Searching for a better seedling growing method

Last year I went on a search for a better plant growing system.

Over the years I have used a variety of planters and peat products to start my seedlings. I used recycled yogurt tubs, those small six pack planters, then I used the small 2 1/2" square planters, since most plants outgrew them to fast and I constantly had to replant the seedlings I went to the larger and deeper planters. These at least I did not have to re-pot as quick the drawback to all these little planters, to use them you have to wash them and sterilize in bleach water. Since I have to do it in my kitchen-sink and I don't like to clean dirty pots in the kitchen-sink I later might want to wash my lettuce in and it is quite a bit of work many times I just would use the dirty pots and sometimes my plants would damp off. Not sure if it was the dirty pots fault or just by chance but dirty pots can carry pathogens from last years crop.

Then I used the 'APS' (Accelerated Propagation System) Styrofoam seedling trays from the Gardener Supply company, they work with capillary mats. These worked nicely for growing plants since the ground is always nicely moist, just perfect for little seeds to sprout and grow and you did not have to water so often. Since they come in different sizes I was able to grow most of the plants without having to re- pot them, at least not as often. Their drawback was the cleaning part. Since they are Styrofoam trying to clean the dirt off them was somewhat a struggle. Dirt likes to stick to Styrofoam, a lot. And trying to clean them without breaking them, was almost impossible. Styrofoam in most regions of the US is not recycled and in the end I decided if I have to throw them away after a couple of seasons and buy new they do not fit into my picture of sustainability and not wasting resources.

Last year I came across the 'Compact Plant Trainer System' made in Sweden by 'Agralan' in the Jung Seed catalog. They looked real sturdy and you can wash the trays in the dishwasher. Reusable without breaking easily and being able to not have to hand wash sounded really good.

 Those also were supposed to have a capillary action, drawing the water to the roots from a bottom tray. I only used them for one planting last year, since I got them toward the end of my indoor seeding season. I had a bit of a struggle last year to get the seedlings out of them without disturbing the roots much. The bottom tray has these pegs which you use to push the seed plugs out when you are ready to transplant, the problem was it did not push them out far enough and since the tray is rather small and the seed plugs are close together it was difficult to grab the plugs without breaking stems of seedlings. The dirt did not hold tight enough and so I ended up with a huge mess, many broken stems and disturbed roots. I also thought the capillary action could have been better. The bottom of the root plug was too wet but then the top level, where the seeds need the moisture was to dry and I constantly had to be on the watch to moisten the top. Last year I thought maybe my potting seedling mix was not a good fit for the trays, too loose maybe. So this year I added a bit more compost and garden soil for it too be able to suck more water up, but still I had the same problem. Too wet on the bottom, to dry on the top. Many of the seedlings had trouble sprouting and again I lost too many seedlings by crushing them trying to get them out of the tray.

So now I came back to my old friend I had for a long time. I don't know why I neglected him so much in the last years since he is sustainable, lasts a life time, I never have to clean him, and there is nothing to clean up after. My dear old 'Newspaper pot maker'

It is so easy to use and by cutting wider newspaper strips you can make deeper pots. So this year I am growing almost all my seedlings in newspaper pots. My plants are growing so nicely and when I transplant them into the garden. I can plant them pot and all.
My first pots I made this year, seemed to disintegrate quicker then I remembered from a few years ago, when I used it heavily and I think that maybe the newspaper paper used today must be thinner then back then.
So my second batch I used my newspaper double and this seems to work much better.
I have been collecting the lettuce plastic bins, they sell the mixed, washed lettuce in the grocery store in, I put the dirt filled, seeded paper pots in these bins and with the lid on it made perfect little green houses. The taller pots I put into some old refrigerator door bins I kept, the lettuce bins fit perfectly on top.
Everything stayed nicely moist in the bins, I hardly had to water and with the help of my home made warming trays it all stayed toasty for the seeds to sprout.

When I had to re-pot my tomatoes I just made some higher pots by cutting wider strips of paper and I think I might not have to re-pot them again before transplanting them out.

All in all my good old Newspaper pot is coming out to be my best system to grow my plants with. Sometimes the simplest thing is all one needs. To top it off it is easy to use, costs very little money, recycles my newspaper and therefore fits in with trying to be more sustainable.

Paper pot Wins!

