The easy way of raising seedlings is to buy transplants others have grown. One drawback to doing this is being limited to those varieties offered for sale.
Buying seeds and raising seedlings is a lot of work and takes planning. One advantage is browsing through seed catalogs and selecting varieties that sound interesting.
Take Peppers
I grew up despising green peppers. They were bitter and tasted terrible. I thought all peppers tasted like that.
A friend introduced me to the world of sweet peppers. Then I found bell peppers came in at least eight colors. When I grew them, each had its own flavor.
My friend grew Macedonian sweet peppers. I loved them too.
Most of these are not available as transplants. This year I started seeds for four Macedonian peppers and three colors of bells.
Raising Seedlings My Way
I don’t have the set ups with shelves and lights. They look nice, but I couldn’t justify the expense for something I would use only a few weeks a year.
I’ve finally settled on using Styrofoam cups with holes punched in the bottom and cat litter trays. Yes, that is correct. I use cat litter boxes.
The cups come in various sizes although I favor the eight ounce. I dump potting soil in each, label each and add two seeds.
The litter boxes are an easy to move size, waterproof and hold 19 cups. Since I move the trays out on the porch in the morning for light and back in at night, these are important qualities.
Germinating Seeds
Tomatoes and peppers need warmth. I have a shelf over the wood rack where I pile the boxes of cups. Old window glass is over the trays both to hold moisture inside and keep the trays from squashing each other.
Warm air bathes the boxes. Most seeds germinate in five to seven days. Any box with seedlings is moved out to where it gets light.
This year I started a number of seeds that like cooler temperatures. These set out on a table I usually use for painting until they germinated.
Last Steps
Since two seeds went into each cup, most cups will have two nice seedlings in them. They can’t both stay in the same cup.
Unless something is wrong with one of the seedlings, I set up another cup and move one seedling as soon as the first true leaves appear. This does require more cups and litter boxes. And time and space to move them in and out of the house.
Ultimately these seedlings will move into the garden. And raising seedlings is over for this year.
