The snow here in the Northeast is REALLY starting to get to us here at Great Garden Supply. Not that we don’t love all the shovels and ice melt we are selling but the grey landscape, the slippery walk ways, and cleaning off our cars day after day is making us long for Spring.
Our team decided to start some seeds indoors to combat the winter doldrums. Great Garden Supply employees Jason, Sterling and Sheri chose a packet of seeds with a favorite herb, vegetable or flower. Step two is determining the set up we will use to grow our seeds:
1) Type of container – Pots or flats from our store, egg cartons, newspaper pots, yogurt cups
2) Potting mix – Organic, soil-less mix, soil from the garden
3) Plastic bags or Purchased Covers to trap warmth and humidity
4) Light source – Artificial fluorescent lights or natural light from a window
We will each blog about what seeds we chose, our set up, our daily and weekly progress, and eventually, our success at transferring our plants outdoors. For now, we wanted to share with you our first question: when do we plant what?
Seed Starting Plan
We found this helpful Seed Starting Plan on the Organic Gardening website to determine when we need to begin.
You’ll notice at the top of the chart there is a space to enter your frost-free date for your garden. This will vary depending on where you live. You can either call your local garden center or refer to the Farmer’s Almanac Frost Calculator for the approximate Last Spring Frost date.
Once you’ve determined your frost-free date you can then figure out when to start your seeds indoors.
* Write your frost-free date in the blank space at the top of the chart.
* Get a calendar and add or subtract the number of weeks in the “Safe to Set Out Time” column. This is the “Setting Out Date” when you can safely plant the crop to the garden. Write it in the last column.
* Take each date from Column 5 (“Setting Out Date”), subtract the number of weeks shown for that crop in column 3 (“Weeks from Sowing”) and record that date in column 2 (“When to Start Inside”).
Who will sprout the first seedling? Stay tuned for our first blog entries and pictures!
