Starting Over part two

My seed starting area is more elaborate than it was a couple of years ago, but it's no Martha Stewart work station and it doesn't need to be. It is after all, an area in my basement where I work with dirt. I am a big fan of ignoring instructions and warnings if they seem inconvenient, but here are a few rules I've decided are useful: 1. Use good seed starter mix. I got some great organic stuff with rice hulls from my local garden store. But only after (during my frantic February seed-starting) I picked up a bag of Miracle-Grow "Organic" potting soil during a late-night Home Depot run for lights. Not only was the potting mix too chunky for starting seeds (I grabbed the wrong bag) but I am highly suspicious of its organic qualifications, and many of the pots developed a sheen of white fuzz and green mold before I dumped them and re-potted with the good stuff.

2. Mix it with a lot of water before putting it into the pots. A bucket you don't use for other things is good for this, so you don't have to scrub the dirt out.

3. Do wash the pots, if you are re-using them. All my tomatoes immediately got some sort of rot my first year, when we reused old dirty pots and old potting soil. They produced for a while but succumbed soon after the first crop of the season. Last year I washed the pots and none of the tomatoes had significant problems. 4. Put the "labels" (masking tape and a sharpie) on the pots before you fill them, unless you are a very neat person who will not slop dirt and water that will keep the tape from sticking and the sharpie from writing.

5. Once the plants germinate, keep the lights CLOSE to the plants. These are the toughest, squattest tomato plants I've ever started, which is lucky, since as I've mentioned, they still have a long wait before it's warm enough to stick em outside. One instruction I have found not that useful, in my experiments: putting the whole tray of newly potted seeds in a plastic bag until germination. The trays I did this with stayed too wet. I find draping the trays (or the whole shelf, if you have a big set-up as I do) with plastic works just fine if you check on them daily. Either way uncover them as soon as the seedlings are up so they get light and the plants aren't damp. I also started some seeds in egg cartons this year, the first time since grade school I think. I've found they dry out very easily so you have to commit to water them at least once a day. And with that, I'll return to my dirty workspace, to pot the okra seeds I've been soaking since yesterday - a new crop for me.