Indoor Seed-starting

Sunday, May 31, 2020

Back in early April, as a means to get through my social distancing birthday, I put together an indoor seed-starting set-up to get a headstart on the garden. It also makes getting through winter a bit better, as you get to watch the seedlings grow super fast!

The set-up is just an LED shop light, a heat mat, a small fan, and some seed-growing trays with lids. Nothin fancy, nothing expensive. Yet effective.


I started with Magnolia tendril snap peas, cascadia snap peas, jewel-toned nasturtium, Red giant mustard, garlic chives (which I can never seem to get to grow), Bright lights rainbow chard, Purple Cherokee tomatoes, long purple eggplant, and sweet basil.


One week after planting

Two weeks after planting

2.5 weeks after planting
This planting was later followed up by the summer & winter squashes: acorn squash (which was slow to grab life), hubbard squash, butternut squash, grey zucchini, and Benning's tint patty pan squash. These are some real chonks:




I now store my seeds in a couple air-tight jars in the fridge, in the hopes that the seeds themselves will last longer. I'm working on seed saving, but it's some times nice to have a little stockpile so one doesn't have to worry too much about

I also made my last seed purchase in mid-March, shortly before the NYTimes' article on 'Panic-buying comes for the seeds', so I was quite well stocked before everyone went out of stock.