It's planting time for us!

Its zone 7 here and guided by a handy schedule from a local seed breeder we got organized on what to start early in the greenhouse. Coming from zone 6 where the ground was still covered with snow we find ourselves stepping into gear!

Actually we are slightly behind earliest suggested planting schedule, but not too far behind, considering daylight length last month is still relatively short - so feeling good about the timing.

We tamped down the soil in the wooden flats using a short block of wood so that it was a flat and even surface to work with.

We got out the seeds we had organized for planting into our wooden flats.

We laid the seeds out in groups on flats and started moving them around until we were happy with what was going to live in each flat.

We pretty much took two approaches to seeding the flats:

1. Rows

Like garden rows but miniaturized, the little rows allowed us to seed multiple varieties or species in one flat. We mostly used this approach for larger seeds where it is easier to control placement.

We're trying to be considerate to our future selves and not sow too many tomato seeds in each row because we know that if we end up with more plants than we're realistically willing to pot up in the next month or so it might be emotionally difficult to thin out the tomato seedlings.

But regardless of how we feel about anything at that point, we will have options:

• We can thin out the tomatoes in one flat as they grow larger and let them grow to transplant height.
• Or we can keep more of them, pot them up into more flats or 4" pots and let them spread them out so they have room to get larger.

We took a similar approach with eggplants and peppers. And we have one heating mat which we put under the flat of peppers for now.

2. Broadcast

For some of the smaller seeds like onions we broadcast them by pinching and sprinkling from above to the density we want to achieve.

Broadcast is helpful because it is easier to get uniform spacing with small seeds this way. And it's also helpful for something we want a lot of, like onions.

You could broadcast a whole flat with one type of seed but for the amount we wanted to end up with we ended up sectioning out a flat into 3rds or 4ths and broadcasting one type of seed in each area.

In some cases we did sprinkle smaller seeds into a row when we wanted only a few and wanted to make most of the flat. We could have used 6 packs alternatively but have enough flats that we didn't need to.

Covering the Seeds

After sowing and labeling we covered the seeds. A general rule of thumb is to cover 2-3 times the seed's width. That's not very much soil for most of what we seeded.

For the bigger seeds in rows we just pinched the sides of each row together over the seeds and then tamped it down.

For the smaller seeds whether broadcast or in rows @idyllwild showed me how to sift some soil over the top of the seeds in a colander to get a fine dusting to just the right thinness of layer to cover the seeds. This is an incredibly brilliant pro technique!

And then we watered them all in so that the soil is nice and saturated. It didn't take much because the soil was already moist to begin with.

A mist or light sprinkling is ideal so that the smaller water droplets don't disturb the soil. And then we will check daily and rewet the top of the flats as needed so that they don't dry out too much.

Labeling

The name of the veggie was labeled on the stakes where the seeds were sowed. In our notebook we took down additional notes of date of seeding, the veggie type & variety, where the seed came from and what year the seed was harvested so that we can refer back later in one place for basic info that might matter later.

We sowed 5 flats of veggies and herbs for now:

1. Basil, Thai Basil, Eggplant
2. Ground Cherries, Tomatillos, Tomatoes
3. Leeks, Radish, Pak Choi, Onions
4. Peppers - Sweet & Hot
5. Yarrow, Chamomile, Hopi Tobacco, Elecampane

@idyllwild sowed several flats of flowers and you'll have to ask her about those ;)

Next up is seeding the garden with early / cool weather crops!

Happy gardening!