The seedlings have sprouted! The seedlings have sprouted!

Pardon my very cliche title, but I thought it was rather fitting. My cucumber seeds sprouted today. I was extremely excited. Unfortunately the others have not done the same.

Unwrap your presents, and plant your seeds.

This is the second post in our story on my veggie garden.
This is a little how-to on planting your seeds.
Step 1:  unwrap your starters package:

This is my lovely kitchen table, pardon the mess. First, I unwrapped the package. It includes the trays for the plants, stands for the trays, a place for the water to be held, and a mat for the water to soak up through the bottom of the tray.
Step 2: Start with an empty tray.

So this part is pretty self explanatory. Just dump all of the contents [carefully] out of the bottom tray.
Step 3: Add the stands.

This part is also pretty easy. Just make sure that there is enough room for the black watering mat on either side.

Step 4: Add the mat

This part is a little tricky, a helpful tip to get it even is to lay it flat on top of everything and then tuck the sides down under. Just make sure that eack side is down long enough to soak up some water.

Step 5: Add water

This part you will need to consult your instructions on how much water specifically to add. Also note that the water needs to be warm, not boiling hot, just warm. Also make sure to get it even throughout the pad.

Step 6: Add the trays

This part is also easy. Just put the trays that already have the dirt pellets in them on top of the wet watering mat. he dirt may start to expand fairly soon after setting the trays down on the mat.

Step 7: Plan The Plants

 



This part can be done before everything else, but you should do it before you plant the seeds. The kit comes with two pieces of paper to keep track of what you planted where. For extra help in remembering what I planted and where, I also stuck stakes into the soil once it had expanded.

Step 8: Add more water

Now that you have your soil on the watering mat, you need to add more warm water. Like before, consult your instructions to see how much water you need.

The soil will expand pretty quickly. I was quite surprised and thought I had added too much water!

After about 3 to 4 minutes, the soil should look like this. Nice and moist.

Step 9: Plant seeds

Now comes the tedious part. What I did first was take a fork and make sure that the soil was nice and loose for the seeds to put down some very tiny roots. Then I dug a little hole with the fork and spoon and put the seeds in to each part of the tray. You should plant 4-6 seeds for smaller seeds and 3-4 seeds for larger ones. Or follow the specified number of seeds on the packet. This was by far the longest step. It took me about half an hour.

Step 10: Put your seeds somewhere warm and out of the way

Many people choose the fridge as their new home for the plants. Its warm and out of the way.


This concludes this how-to on planting your seeds. Happy gardening (:

Gather your supplies

Our story begins with a random whim to have a vegetable garden. Each year I've wanted something really bad and absolutely *had* to have it. Last year it was a fish pond, of which 5 of 6 fish are still alive and well. This year it happened to be vegetables.
I begged my parents to take me to home depot and buy me some seeds and things to get started on gardening. After about a week of asking, they did.

This is what I ended up purchasing from my local Home Depot. If you can't see the picture, I bought bell peppers, sunflower seeds, chives, basil, and a package of heirloom vegetables. The packet included green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, and carrots. Heirloom veggies means you can take seeds from this years crop and use them for next year.
In addition to buying the seeds, I also bought a starters kit, which was about 20 dollars. It includes everything, and I mean everything you need to start. All you need is seeds and water. The kit includes some wooden lables, but I decided to get some plastic lables as well.
As seen in the picture, there are also two plants. These are two tomato plants, which have been doing very well in my front window. [I decided to see which produced more, the seeds or the established plants.]
It is important to know that you must plant the seeds several weeks before the last frost. Fortunately for me, down in southeast Texas, are getting a blast of cold air with the potential for snow, so I didn't plant these *too* late.