Seed Starting Series: Secrets to Germinating Seeds Indoors
Starting seeds yourself is an incredible way to both save money and have the fun experience of growing really interesting, unusual, fruit, veg, and flowers that you might not find in your local nurseries. I love it!! Every year we geek out over allll the seed catalogs buying everything from pink celery to giant yellow tomatillos, to ombre pink, purple and green, cabbages to our favorite from last year - Black tomatoes (Black Beauty). We are planting lots of seeds this weekend, and while having a greenhouse is a great help in getting them started, it isn’t necessary! In fact, there are benefits to starting seeds indoors where they will get the ambient temperature of the house/sunroom and will be a few steps away from the sink! The key factor is figuring out how much space you have - but we will get back to that below. Here are the most important basic steps:
Choosing seeds - If you don’t yet know what your hardiness zone is, then click here and enter your zip code. Once you have found that out, do a little research to see which plants do well in your area. If you are local to Modern Farmsteads and garden along the Front Range here in Colorado, feel free to look through our blog and Instagram posts (@modernfarmsteads) to see what has grown well for us. Otherwise, a great place to figure out what types of crops grow well in your area is to talk to local nurseries, Extension offices, and friends/neighbors. Gardening has a wonderful way of building community and few groups are as generous with their knowledge and experience as fellow gardeners. Do try to order your seeds in very early January (or as soon as you can thereafter) because the exciting varieties often run out! Store them in a dry, dark place until you are ready to use them - this enables them to stay viable as long as possible. (Some can last several years!)
Build a planting timeline for yourself. The best way to do that is to read the seed packet and see how many weeks in advance of your last frost date you should plant each type of seed. For example, here in Longmont, it is estimated that the last frost date this year will be May 21-31. One of my favorite types of eggplant to grow are Listada de Gandia and it needs to be planted 8-12 weeks before that last frost date. Working backward that would mean that I should plant my eggplant seeds at the latest between March 5th and April 8th. (You can also start them even earlier! Some of us push the shoulders of the growing seasons in order to get more crops sooner but it requires some extra effort and consideration. That is whole blog post on its own - I’m working on it and will be posting it this spring.) It is important to note that a lot of seeds do better if they are planted directly into the garden. Some varieties don’t enjoy having their roots transplanted so I don’t start those early. They do so well when they are directly planted into the soil (Examples: Zucchini, beans, melons) Best of all - this practices gives me more space to grow the crops that must be started inside.
Once you have created your planting schedule, you should determine how much space you have to grow your plants indoors. Work backward and come up with the numbers you will grow of each type of fruit/veg. Sometimes I plant a little extra of the seeds that I’m most excited about. Last year all my Lucid Gem tomatoes from Wild Boar Farms met an unfortunate pet-related demise and I was so sad that I didn’t get to grow any!!
Now you have to decide what supplies to invest in.
Non-negotiable: Seed starting soil/medium. Most seeds won’t germinate in regular garden soil so either pick up some at your local greenhouse or make your own. You can find the recipe that I use here. I borrowed it from Eliot Coleman’s book The New Organic Farmer which I love! Now you have to decide what to plant the seeds into. You will either need small pots or plug flats/propagation trays, or soil-block makers and 1020 trays to hold the blocks as well as a warm window sill or counter near a well-lit window. I have added my recommendations here and if you would like to learn how to make soil blocks, the blog post is here.
Optional: but incredibly useful and necessary for long term success: Heating mats, grow lights as well as shelving to hold your plant starts. I also like to use a dibber and a seed sowing gardening tool for speed. Again - the brands and types I use are here.
Following your planting calendar, it is now time to start! Closely follow the instructions on the seed packet and also google how to plant each seed. One of the big mistakes I made early on was to assume all seeds require the same instructions and I planted them all the same way! So sad!! Let’s just say I spent a lot on that failed seed experiment lol! I learned the important lesson that each seed has specific instructions. For example:
Many types of seeds are very simple to germinate. All you will need to do is plant them according to the instructions and put them in a sunny window. The seed packets put the date range of when you can usually expect them to poke their heads up into the world (germination) which is really helpful. One year I planted lots of seeds using the clear plastic covers that often come with seed starting trays because I thought it would create a micro greenhouse. Because I knew the time they were to emerge from the soil on average, I knew that something was wrong when none of them came up. It turned out that the environment was much too warm for the plastic cover to be used inside a heated greenhouse. Without the date range I might still be waiting for those seeds to grow lol!
Some seeds need light to germinate so instead of planting them under soil, lightly press them into the top of your seed starting medium. It is important to have a misting bottle to keep the tops of the soil and seeds damp each day until they germinate and you can gently water the seedlings.
Some seeds need to be buried at a certain depth. It can be helpful to use a homemade tool like chopstick that you have marked with different measurements so that you can quickly make a hole at the right depth.
This leads to an important point - some seeds need special conditions to germinate. For example, several types need to be soaked in water for a number of hours before planting, others need to be kept in the cold for a number of weeks (stratification). Other seeds require a certain steady temperature for a number of days to germinate which is why heat mats can be important. Its always worth a few minutes of research to make sure you are set up for success.
I like to give myself at least half to a full day to get my seeds planted. Even though it takes a little bit of research and time to prep/setup I am always so incredibly thankful when they are all up and growing. It saves so much money (once you have paid out the one time start up costs) and it puts you in charge of the nutritional value of the plant… You know how it was treated and the growing conditions/soil it received.
If after reading the above you are like me and would really like someone to show you how to grow your own seedlings please reach out! I’m happy to come over and start your seeds with you (Christina - 720.534.6032 / christina@modernfarmsteads.com) and hey if you would rather buy your starts that is perfectly understandable. Our Neighborhood Farmstand is open throughout the spring and you are welcome to reach out and buy plants from us while supplies last.