Seeds

Seeds. Lots and lots and lots of seeds! I swore up and down that I was not going to start seeds this year. First, I don’t have the space nor the proper equipment. We live in a guide house that we share with lots of people. I have to move our kitchen stuff to the commercial kitchen so the guides can have the house kitchen. I think I’ve mentioned all this before, either here or over on social media. The place where I have my houseplants right now is in someone’s bedroom! But then there was a seed swap over on instagram. And that got the better of me! I didn’t have any seeds to swap so I thought for sure that the hostess wouldn’t let me enter. But nope. She said there were plenty of seeds! So I joined! I sent some goodies to use on and in the packaging because I felt bad not contributing anything.

So the seeds came. And I got a ton of seeds in my package! I mean a ton. And a little known fact about me is that I have only had one garden before. And I just planted stuff with little regard to what I was doing. Because um, I don’t really know what I’m doing! So this time I am making sure I do my research first. And planning the garden as best I can.

So the seeds. I opened the package and looked inside at all those goodies! And then I let them sit for a while because it’s so overwhelming. But then I thought I should get busy because spring might eventually get here. So I researched each and every seed, how to plant them, when and how to start them, and how to harvest them. I have a spiral bound notebook that I made notes in. And then I started all the seeds that needed to be started inside. I think this process took me about 4 or so days, from research to seed starting. I saw on instagram where homesteaders were using red solo cups for starting seeds. This eliminates the need to repot them once they’ve outgrown the smaller pots.

I did run into a few issues along the way, mostly from my own neglect of not double checking my notes! I purchased a few sweet pea seeds back in the winter. I don’t know anything about flowers either so when I did my research it said to soak the seeds for 24 hours before planting. Guess who didn’t do that? Yep. So I had to sift through all those cups of sweet pea seeds until I found as many as I could. I still ended up with a decent amount of seeds though. I also had to buy a few peat pots for the pumpkin seeds.

I’ve never had much success with starting tomato seeds and I ended up with a couple of packs of tomatillo seeds and some other tomato seeds. We’ll see how it goes. I did order some seedlings from a local farm so I decided that would be my ‘serious’ garden and all these seeds would be my fun, experimental garden.

While out and about I found that cute tin for my seeds. I got it at the Target Dollar Spot for $5. It’s labeled as a seed tin and comes with the appropriate inserts. I just need to put the seeds in the tin rather than in my homestead binder. And then figure out what to do with all those cups of seeds in the next couple of weeks! I haven’t even started the garden yet! But I will once the weather actually cooperates.

I like that the chickens wanted to help me with starting the seeds. I suspect they just wanted to eat the seeds though.

I’m happy that I will have a garden this year. I can make all kinds of fun, fresh food and have some to give away plus put up for the winter. I like being organized too so I’m glad I got all that research done and found a cute way to organize my seeds.