When do you start your seeds inside? This isn’t pretty but it’s going to get messed up anyway. If you look on the back of a seed packet it will tell you based on your region when to start vegetable seeds inside. I always start early because in the last 4 years I have had to buy from different seed companies just to see what will grow! I haven’t had much luck. I used to, but not recently. Is anyone else having a hard time growing seeds?? Of course my neighbor had an easy time. I cannot grow anything outside here because it will get destroyed by vandalism. I am not talking about that issue, I seriously cannot get seeds to grow for me in the last 4 years, inside! So I bought them already grown from Lowe’s, but that means I have failed! What company has seeds that will grow?? They start to grow, right? Then over and over they just stop growing or they die as small seedlings! I am still going to try…
Today is almost December so I started some seeds today. It’s unofficial! So there is room to fail…
I bought some almost dead flowers that they sell at the hardware store and if you get a whole bunch they come in these trays! So I have used them many times to grow seeds. I cut a trash bag open just on one side and put these in. The first is from all of those plants that I bought and then I saved all of it. I planted several packages of peppers (9) and tomatoes (4).
This way is a little faster than planting 3 seeds per styrofoam cup which I have done before.
So I have planted some seeds and it started smelling like mold and it was sort of forming. I read that it is normal for that to happen. This has always happened when I cover the seeds but I think more so with a black trash bag. I have done the black trash bag outside if I was growing grass or starting a larger garden outside but since it was outside it didn’t bother me as much. Anyway some people said to add hydrogen peroxide to the water. I read 4-1 ratio or a 10-1 ratio, so I guess it’s whatever a person wants. It really has helped! and then I also sprayed the micro greens with that.
These did grow but many didn’t. I didn’t want them to get slimy in hopes of more of the seeds sprouting! So I am going to freeze them in a plastic bag for smoothies. I have eaten them as lettuce on a burrito and that is really good too. The coffee filters worked really well. I have another post where I used the coffee filters but the seeds molded and I guess somehow the seeds themselves had gotten ruined. I am going to try another brand to see if more of the seeds will sprout. This just may be me so it may not be the brand of seeds that didn’t work.
Taking these off of the coffee filters is so much easier than the papers that usually come with these micro green kits! I think I am going to throw in some flower seeds with the micro green seeds that didn’t grow just to see what happens. I will do that with one and then I will throw in some vegetable seeds in the other one. How fun!
So I added wildflower seeds to the left
And some pepper seeds to the right
Anywayz, do you remember public school, 5th grade? They taught us about Dr. Mendel and his pea plants? Dominant and recessive traits?? The boxes that we had to study and fill out with all of the capital and lower case letters in those boxes to tell us what qualities or traits were going to show up in those pea plants, those would be hybrid plants. Then there are the heirloom plants. They have never been modified genetically they are heirloom plants. Somehow plants can be cloned, or grown to be disease resistant, those are genetically modified. some people do not like genetically modified plants/organisms.
I already sprayed it with the hydrogen peroxide solution. So hopefully they will grow
These have started to sprout!
I already had these grow lights so I decided to throw them on the shelf. The small seedlings seemed fine without those so it a ‘just in case it could help’ I have grown seedlings under my loft bed before with just a rope light intertwined through them. I left it on all day and night. I did not have any heat on them except what the room was heated to. They were fine and grew in pots. My grandmother started her seeds in styrofoam cups of dirt each year. She would have them in each of her window sills and on a table on the back porch. She never had grow lights or heating pads under each section and she had a garden every year. I don’t like things to be too difficult because then I will not even attempt to do them…sometimes. But then I regret that decision!
I decided to chop off the tops of the tomato plant because that was the only healthy part. I have learned that the whole stem of the tomato plants contain hairs that can possibly turn into roots so I put those stalks into some water with cell food. Cell food doesn’t say that it’s for plants so it isn’t officially for that but I have saved almost dead plants from Walmart that were sent to me through the mail with water and cell food. Roses did well with that.
Here are the tomato seedlings now! Can I call them seedlings? Nope. I have tried using top soil last year and now and the same thing has happened. Also I have used some of the same brand of seeds as well. I have been successful before with organic seeds but only if the soil was organic, a soil that I made in Colorado. On Craigslist they would sell soil from the brewery in Denver. I added peat moss and something else, that I don’t remember. I had a very nice tomato garden. I do not have access to that and it was inexpensive. I just bought some organic soil, and I am sad about that because I want it to be different. For this soil I had saved some soil from some of the almost dead plants that Lowe’s sells for cheap. Maybe that is not a good idea!! Because these seedlings are dropping like flies. I want gardening to be inexpensive because that is the point of it. That way I don’t have to be dependent on the grocery store. I will keep you posted. The pepper plants are coming up now…but will happen to those??
Starting new…
I bought these.
I forgot to add holes to the bottom of these cups. I normally use styrofoam! But I wanted really small ones!
I used a couple of soup flats since they are free. In the past I have used heating pads to get my seeds to germinate but I don’t have those now so I put them in my room, which is warm. I planted flowers in the top flat. The flower seeds are not organic. The vegetable seeds are organic. I planted pepper seeds and tomato seeds. I am following the rules of these packages of seeds. Sort of. I packed in the seeds into each one of those cups. I didn’t make a hill for each seeds and then I didn’t measure between each seed. Even if I had time, I just won’t!
