Hands Back in the Soil


This evening we headed to the basement and fired up our grow lights, heat mat and cleaned off all our flats and tools from last year.

...We use seed starting mix from Linders and mix it about 2.5/1 soil to water to get the right consistency for the soil blocker to form good blocks. Chris has found the blocker to work best by pressing it onto a hard surface then tapping the plunger down slightly 3-4 times before pushing it all the way in and removing the casing from the soil.

This evening we headed to the basement and fired up our grow lights, heat mat and cleaned off all our flats and tools from last year. We set up our germination chamber in the old coal room in the basement and it is the perfect space to plant and let the seedlings emerge. We use soil blockers to start all our seeds (3/4 inch). Tonight we started 60 pansies, 60 snapdragons, 20 yellow nugget cherry tomatoes, 20 brandywine heirloom tomatoes and 20 sweet peppers. They are on the heat mat at this moment hopefully gaining the energy to sprout. We plant extra knowing that not all will sprout or survive transplanting and perhaps if we do get good germination we will have enough to give away as gifts.

We use seed starting mix from Linders and mix it about 2.5/1 soil to water to get the right consistency for the soil blocker to form good blocks. Chris has found the blocker to work best by pressing it onto a hard surface then tapping the plunger down slightly 3-4 times before pushing it all the way in and removing the casing from the soil. He made the best blocks tonight as I put the seeds into each block. We have the heat mat set at 78 degrees and the flats are covered with plastic tops to keep the moisture in the blocks. We have also covered those plastic tops with some foam to keep heat in and light out.

Posted: Sun - March 21, 2004 at 10:48 PM        

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