to get a brick of the stuff, unfortunately my local gardening store only had these pellets.  You can plant directly in the pellet, but as you will see, I removed the netting so that I could work directly with the coir itself.   Coconut coir shouldn’t run you that much – each of these pellets was $.25.

Add water to the coir pellets, adding more water as needed. 

The pellets will expand to about four times their size.  Kids especially love this “magical” step!  I’m a big kid, and I still think it’s pretty cool.  At this point you have two options – you can plant one seed directly into each of these pellets.  I, however, chose to maximize the coir, and remove the outer casings.

You will be left with a gorgeous bowl of planting material.

Next, I filled compostable seed trays about 2/3 full with coconut coir.  I placed the trays in a plastic container, so I could move the seedlings around easily without disturbing them too much.  We’ve had a nice spring, so I ended up keeping them outside most days, and moved them inside at night.

Now it’s time for the seeds.  Choose varieties that work well for your growing conditions.  I chose varieties that do well on hot sunny balconies, and tolerate less water.  There are plenty of places to buy seeds. I got mine through Burpee which has a catalog and sells through places like Target.  I also picked up some organic seeds at my local garden store.

Carefully place the seeds in each segment.  Here, I’ve put two snow pea seeds in each segment – you can thin them out later, or transplant them to larger pots once they spout.  This is one of the advantages of starting in this manner as opposed to the coir pellets, which only can support one seedling each.

Cover the seeds with the remaining coir and label each row so that you can identify the seedlings once they sprout.

Ensure that the seeds stay warm, moist, and get adequate sunlight.  Check the seed packet for germination information.  In as soon as 3 days, you’ll begin to see seedlings poking through the top of the coir.  Congratulations, you’re a gardener!

To avoid long, spindly growth of your new seedlings, try to ensure that they get natural light.  If this is not possible, check out some of the websites that sell special lightbulbs especially for starting seeds.

Make sure that the coir says moist.  When the plants have 2 sets of leaves (their initial two leaves are just to gather energy from the sun – the characteristic leaves will appear later) apply organic fertilizer.  When plants are a few weeks old, you can transfer them to larger pots.

Tags: Do It Yourself, kids, seedlings, seeds
Posted in Do It Yourself