IGPro Garden software review

I am trying to be a bit more organized this year with my endeavor of growing my own food.
Since I have such a large variety of seeds it is a bit of a challenge.
I like variety, to me it is not good enough to just grow one or two Lettuces, or one Zucchini, Radish, Carrot or whatever I want to grow. I love to have a colorful salad and the middle eastern Zucchini tastes very different from the dark green Zucchini or the Romanesco. Variety is the spice of life, right?
Also how else will I find the perfect varieties for my Pacific Northwestern Garden, I am still not a seasoned Northwestern Gardener, still trying to figure things out how things grow out here.

So this year I am working a bit more with my wonderful garden software 'IGPro' I got from the UK written by an independent software programmer who himself is a gardener and is a nice guy always improving the software as we users come up with new demands.
We call out to him "we really would like it to do this task" or " It really would be great if the software could be used for vegetable gardens", because it really was written for the ornamental garden not for growing vegetables and he takes it all in stride and making it better for us users. Since there are now quite a lot of vegetable gardeners using his program and it has been quite a challenge to use the program for the vegetable garden use he actually is writing now a new program, just for us vegetable gardeners. How often do you find that kind of customer service, especially nowadays?

I know it will be a great software when he is done with it and I will be standing first in line to get it.

The program is different from many other garden software program that it is not a program to design a garden but it is designed to keep track of your plantings, like a database of your garden. Once you input all your information you can keep track of where your plants are situated in your garden, when you need to take care of them like fertilizing, pruning, spray schedules, seeding schedules, you can link photos of the plants to their profiles, do queries to find specific plants, print out reports. You can collect all the information you need for each plant, when you purchased it, where you got from, profile information, growing information and the beauty of the whole software you can make it your own. You can configure the Plant Care Topics or plant cultures and properties to your needs the software let's the owner change the program to his/her liking.
It has tons of features and because it is so configurable and let's us build to independent data bases, us Vegetable gardeners with Ornamental Gardens got the idea of  using it to keep track of our vegetable gardening also.
This year I finally managed to get all my vegetable seeds into the data base, with some of the growing information. At least I now have almost all my information in there of when I need to start my seeds inside the house or outside and when to transplant them. With the built in Task program I now can set up the tasks for each vegetable I plan to grow this year, assign them to a garden area/garden bed, set the dates to plant and after it is all set up I can print out my report what I need to do today and take it out with me into my Kitchen Garden. The report shows me what bed it goes in. No more confusion of putting seeds into the wrong bed or not remembering where I put them because I ran out of the labels. Labels? You can even print out labels with this software.
Since this software is so versatile it also can be used for the professional gardener like Nursery owners or Landscapers, you can set it up to keep track of all the plants you use and things you need to do at a nursery and design your catalog with it. Or as a landscaper create a garden for each client with garden areas, the plants used in it and link photos of the plants then use the query program to make lists according to specific criteria like plant size, color, soil type or any other site specific criteria.
I highly recommend this program to anyone who likes to be organized in their garden.

I am still far from having it all set up perfect for my use since I started using it for my vegetable garden but once it is done I know I will be Soooo Organized.

Seed tape update

I have been a bit to busy working in my garden to be posting. Spring and early summer is always my busiest time in the garden with weeding, pruning, planting new plants and getting things started. It should slow down somewhat soon, although I have a few projects I like to accomplish this year. I will tell about my garden projects in another post. Hopefully soon.

