February Seed Starting
February Seed Starting
Seed sowing finally making spring feel hopeful! I do not know about all of you but this has been the coldest and longest winter in what feels like forever! I couldn’t wait to get a jump on sowing seeds for the spring and summer! Let me show you my set up from the beginning!
Grow Lights and Shelving
To begin, I have these all growing under LED grow lights on a 4 tier shelf as you can see below. I picked this shelf up for about 38 dollars and it has shelves 3 feet wide by 2 feet in depth and the entire unit is 56 inches tall. I made a light hanging foundation on the top shelf with pvc piping so I could hang lights from the daisy chains and also so I had 4 usable shelves.
The lights I used on the top shelves of one shelf and all on the second shelf are from LOWES and are LED 3000K each. The bottom two shelves are lights I purchased off amazon that are LED and have red, blue and white light. All the lights in my set up are linkable and are on timers so I don’t have to get up at 5 am to turn them on! The lights are also on daisy chains to make moving them higher or lower on the seedlings very simple.
Containers and Soil
All the containers I used are from Amazon. They are 72 cell plastic cells in a black plastic tray without holes. The plastic dome covers are from Agway. The seedling mix I used is Black Gold Seedling Mix (green bag).
Sowing on 02/15/21
I sowed 4 trays on the 15th! I am in zone 7 so what I sowed is based on a last frost date of May 1st. All the soil was moistened first. Then seeds were sown and a spray bottle was used to mist the top. All watering is done from the bottom to prevent fungus gnats.
Tray 1 includes:
36 pepper cells
24 eggplant cells
12 tomato cells
Tray 2 includes:
12 broccoli cells
9 brussels cells
9 cauliflower cells
12 celery cells
12 kale cells
18 escarole cells
Tray 3 includes:
48 tomato cells
24 broccoli rabe cells
Tray 4 includes:
32 snapdragon cells
12 verbascum cells
28 rudbeckia cells
Sowing on 02/17/21
I sowed 3 more trays on the 17th!
Tray 5 includes:
24 basil cells
32 scallion cells
16 echinacea cells
Tray 6 includes:
18 spinach cells (9 planted on 02/17 the rest will be 03/01)
12 lavender cells
12 lemon balm cells
12 mint cells
12 rosemary cells
6 sage cells
Tray 7 includes:
32 asclepias cells
8 echinacea cells
32 hyssop cells
02/17/20: Some germination
Broccoli Rabe germinated!
02/19/21: More germination!
What an exciting morning!
Tomatoes germinated: brandywine, amish paste, mortgage lifter, atlas, yellow pear
Escarole, cauliflower, kale, broccoli, brussels started germinating!
02/22/22: Updates on growth and germination
Some of the flowers (rudbeckia and snapdragon) started germinating! All three varieties of eggplant germinated (black beauty much slower than the white and long varieties). Some spinach germinated this morning! The tomatoes, broccoli, kale, brussels, cauliflower and escarole are growing very fast and healthy. The broccoli rabe is ready to pot up as I just thinned this morning and the roots are starting to come through the bottom.
03/09/21: Germination update
Many seedlings are growing rapidly! Broccoli rabe and tomatoes have been potted up. Verbascum and rudbeckia were the two seeds that didn’t germinate as I planned but I am going to sow some more seed to see if it was due to over/under watering or bad seed. Here are the updated photos!
03/15/21: Potting up more seedlings
Potted up cauliflower, kale, broccoli, brussels, escarole and spinach! Broccoli rabe has been growing awesome since being potted up!
