Considering starting seeds for your vegetable garden this year? If you’re one of the millions of people who took up gardening as the pandemic wore on into its first month of lockdown, you may have begun your gardening experience on fly. This year, however, you have the opportunity to be a bit more planful about getting the gardening season going. Seed starting may be in your near future.

If this is you, then I have a series of three posts for you to consider for a successful seed-starting project, from start to finish. In fact, the best seed-starting endeavors begin way before the seeds are sown. In this Part 1, I have a few items for you to consider before your seeds meet soil.

Containers for Your Seeds

You have options for what you start your seeds in. Use yogurt cups you pull out of the recycling, or small plastic pots you saved from last year. The containers could be actual seed-starting trays or even biodegradable fiber pots. Whatever you use, make sure that they are

1. clean and sterilized (a 10% bleach solution should do the trick for used plastic plant pots)
2. have drainage holes
3. have either a saucer or a matching no-holes tray underneath to catch draining water.

The containers don’t have to be huge. If you sow many seeds in one container, your seedlings will do best if they are subsequently transferred to individual pots. More on that in Part 2.

Seed-Starting Mix

Use a mix that is meant for starting seeds. These mixes don’t have soil at all. They are mainly a combination of organic materials specially formulated to create a root zone environment that promotes germination. It will hold just enough moisture to encourage seeds to essentially break open, while also allowing just enough water to drain so the seeds don’t sit in a soggy environment. A quality seed-starting mix will come with a dose of fertilizer that will be enough to supply the growing seedlings with nutrients for up to a month or so. I like the Organic Mechanics’ Seed Starting Blend, as it has a nice porosity.

In Part 2 I’ll discuss what to do when actually sowing your seeds. In Part 3 I’ll talk about that expanse of time between germination and when they can head outside.