And happy spring! We hope you'r just as excited as us to rotate the garden into summer crops. Our winter served very well on leafy greens, broccoli, cauliflower, beets, and the occasional monster carrot. Still we miss our tomatoes and peppers and look forward to a change in our meal plan.
Big on variety here. Prefer to have many different plants. Any season I can have six different kinds of peppers, and 10 varieties of tomatoes. Sometimes buying seeds is the only way to get the plant that you want. Seed starter mix had been tricky for us over the years. You can buy seed starter mix for ~$8 at a hardware store, and it's corresponding specialized formula fertilizer. But in addition to costing a lot (you need more than one bag) you don't feel sustainable using it (both the plastic bag, and it uses peat moss which is not sustainable). And as usual we just like doing things ourselves.
Little disclaimer here-Online you can find way more effortful and possibly better seed starter mixes, which include uncommon household items like perlite and vermiculite. But this is what WE used this year, and frankly it worked very well.
Another disclaimer. We didn't fret too much over the ratios. The coconut coir retains the moisture, the potting soil helps with the fluff, and the compost is the plant food. I've made this without potting soil and it work OK too.
Homemade seed starter – mix thoroughly with a spatula.
Honestly I am not positive how well the foil helps. It supposedly will reflects the light and thus add more light. It's a pretty low effort add on that hasn't caused me any problems so I've kept it.
Set yourself up for success. Those seeds aren't going to last forever anyway. Place 3 or so in a pod when ultimately you're going to thin it down to one plant.
While it was still winter I kept this in the bedroom and it actually helped keep the room a little warmer.
Won't germinate/sprout – too cold, seeds buried too deep, not enough water, soil mixture too dense.
All this is fine, you're reusing a seedling pod instead of buying a new one, and it technically is a little bit cheaper.
If germinating plants from seed gives you a sense of pride and joy.