March 10: starting seeds

 

Earlier this week I started about half of my seeds for the 2026 garden.

Now is the time in the upper midwest to plant brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, etc) as well as peppers and eggplant. I'm growing two varieties of broccoli, just a couple red and green cabbage, Cheddar cauliflower, two eggplant varieties, and a few sweet and hot peppers -- mostly Ajvarski, which is my favorite sweet pepper. I save these seeds every year and the plants produce better than any other sweet pepper I've grown and the flavor is wonderful. This is an especially good pepper for roasting, and I freeze several bags of frozen roasted peppers every fall to use throughout the winter.

I have cheap LED shop lights set up on a card table in the basement with a timer to be on about 12 hours a day. I also have a couple of old heating pads that are also hooked up to the timer. I put my seedling trays on old cookie sheets and rest them on the heating pads to warm the soil and encourage germination. 

You can see the common theme of repurposing things I already have on hand and using cheaper alternatives. But this year I am trying out compostable trays rather than re-using the plastic trays as I normally do. Many of the plastic trays are starting to fall apart, and I just felt like doing something different. We'll see how this turns out. So far I think the main difference will be the challenge of keeping the soil hydrated because this method dries the soil out faster. It may be beneficial in decreasing mold growth.

Last year I started almost all my seeds in early March, and I ended up have several things, such as tomatoes, that were much too big and wanted to be planted long before optimal weather. I left several notes in my garden journal noting that I needed to wait next year. So here I am following my advice and will wait until the end of the month to do tomatoes, basils, and flowers.

On another note: the sweet potatoes I started last month are starting to sprout. The purple sweets have some leaves on them already, but both the purple and the orange have some roots. I'm happy with the progress so far -- sweets take a long time to get going for me, and so we are on track.