Garden Update: Early Seed Propagation in the Greenhouse

I recently seeded our solanaceae family plants in our greenhouse! This included tomatoes, peppers and eggplant. Our winter is quickly receding but we have to be wary of frost which can still hit us into late May / early June. And so I am getting our seeds in some soil so that they can germinate and get growing in the shelter of the greenhouse while we are waiting for frosts to subside.

I also seeded onions and leeks which are fairly cold hardy plants and will be transplanted out earlier, as soon as they are a good size.

We are using these beautiful handmade wooden flats for starting our seeds! We have come full circle because we moved to Oregon a year ago now, and one of the first things when we got here was build these wooden flats (instructions inside).

After shoveling the flats full of potting soil I tap them down on the ground several times to settle the soil. Using a piece of wood I can tamp down the soil and get a nice flat surface.

For the potting soil I am purchasing locally made organic compost (60% compost / 40% organic manure) and mixing roughly 10% sand. This works really well for seedlings. One step I skipped this time was sifting the soil through some hardware cloth to get a finer, more even soil.

To sow the seeds I make little furrows, like a mini row in a garden bed and drop the seeds in. Then pinch the soil over them and tap it down so that there is good soil contact.

Its nice to step back and admire my work. And then look over my shoulder and appreciate the onions and cilantro that were planted at the end of last fall in the greenhouse. They are really starting to pick up in their growth now that the days are getting longer. We are enjoying lots of cilantro and some green onions from time to time. It will be nice to have early onions this spring, especially considering we are down to our last 5 or 6 onions from last year.

Down the line a flat of lettuce I had seeded a few weeks prior is coming up nicely! I didn't use the furrow method for the lettuce; I scattered them around evenly and covered them with a thin layer of soil.

Outside the garlic is coming up!! We just planted the garlic in January, luckily there wasn't snow on the ground and we got it in just in time. The week after planting the garlic it started snowing and we had snow on the ground until just recently.

I have a good feeling about this season :)

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