It's March seventeenth! Aside from wishing you all a very Happy St. Patrick's Day, this day is also a very special day for me every year, it's the day I start my tomato and pepper seeds!
St Pat's day is approximately 8-10 weeks before my last frost on average. Well, most of the time, and since I have a greenhouse and all sorts of season extension tricks up my homesteading sleeve, let's just say it's the day I start stuff.
Because as most seasoned gardeners and homesteaders know, it's not a good thing to start plants too soon, they get all leggy and rootbound if they stay in the wrong sized containers too long. And honestly my friends, I have so much work to do all the time, that I don't want to pot on plants three hundred times before I plant them into the ground.
So, I have found, after much practice and experimentation, that March 17th is the day to sprout my seeds.
This is how I do it:
Tomatoes and pepper seeds need a high temperature to germinate. I don't like to waste energy or spend lots of money on paying for the energy to heat the medium up to start seeds in a container, so years ago I started sprouting them.
That's right, I get out some paper towels, get them damp, fold them up, add seeds, and cover them with labeled plastic wrap. I then set the to be sprouted seeds in a dark place that is always warm, on top of my refrigerator.
Seven to ten days later I have tomato and pepper sprouts. I have been doing my tomatoes and peppers this way, without fail, for a decade and a half. It really makes life (at least the pepper and tomato plant starting part of it) much more simple.
To start with, I get out a couple pie plates. One for the tomato sprouts and one for the peppers.
Next, I wad up a few paper towels, get them damp (not soaking) with warm water and make a base of dampness as I like to call it. You do not want your sprouting seeds to dry out!!
Making sure I have a plan before I start is an important step too. Before I even get the pie plates out I have my seeds on the counter, along with my garden notebook, plastic wrap, a sharpie, and various members of pet management in attendance (Such micromanagers!).
Since I kept good records last year, this year I had quite a bit of my own tomato seed to plant, as I actually properly followed through and saved seed from my best heirloom plants.
This year I am cutting back a bit too. Usually I start well over a hundred plants and give a bunch to friends and family too. Last year I grew eighty tomato plants in my garden, but with all the chaos happening with our family this year, I am only planting sixteen to twenty plants in my garden. That will be lovely and manageable I think.
After filling all of my little damp paper towel squares with tomato seeds and covering that pie plate with it's plastic wrap label, I set the damp little pie plate seed starting house up on top of my fridge in the dark spot where the cupboard above the fridge is. The little sprouties love it there.
As far as care goes, I check the sprouting seeds every other day to make sure the paper towels stay damp. You do not want them wet, just moist, so if they start feeling a bit dry, I add a bit of lukewarm water.
And hopefully, in a bit over a week or so, I will be plucking little sprouts from the paper towels and transplanting my little plants for the next phase of growth. I'm so happy Spring is here!
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's seems to be sprouted from her hands at times iPhone. The text divider image was made in Canva.
