Start Seeds Indoors for Spring Gardens

Welcome to Spring 2018! Believe it or not considering it was snowing on the first day of Spring. It is only a matter of time before we can get into the yard and get into the garden. Before you can do that, you need to plant seeds and grow some seedlings! In this post and episode of the Small Scale Life Podcast, I am going to discuss setting up an indoor gardening area and starting seeds indoors for spring gardens.

Have you planted seeds yet? I did on St. Patrick’s Day, and I have some great news to share with you about that!

Introduction – How to Start Seeds Indoors for Spring Gardens

If you have been following along over the past few weeks, we have been going through the general process for preparing for the 2018 Gardening Season. We have done the following steps so far:

• Developed a garden plan – Developed a list of plants we want to grow)
• Ordered your seeds – Selected a reputable seed vendor and purchased seeds for our garden.

While there are many seed vendors out there, I focused on four big vendors that members of the Small Scale Life Facebook Group and MN-WI Regenerative Agriculture Group use most often.
Finally! It is the moment of truth! It is time to stop thinking and start doing! I grabbed my seeds and some soil and got ready to get down to business....

Not so fast!

Before I could start planting seeds, I had to some additional planning and prep work.

Setting up the Indoor Growing Area

Part of my planning and preparation work was to select an area in the house to grow seedlings. In our previous house in St. Louis Park, I grew seedlings on two shelves in a cold and dark basement. I discussed how I started seeds and some lessons learned after have some failures over the past few years in the following articles (on smallscalelife.com):

• How to Garden Indoores
• 8 Steps to Starting Plants Indoors
• Lessons Learned from Growing Indoors
• Four Lessons Learned from Starting Seeds

For the 2018 Gardening Season, I had to find a new space to plant seeds and grow seedlings. While I knew I would be regulated to the basement, it was a much different situation in this house in Minneapolis. The basement is not as warm as the upper level, but it isn’t as brutally cold and dark as the St. Louis Park house. I attribute that to the fact that half of the basement is insulated and finished, and that does help retain the heat! Having more heat retained in the basement should help with germination, and I am hoping that having a warmer basement reduces the potential for damping off disease!

I had to select my indoor growing area, and it really came down to three choices: the built-in near the television, the bar area or the workbench near the furnace. I would not be able to use a shelf in this house simply because we have gear and things on all of our shelves. We just do not have the extra shelf space!

The biggest concern I had as I was evaluating each location was the availability of power (for grow lights, heating pads and a timer) and the impact on other basement users (like my son and wife Julie). Each spot had power, so really it came down to finding a spot that would be out of the way and not bother anyone.

The best spot was the workbench near the furnace. While losing the workbench for potential projects is not ideal, it is important to remember that I would only need part of the workbench until mid-May. What could possibly go wrong? Besides, if we needed to use the workbench, everything can be moved quickly. Of course, that might mean that the trays go on top of the freezer, but I would only use it temporarily (I promise, Jules).

The workbench is 27 inches wide, and that easily beats the narrow 18-1/2 inches on the St. Louis Park shelves. In case you are wondering: yes, in this case, size does matter! The extra width easily accommodates both seed trays in a side-by-side configuration on the workbench. On the shelves, I had to use scrap pieces of plywood to get over the lip of the shelf to get the trays to sit side-by-side. This is much, much better!

Equipment Needed

Part of getting your equipment might include buying soil and seeds - March 2018
With seeds in my hand and a growing area selected, it was time to get my “equipment” out of storage in order to start seeds indoors. My equipment consistec of the following:

• Seed trays
• 9x9 plug flats (or cells, as I like to call them)
• 5 gallon bucket or kitty litter bin (to hold the soil)
• Pro-Mix soil
• Heating pads
• Grow lights
• Timer
• Surge Protector
• Jumbo popsicle sticks or other labels for your seeds

Most of these materials had been in storage for the winter. I had to rummage around the garage to find what I needed, and then I realized that I had thrown away my 9x9 plug flats last seas...