Seed Starting... Getting Started

One tray of seeds, soil plugs and labels... ready to germinate

I already covered how I make the soil plugs here, so lets move on.  In the picture above, you can see my soil plugs in the baking trays, labeled and seeded, ready to go.  Getting to that point took too much time, but I'll just have to make things work for now. 

Since it is no fun to forget what seeds are in what plug or container, I need labels.  It is quite possible that part of the reason it took too much time is that I might have been slightly OCD on the labels.  To get a better idea, let me explain that process first:

Measuring out the labels

Starting with some 2" wide masking tape, I measure off the tape at 1/2" increments.  These are cut at every inch, but are labeled first on the bottom half of each 1". 

Adding text to the labels

Up till now I've been using a red fine point sharpie marker... but I'll need to do something different, as they are fading a few weeks later.  I'll try black, but I have my doubts about how well that will work.

Cutting the labels to length

One they are cut, I attach them to a square tooth pick.  The sticky side goes to sticky side, and they hold the toothpick quite well!

After you fold it over, stick it in the dirt wherever you are planing your seeds... Nuff said about that!

Putting the seeds into the soil plugs is relatively easy, assuming you can handle small seeds.  I typically take another toothpick and poke a hole, however deep the seeds need to be planted, into the soil plug and wiggle it to open up the hole.

Setting the seeds

Then I pull out the toothpick and drop the seeds in, pushing them down into the hole with the toothpick marked for whatever length they should be planted to.

Hopefully they germinate shortly after...

Enjoy!