Gardening 102: Seed Starting

We are really excited to start our garden this year because we thoroughly enjoyed planting, weeding, picking, and eating everything in our inaugural garden last year. This time around we are going to try to start a few things from seeds instead of just buying all plants this year. Since I work at Park Seed, I have access to lots of seed varieties, seed starting accessories, and tons of horticulture knowledge that I find invaluable in our quest to lessen our grocery bills and become just a little bit greener.

To start things off, I've thrown together a few seed starting systems, thanks to one of my coworkers' help. We combined a Park Seed Windowsill Bio-Dome Seed Starter with just a few plain ol' six-packs...nothing too glamorous. I have three six-packs started right now. Two of the six-packs are filled with tomatoes, but they aren't the same variety of tomatoes. One of the varieties of tomatoes I have is an Organic seed certified by Clemson which is named 'Mater Sandwich Hybrid'. This variety is an indeterminate tomato, which produces fruit throughout the season; most of your normal tomatoes are indeterminate. The other tomato variety is a determinate, which means it will produce all of it's fruit at once. This type of tomato is great for canning, juicing, or saucing, which is why we are trying both "type" of tomatoes. The name of that tomato is 'Fabulous Hybrid'. And to round out my first run of seeds is a sweet banana pepper.

Like I said earlier, the wealth of horticulture knowledge that roams around Park Seed is crazy! I've been working here for nearly four years now and I have only gained a small grain of sands' worth. Hopefully I will be picking up more and more now that spring is here and I want us to grow as many veggies and herbs as we can. I will keep you posted on my seed starting trials and any more tidbits of gardening info that I learn.