Sunday, March 22, 2009

Seed Germination!


Who would have thought that you didn't just plant the seeds in the ground and water!! Well to make sure we were on the right track, we did a lot of research. I came across a great resource called Sarah's Pioneer Living http://www.exploreourplanet.org/ . She has a web show on YouTube called Pioneer Living. I watched all of her Urban Gardening: Gardening to Survive video clips. My husband listened while watching the March Madness Tournament:) A quick note about Sarah: she has a great deal of knowledge regarding this topic and reminds of a free loving hippie chick with an awesome green thumb, which is my way of saying check out her gardening videos. Anyway after coming up with a game plan, we sought materials that we had on hand and went to Lowe's to get the rest (kids and all).


We quickly learned that we are about seven weeks until the last frost in our area and needed to get a move on and plant the seeds INDOOR. The seeds have to germinate first before we can sow them outside. To do this, we came up with list that included these items:

-Organic potting mix

-Seeds (of course!) (Sarah would advocate going to the grocery store and purchasing the produce, but to get started TODAY we wanted seeds on hand that we didn't have to dry out)

-Trays to mix seeds and soil- something with a lid or cover to create a greenhouse effect.. Sarah does have great ideas for creating trays and using saran wrap!

-Growing light (We actually had a 48" fluorescent light and a heating light)

-Spray Bottle

-Tags to identify our seedlings

-Newspaper (We had this on hand!)

-Aluminum foil

- Compost Tea (for a fuller explanation see Sarah's video, but in short it is adding hot water to vegetable/coffee compost, blending, and straining. The water mixture is basically fertilizer for the young seedlings.)


Well we came back with more seeds than we needed of course. The girls wanted to grow flowers so we picked a few of those. Do we need to germinate those?...I have no idea but it made them happy. Check out the picks for yourself.


I will be back to explain the process in a minute!!!!


To Seeds, Soil, and Hope!


Yours Truly,
Kat


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