Sowing the First Seeds of the Season

SOWING THE FIRST SEEDS OF THE SEASON

It's always exciting for me to sow seeds that, with patience, will grow into adult plants and make a customer's garden beautiful.  It just amazes me that all the genetic material it takes to produce these plants is stored in these tiny seeds.  But I'm not here to give you a lesson in biology, suffice it to say that life in all forms is amazing.

With that being said I usually order my seeds for the following season shortly after Christmas.  I usually order seeds from several companies but the ones I like are Vis Seed (but don't order your seeds off their website.  It's not up to date!) , Harris Seed, Twilley Seed, HPS Seed, and Stokes Seeds.  Vis has by far the most reasonable prices but heed my warning about their website.  However at the time of this writing my new seeds have not arrived yet.  So I look at last years leftover seeds for anything I can sow to pass the time.

Look at that!  Coreopsis and Penstemon seeds!  These are perennial plants and sowing them this early in the season will give them the head start they need.  It's much too early to sow any annuals yet, but before you know it I'll have the johnny jump-up and pansy seeds out.  But how many seeds are left over?  Unfortunately not many.  Certainly not enough seeds to sow them in a 406 cell seed tray I would typically use.  So I decided to sow them in 50 cell trays that our mums and other plugs come in.

I don't even bother using my germination mix (soil).  I just fill the trays up with our normal everyday potting soil.  Oh wait I'm forgetting something.  Seeds like additional heat in order to germinate.  I need to turn on the heat table!

This is the hot water heater that heats the heat table.  That's using the word "heat" way too many times in a sentence.  Oh well. 

The pilot is still lit from last spring when I turned it off.  Bonus!  No need to light this baby.  Now I just have to turn it up to hot, turn the control unit up to 70 or so, and turn on the valves for the pipes that run under and through the heat table.  

That was easy.  After sweeping out the leaves and debris that is always collecting under the heat table I am ready to sow my seeds!

I'll start with the Penstemon.  Wow these are really tiny seeds.  I would normally use my seeding machine that uses a vacuum to hold the seeds in place, but since I'm not using the 406 tray it would be pretty pointless.  I just need to pick up these tiny seeds with my fingers and try to drop them one at a time into the soil.

First I make a slight indentation in each cell with the butt end of a dibble.  I'll drop the seeds one at a time into these cells.  I ended up filling about 45 out of the 50 cells with Penstemon seeds.

These seeds need darkness to germinate so I'll cover them with a thin layer of fine vermiculite.

 All done!  I put the tray on the heat table and staple a plant tag to the tray so I remember what is growing here.  By the way this particular Penstemon is Tubular Bells Wine Red/White Throat.  It is actually a tender perennial in my neck of the woods but maybe in your zone it is a bit hardier.  These plants have sold well for me at market but I decided to cut back this year so I didn't order any new Penstemon seeds.  So these are it.  I hope that most of them germinate.  Let's do the Coreopsis now.

Wow I'd be lucky if I had about 20 of these Coreopsis Presto seeds.  That's okay because I have 100 more on order.  Last year I grew too many and ended up throwing them away so again I am trying to cut back.  There is only so much you can do each season.

Following the same procedure I used for the Penstemon seeds I am able to complete sowing the Coreopsis seeds.  I ended up sowing about 30 of them.  Not bad.  Now I lightly water them and that's it.  It might take up to a couple weeks for them to germinate.  I just have to water them everyday and hope for the best.

I'm really looking forward to receiving my new seeds and sowing more!