Sister KC here from St. Vincent Mission. I actually planned this post for this Spring but life got in the way. The neat thing about blogging though is that a good topic is never wasted. And the topic today is starting seeds. It’s actually a brief pictorial. The featured picture (that would be blog-speak for the first picture at the top of this post) is one I took at Todd Howard’s greenhouse in March of this year and is of Red Russian Kale starts.

What can you tell me about these pictures?

 

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Red Russian Kale dated 2/25

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Red Russian Kale dated 3/7

If you said, “someone must have switched the date tags” you would have said what I did when I visited Todd. The truth is the dates on these two trays of kale are correct. “How can that be?” I asked Todd.

Ends up that he had run out of seed starting mix and had to use what was on hand at the local hardware store he patronizes-potting soil with fertilizer already in it.  It seems that babies do not like all that fancy stuff so the seeds that were started in potting soil on February 25th were stunted while the seeds that began life in sterilized seed starting mix were happy and healthy.

I’m bringing this up because if you plan on putting in a fall or winter garden, time’s a wastin’ for seed sprouting. If you, like Todd, can’t get seed starting mix you can always make your own, just be sure to pasteurize it. Here is a link from Oregon State Extension to learn how Seed Starting Mix

There are plenty more ways to make your own healthy seed starting mixes online and I bet several of you already do it. Care to chime in for our readers? Feel free to leave a comment. Thanks and keep growing.