All right — the growing season begins! I started my seeds today that I’m going to grow in the basement until I set the plants out in the garden in May. Here’s the list of what I started today:
- California poppy ‘Summer Sorbet’ – seeds from Thompson & Morgan
- Cosmos bipinnatus ‘Double Click’ – seeds from Thompson & Morgan
- Salvia nemorosa ‘East Friesland’ – seeds from my garden – I grew these from Wal-Mart seeds last year
- Salvia transylvanica – seeds from my garden – I grew these from T&M seeds last year
- White coneflower (Echinacea, unknown variety) – seeds from my garden – I originally gathered the seeds from my mother-in-law’s plant
- Coreopsis grandiflora ‘Mayfield Giant’ – seeds from my garden – I originally got these from a wildflower mix from Granite Seed (a local company in Lehi)
To start seeds, I use the paper towel method — it makes for very rapid germination in some plants. I think it works very well and is easier to control than sowing them in little pots or flats right from the start. I’ll post some photos here about it. Click any of these photos for a larger view:
Moisten two paper towels, one stacked on the other. Squeeze out excess water (you don’t want it dripping). Place seeds on it. If you gathered your own seeds, try to not allow chaff or old flower parts to be on the paper towel, because they’ll cause mold or mildew.
Fold the paper towels over, so the seeds are sandwiched between the layers. If the seeds are a kind that need light for germination, only allow one layer of paper towel to be folded over them.
Carefully put the folded paper towel in a ziploc bag, seal it up and write the kind of seeds on the bag with a marker.
For those seeds needing warmth to germinate, I put them on top of an electric heating pad. Then I put them under fluorescent lights that are perhaps four inches above the seed bags. For those seeds that don’t need as much warmth, I put them under the lights but not on the heating pad. Some seeds require darkness for germination. I have tried a couple tactics for that — put the ziploc bag inside a thick brown paper grocery bag laid flat on its side. Or, put them in an old desk drawer that is right in this little planting “room” in my basement. If they need warmth, they need to be in the paper bag and on the heating pad, but I don’t think any of the ones I’ve tried needed the warmth.
After all this, I check on the seeds every day. If the paper towel starts to get dry, I spray a little water inside the ziploc bag. The seeds will germinate much more quickly this way than in compost or soil. Once they start to get a little tail-looking root coming out of the seed, I put them in little pots or cell packs in a tray with a clear cover, with the lights just immediately over the clear covers. The lights need to be within two inches of the little growing plants, or they will get scrawny “etiolated” stalks from reaching toward the light. They usually then fall over and die. I’ll post more photos later when the seedlings get transferred to the cells.
Also, I will upload a file that has germination information on a whole bunch of seed varieties. It used was originally published by Thompson and Morgan, and now several people have posted it on their websites because T&M doesn’t have it anymore.