Spring is really here. You can almost hear the plants pushing up through the ground.
This weekend would be a wonderful time to plant seeds you already have. Do you have a box or a drawer where you keep your seed packets? If you haven't yet this year, go through your seeds and pull out favorites to get started.
Especially now, with seeds in bigger demand than ever, and long lead times from many vendors, don't worry too much about seeds being past their "expiration" date. Seeds never really expire the way food does. Their germination rates go down with time. The dates are provided so that you know their high germination percentage is guaranteed just for the year printed on the packet. If the seeds are really old, plant way more than you need, and it's likely that at least some will sprout.
If you haven't yet, you can read last week's post with all the how-to details for seed starting.
I don't know about you, but for me this has been a big week as the fatigue of extended full-time parenting and working is catching up with me. I'm not looking for anything too complicated. I'm looking forward to (maybe, finally) finishing our new veggie beds, planting all the seedlings that are waiting in the wings (and occupying all my seed pots), and sowing a new batch of seeds in the space that will open up.
I'm also doing some experimenting with making seed starting mixes with materials we're all likely to have on hand to help us all stay home. Do you have any recipes / materials you'd like to share?
BTW, the image above is of a prototype seed pot from about 6 years ago when an admittedly informal and non-scientific focus group said that single-cell, adorable mini seed pots were the best idea. Turns out that was decidedly not the case. Since I first started selling pots to real gardeners, I've been asked a million times, "Can you make a bigger one?" and exactly zero times, "Can you please make it smaller?"
