Gardeners, start your onions

Onions seeds have been planted!  It was indeed lovely to get dirt under my fingernails for the first time this year.  I've made such a big deal about starting seeds, you'd think the process took hours and hours.  But in reality it took only 45 minutes, mainly because I had everything I needed already on hand.  Seeds, trays, flats, soil, heat mat, and grow lights.  I won't need the grow lights until the seeds begin growing, but it's good to get things ready ahead-of-time.

You need special seed-starting soil to start seeds indoors.  If you use regular potting soil, the hunks of bark and rock in the dirt will impede the seed growth.  If you use outside soil, you'll bring in weed seed and insect eggs.  Best to use the good stuff, which is easy enough to find.  My favorite commercial seed starting medium is from Burpee's.  I usually buy it from Menards for $4 a bag.

Last year I tried coconut coir for the first time.  I was dubious about all the hype around it, but lo and behold I discovered the hype is well-deserved.  An 8-ounce brick costs between $2 and $7, depending on where you get it and how much you buy.  One brick expands to about 2 gallons of soil.

Just like those dinosaur capsules my kids used to play with, the brick expands when you add water.  Just so you know, it expands a lot.  

It's amazing how much water the coir holds.

It was still expanding after I took this photo.  I realized I needed a bigger boat.

Best 5-gallon buckets you can find.

After the soil is saturated, fill your trays (not to the tippy-top) with moist soil.  As you can see, I like to re-use plastic food containers for my trays.  Make sure the trays have holes in the bottom for drainage.  The trays are placed in a 'flat' that catches any water seeping through. 

My seed sprite keeping a watchful eye.

The onions are going to be in these trays for 8-12 weeks, so I used deep trays to have room for root development.  If I was starting tomatoes or lettuce, which I'll transplant into larger cells after a week or two, I'd use a shallower tray and less soil.

Sprinkle your seeds over the soil.  Whether you put the seeds in single holes, rows, or scattered over the top depends on a lot of things.  Because I'm unsure of the germination rates, and because I have plenty of seed, and because I'm fine with thinning the seedlings if too many grow, and because onions are easy to pull apart when transplanting outside, I decided to scatter the seeds thickly and randomly.  Cover your seeds with a thin layer (1/8-1/4 inch) of soil.  Make sure to label your trays!

Cover the tray to keep the soil from drying out - those clear plastic lids that come with some flats work well.  Put the flat in a warm spot, or use a heat mat.  Heat mats can cost up to $30 depending on where you buy them, so they're not cheap.  But they are a good investment if you start a lot of seeds, or if your house is a little chilly during the winter months (like ours).  I like to test my mats with a thermometer to make sure they don't get too hot.

Now that the onions are done, I have to wait a few more weeks before I can start the next round of seeds.  Kale seeds are next on the list!  And after that lettuce, and then marigolds, and then peppers, and then...