I mis-spoke! The vegetable seeds are not organic, they are just non-gmo. I thought they were organic, I guess because of the name. I think that I searched for organic seeds at Walmart and these came up, so I assumed. Anyway, the seeds are not modified or genetically engineered, that is ‘non-gmo’. But when the farmer grew these they were allowed to use whatever pesticides/ fertilizers that they wanted to use to grow them. It would be better to be organic, IMO, because then they have to use safer pesticides/fertilizers that are ok’d by the USDA. United States department of agriculture. I wish that I had paid more attention to what the actual package said!
Do you remember public school about 5th grade? We learned about Dr. Mendel or was it Dr. Mendelson? He had studied about pea pods or pea plants and what traits that they would show as they grew. Some traits were dominant and some were recessive. We had to fill out the genetics boxes with the capital and lowercase letters. Capital letters represented the dominant traits and the lower case letters represented the recessive traits for the plants. They would take plants that had the dominant traits they wanted and graft them together to get new plants with those dominant traits. Those are called the hybrid plants. Then the heirloom plants have never been modified. I have heard over the years that plants can be cloned as well and that would be considered gmo or a genetically modified organism and also a hybrid.
Plants=organisms
There are different definitions of the word organism, but overall it’s a living thing.
Excited! So the flower seeds were not organic or Non-GMO. The dirt was really expensive IMO but it helped 100%. I know that many people think that it’s just common sense to use the right dirt but I had wanted it to be dirt cheap!
So for these non-gmo seeds I have 3 soup flats and these are the only ones that have sprouted by this time. It’s been a couple of weeks. They are heirloom seeds. Is that different? The internet says that it’s only 5-7 days. I just added dirt to these last night and they survived so I hope that they will keep growing. It’s still worth the money if they mature. Getting a large tomato plant from the hardware store is around $20 here and the medium size plants are 12$ or something. None of those survived and they didn’t produce any tomatoes for me. I bought several! So I planted tomatoes and peppers but I did not label them because I didn’t want to waste my time labeling if they were not going to grow! I did use some heating pads under each group. I know there are special heating mats for that but I used the normal heating pads.
I am starting these. These are organic. I would like to see if these easily grow. It’s just a random experiment.
I also started these in a different flat
I also planted jalapeños of this brand.
I did not label the flats as organic or non-organic. Is that called conventional? So my experiment is sort of ruined, but not totally. Anyway two have already sprouted!
At least they are in different flats! The flowers that I had planted sprouted nicely and they were not organic but the dirt that I used is the Fox Farm brand. It really did make a difference. So I will keep going. BTW the flowers died!
20 of the cups are the non-gmo but I had two soup flats of those, the others didn’t grow at all.
11 of these are organic and conventional. I had 1 flat of each. For the organic I mostly had tomatoes and conventional were mostly peppers. I think I will have to wait a little longer because the second leaves are just starting to sprout and then I can see if they are peppers or tomatoes.
I will have to count the plants but there are 21 cups of just the non-gmo. And 10 of the organic and conventional. The organic and conventional came up sooner but it kind of seems like a tie.
I am so excited that these are still alive and growing! It is February 12th.
February 21st
Finally seeing some real growth!
March 12th
It is March 12th today. They are growing so slowly in my opinion but they are so nice! I have had to repot all of them into bigger pots. I did add some lavender for a while to the water and that really helped them to not turn yellow. I am not sure how many of these will actually mature.
March 28th
I just repotted all of these. They are growing! But in comparison to the last pictures they really look the same, at least they are alive! I started some organic peppers in the same dirt and they are growing! I know that some of you just grow seeds and it’s old hat for you but it really hasn’t worked for me for a while. I know that tomato plants grow large but I wanted to keep them inside in pots. I have grow lights so I might try. I saw a YouTube video of a guy who had a tomato plant in his house all year long and it hadn’t died for 8 years! I am going to try and have them as house plants. why not? I don’t want weed killer to drift over onto them if I put them outside. At the rate they are growing it might take two years for them to grow any fruit.
April 4th
I remember growing tomatoes from seed around 15 years ago and the they really were more substantial. The plants that I have growing now are very nice and beautiful but the leaves seem thinner. I also grew jalapeños from seed as well. More grew from less seeds and they were better as well. These are not really growing as fast and the stems seem smaller and less girthy.
April 12th
I cut the tops off of these. I left at least two outgoing stems on the original plants and the tops went into some water with a small amount of dirt for nutrients. I hope they will grow some roots. All of the little hairs on the stems are capable of turning into stronger roots, right? I am also hoping that the stems of the original plants will grow thicker and the leaves might become bushier. I only did this to the tomato plants, they had become extremely tall.
April 21st
I have a few more but I wanted to show you how thin these stalks are. After I cut them, that seemed to help. I put them outside for about 20 min a couple of days ago to enjoy the sunshine but that seemed to be detrimental. They started wilting and now they are not well. They really are too thin and wispy and too small IMO for how long they have been growing. They might get better but….
They never did. So I planted seeds outside and it’s turned out much better. For me planting seeds inside has been hit or miss over the years.
Leave a Reply