Quick Seed Sprouting for Spring Transplants

Here is a quick and easy method for starting your plants from seed (especially good for making sure your old packages of seeds are still viable for use).

Items needed:

• 1 or 2 new garbage bags
• roll of paper towels
• shallow bowl of warm water
• clean plate
• some long plastic bags (empty, clean plastic bread bags)
• seeds
• marking pen
• masking tape

Needed Later:

• styrofoam clean coffee cups, or used paper coffee cups (washed with soap & water & dried)
• general purpose potting soil

Take your package of seeds and check the back that it doesn’t require a cool or long germination time. Suitable seeds for this pre-germination are: Spanish Onions, tomatoes, green peppers, cabbage, brussel sprouts, broccoli, or pretty well any plants that you normally buy as transplants, including flowers. Do not pre-germinate carrots, beets, or most root vegetables other than onions. Corn (needs quite a few neighbouring corn plants for it to pollinate to produce good kernels of corn) and peas, lettuce and spinach are usually planted directly in the ground early in the Spring as soon as the ground can be worked without clumping together. I have pre-germinated corn and peas just to make sure that the package was still good.

Take a new garbage bag and lay it flat on your table or workspace. Tear off a section of paper towel and get it wet and lay it out flat on top of the bag. Pour out a few seeds on the plate and carefully spread them out on the wet paper towel, using tweezers if necessary, about 1 inch or 2 to 3 cm apart on half of the towel.

Wrap the other side of towel over the seeds and fold over in half again. Place carefully in the plastic bag and on the outside of the bag containing the roll of seeds place the masking tape that has the name of the seeds on it.

Fold over the end of the bag and place it in a warm place for a couple of days, (top of a refrigerator, stove or microwave at the back is good). After about 3 days, carefully open the bag and check the state of germination. If some are germinated, you can carefully rip them off the moist paper and plant them in the soil filled coffee cups.

Roll up the moist paper towel with the seeds that still need to sprout, (if you want more) and replace in bag and put back in warm spot. Check again in 2 to 3 days. Poke a small hole with a pencil or scissors in the bottom of the cup and fill the cup loosely with soil about 1 inch from the top and lightly tamp down, pour in warm water until it seeps through the bottom and then lightly press the sprouted seeds (the wet paper towel may remain on seed), onto the top of the moistened soil.

Sprinkle about ½ inch of soil over the seeds and press lightly. Sprinkle warm water lightly over soil to moisten and put the little pot in a bright, sunny window on a water catcher dish, Styrofoam plate, or cut off bottom of a plastic bottle. Make sure you label each little pot as soon as you plant them and don’t let them completely dry out. Press your finger down into the soil every 3 to 4 days to see how moist the soil is.

Some plants don’t like being transplanted and must be directly planted into the soil but Tomato plants especially like being transplanted, so whenever the plant is too leggy when it is young, just put in a larger container and add more soil up the stem to where the leaves are starting to grow. When it has 2 to 4 sets of branches, transplant it into its “home” pot (1 foot deep x 1 foot wide) or a spot in the garden and after any danger of frost. Tomatoes also do well as balcony plants.