Fellow gardeners take heart that spring will come and the snow will melt! In the meantime, starting seeds indoors helps keep the winter blues away.
Here are 5 simple steps to successful start your plants indoors:
Choose high quality seed from a reputable seed company. As an organic grower, you understand the importance of your food choices. By choosing seed companies who have a reputation for sustainability, you have a valuable voice in shaping how seeds are grown in the future. For the criteria I used to vet seed companies, click here.
Pick crops to start indoors that transplant well like tomatoes, peppers, basil, marigolds, squash, melons and cucumbers. Read your seed catalogs or the back of seed packets to see if that type of plant is good started indoors. Some crops like spinach an corn don’t like being transplanted and need to be direct seeded.
Use quality organic seed starting mix. Either choose an organic mix from a reputable company or make your own with a peat substitute like coco fiber, mixed with organic vermiculite and perlite. If you are buying a product, look for it to have mycorrhizal fungus in it to boost root production. If you are making your own mix, add it in.
Give your seedlings lots of light and warmth. You can set up a simple home seedling rack with 3’ shop lights over a shelf that can hold 5 seedling trays. Building it yourself will save you money.
Read my post on building your own seed starting rack, here.
Start your seedlings at the right time. Seed catalogs and packets will tell you when to start your seedlings. For example, tomatoes can be started 6-8 weeks before your last frost date. Cucumbers, melons and squash are generally started 2 – 4 weeks before they will be planted out. Remember to add in time for hardening off. Read my post on hardening-off here.