Starting Plants From Seed - Step One

What you see pictured here are the results of my my seed orders when I've "held back". Even surprised myself when I laid them out on the table for their Kodak moment.

So, what's next? Well, what I do is I prepare the plant tags. Using a permanent marker and tags that I pick up at any nursery, I record 4 pieces of information. On one side, I put the botanical name and the variety; on the other, I note the start date and name of the supplier.

The start date is based on the last frost date. In my area, I'm going to use May 17th. Then, I make up a schedule, counting backwards from that date, by week. On reverse side of each seed package there are instructions for planting. For example, Plectranthus 'Emerald Lace', must be started 6-8 weeks before the last frost. Using my handy-dandy schedule, I find that I should start these seeds on the 29th of March.

I then tape the tag to the seed package and file them in a box according to start date. Each week I'll grab those that must be started. While it may take me a bit of time to get my tags organized, ultimately this bit of work at the beginning of the season makes starting plants from seed - so much easier!