So I tried out the seed tape I bought online. I glued some seeds on with a cornstarch paste making sure I used a enough of the paste so they would stick to it. You are supposed to be able to just roll the whole thing up once the glue dries and then plant the seed tape when you want to plant it.
Well, let me tell you so far I am not impressed with the product, maybe I am doing something wrong but one should think you would get at least some vegetables out of the deal.
I started with carrot seeds, three different varieties, fresh seeds purchased this spring. I planted them right away after the glue was dry. I added some light dirt thinly on top of the seed tape and watered it. It would not stay moist, dried out faster then I could wet it. My whole vegetable garden is on automatic watering with drip irrigation, I even added some micro sprayers, thinking it needed more water then I was giving it. It still dried out to fast. I had my timer go off twice a day, total watering time was one hour but it didn't help. Nothing sprouted.
Then I set my timer to go off 4 times a day for 15 minutes at each cycle. Still nothing sprouted, it was a bit moister then before but still after about 1 1/2 months I only got a few carrot plants with my efforts.
We did have quite some hot days in May, but it wasn't that hot when I first put down the tape, they should have been sprouting.
Late May I tried the same with some Bulb Fennel seeds. Usually Fennel sprouts for me quite easy. I read something online that maybe the corn in the cornstarch might be responsible. So this time I used Elmers glue. I wanted to plant them next day, but then I didn't have time so I rolled the tape up and put it in my seed box to plant it out next chance I get.
By the time I put the seed tape in the garden, some of the seeds had fallen off. I somewhat suspected that would happen. I planted them at the proper depth for Fennel, kept it moist and even covered it with some lightweight garden fleece to keep the moisture in.
After 3 weeks I got about 6 Fennel seedlings that is from 48-56 planted seeds.
This time because the tape was a bit deeper in the ground it looked like it kept moist enough for the seeds to sprout. I don't understand why those seeds won't sprout. All my other vegetables started the old fashioned way have sprouted and are growing.
I even tried to grow Radishes with the tape, not one single seedling I got out of that, while the control group sprouted fine, grew and has been consumed already.
I used seed tape, which had seeds sandwiched between years ago, it was real thin tissue like paper which almost dissolved shortly after planting. Those seeds sprouted very quickly and easily.
Now I am thinking, could it be that the Chlorine in the paper is keeping the seeds from sprouting? The seed tape is made with white bleached paper, or could it be the printing ink?
Or is the problem that it is made with just thin paper instead of tissue paper?

This product if I would rate it from 1 to 10, I would give it a 1-. I won't use it again and I suggest to everyone to not bother ordering this product. Something should have been sprouting, at least the Radish should have.

I could could kick myself, because I first trusted this product so much that unfortunately I did not seed any carrots the conventional way and so now I am without the early carrots.

Oh well.

Seed tape review

I finally got the Seed Tape, where you can use your own seeds. It took a long time to arrive. Accordingly they got too many orders and ran out of it. Only they never mentioned that to me until I e mailed them asking what happened with my order.
I don't like it when they right away charge me and then don't send it out. Hey what is with that? I like my money do interest on my account, not yours!
I ordered March 20th and it arrived just last Friday, May 1st. I was not aware that they are producing it themselves, they don't say on their website. This was their excuse, they could not produce it fast enough because of the large amount of orders.
I thought it would be just like the fleece paper seed tape I am familiar with, where you sandwich the seeds between the seed tape and it is self stick.

Now I have it in front of me, I can see it is just thin, bleached, white paper, I don't even think it is made of recycled paper. It probably will disintegrate fine, but is it organic enough for me?
It certainly is not as I imagined it. You have to glue each seed on to the tape. I wonder if they will stick long enough to not fall off before you get them out in the garden. I certainly don't want to use toxic glue in my organic garden. Maybe I manage to sandwich the seed between to strips of paper. I was hoping for something quick and easy, this does not look quick. At least one can make seed tapes when it is raining outside, I guess that is a bit of a time saver.
Nevertheless, even I am a bit skeptical I will try them out. There will be an update.

Tools for the Kitchen Gardener

I have been buying garden things from Gardener Supply Company for years. They always seem to have the newest accessories to make gardening easier and I have been really happy with their offerings and service.
Look what they came up with now. The Gardener Supply Company now offers an online Kitchen Garden planner.
It is build on the concept of the 'Square Foot Garden' method and geared toward their popular
3' x 6' raised garden beds. It gives you a few options of pre-planned Kitchen Gardens, for the new Gardener just starting out and a bit unsure what to plant.
But the fun really starts with the 'Design your own Kitchen Garden'. This feature let's you choose from 30 different type of vegetables to drag and drop into a grid of 1' x 1' sections, which resembles your garden bed, it puts just the exact amount of vegetables in that grid as you can fit in that space.
I wished they had some more different types of vegetables, the selection right now is limited. Although you can substitute different vegetables which use the same spacing, instead the ones you actually want to plant, it sure would be better to be able to use the ones you have.
Hopefully they add more varieties with time.
After you are done, you can save and print out the garden with growing information or email it to yourself.
The program also offers a 'Step by Step Planting and Care Guide' and a 'Vegetable Encyclopedia'
which right now only has the vegetables they use in the program.
It also will let you link to garden accessories in the online catalog, you could use to grow your Kitchen Garden.
All in all it is a neat program to plan your Kitchen Garden and the best is, it is free.