With the start of 2018, our winter garden is off to a great start! Bell peppers are nearly ready to harvest, tomatoes are growing, green beans and a variety of other plants are starting to produce as well. Since we’re located in south Florida, winter is an ideal time of year to grow a garden since it’s not too hot. We’ll keep you updated as more plants continue to grow and we plant in the recently cleared section of the Garden In Minutes raised garden!
Starting Seedlings in Egg Crates and Transcript
Intro
“Hi this is Theresa from Garden In Minutes. Welcome to Episode 7 of Easy Growing. Today we’re going to discuss seed starting and some very simple ways to do that, utilizing things you may have around your home already.
Paper Egg Crates & Egg Shells – Soil, Hole, Seed, & Cover
So what I do is I use (paper) egg crates. What I do for the egg crate is fill the egg crate with a good seed starter soil mix. Take a pencil, make a hole for the seed, drop your seed in, and cover it up (with soil), then of course moisten it.
The next thing I use also are our eggshells. I fill the egg shell with soil, a good seat starter soil, do the same thing…make a hole, drop in your seed, cover it with soil, and moisten.
Tear or Crush then Plant
Right here I have already a tray of seeds started in my egg crate and the beauty of this is it’s recyclable (compost-able). You can tear a piece off and put it right in the garden. So that’s what we’re going to show you next, how we’re going to plant what we’ve started in our other medium, into the garden.
Okay so here we are. We have our little seedling here. It’s in the egg shell. We’re going to make small hole (in the garden soil). We’re going to crack the egg shell a little bit, just so the roots can come out. Place it in, and there we are!
Next we have the seedling that was in our egg crate. And again, dig a little hole. The egg crate is pretty fragile at this point. So that’s easy to tear apart. So you’re going to break it apart a bit. Place your seedling in your spot. And there we are, right in your garden!
Water Gently and Often
Okay. Now that we’ve planted our seedlings, we’re going to gently water the surrounding area. This way they can get the moisture that they need and it’s easier for them to recover (from the transplant) and absorb the nutrients from the soil. You don’t want fresh seedlings to dry out, so just check the soil every now and again and water them and make sure that they stay moist until they’ve established.
So just to recap there’s a number of ways you can start your seeds and you can choose the one that works best for you. I happen to like the egg crate because you can tear it off and put it in the ground and it will degrade. Same with the egg shells. I like using the egg shells because you can crush it and then leave it there to degrade in your soil. You can get a little calcium from it, but because it’s not ground up into a powder you’re not going to get a big hit from that. But otherwise it’s a good choice. It’s a natural choice.
So, thank you for watching! This has been episode seven of Easy Growing. I’ll see you next time!”
