You'll never plant veggie seeds the same way again!

Planting a vegetable garden by seed can be extremely rewarding.  An average beefsteak tomato plant will produce 40 to 70 pounds of tomatoes!  If the average tomato cost at a market is $2.50 per pound then that's up to $175 in tomatoes off one plant!  

An average pack of tomato seeds from the store costs around $3 and you get 30 seeds. Let's do some more math.  30 seeds can turn into 30 plants, so 30 plants times $175 per plant equals a total of $5250 of growing potential in one pack of tomato seeds.

Let's start a vegetable garden together!

Growing a veggie garden from seed can be very fun, rewarding and cost effective.  Follow along as I just planted my own veggie garden from seed.  Hopefully this encourages you to do the same!

Here are 9 packs of my favorite vegetable seeds that I'm going to use in my garden: cayenne pepper, roma tomato, beefsteak tomato, muncher cucumber, supersweet onion, black eggplant, sugar baby watermelon, tricolor romaine and lacinato kale.

6 cell planting trays.  You can ask your local nursery or garden center if they have any used ones laying around.  I was able to score 12 for free :)  If not, they're only like 30 cents per tray on Amazon. Click Here to buy on Amazon.

I'm going to plant one variety of seeds per tray, this way I don't get confused.

Use a good quality garden soil or potting mix to plant in.  Never use soil directly from your garden to start seeds because the soil may contain insects and diseases which could inhibit the germination rate.  

Fill the soil to the top and pat down each cell so that there is about 1/2 inch space from the top of each cell. Don't pat down too hard.

Although my soil is not organic, I still like to use organic seeds.  One way you can tell if a seed is organic is if you dump them out on your hand and there's no powder or dust, they just look like plain ol' seeds.

Plant in 3's.  You want to do this because not every seed is guaranteed to sprout.  Also if all 3 sprout, there is always one seed out of the three that will grow the best.  When they get about 2 inches tall, pluck the two weaker ones leaving only the strongest in each cell.  Oh and I purposely did not plant any seeds in one of the cells, you'll see why later.

Cover the seeds with soil.  This is one of the most important parts. Most people punch their fingers down into the soil, throw some seeds in and cover them up.  A rule of thumb (no pun intended) is to plant the seed as deep as the size of the seed.  For example, if the seed is 1/4 inch tall then plant them 1/4 inch deep.  Most seeds are tiny and barely need to be covered with soil.  If you've never done this before then it will feel like you're not even planting them but trust me, it works!

Remember, a typical seed pack has up to 50 seeds in it.  Since I only used 15 seeds, I rolled up the leftovers in the packet and used this waterproof plant marker to store the seeds. No sense in wasting them, I'll use them again next year.

Place the plant marker in the cell that you didn't plant seeds in.  And it's that simple, only 8 more to go!

It took me about an hour to plant all of these but it was worth it.  Now we just need to water them.  Be careful the first few times you water because the seeds are so close to the surface.  If you water them with too much pressure then you risk the seeds moving around or floating away.  Here's my custom made soft watering system.

Click image to enlarge

pin&bottle

poke holes

fill w/ water

Here's how I made my custom watering jug

Do a few passes over your newly planted seeds, just enough to make the soil moist all the way through.  Don't hold the jug over one area for too long so that it starts puddling.  Put your newly planted trays in full sun!  Full sun means at least 6 hours of direct sunlight.  Water them twice a day with this jug (between 6-8am and again between 3-6pm) until the plants start to emerge.  Once they emerge, you can start watering with a regular watering can or cup.

General Care
When the plants are less that 4-6 inches tall, it's important that you don't miss watering, especially if it's hot.  Once they reach 4-6 inches, back off watering till only once a day.  A tip on how you can tell if you're watering correctly is take a handful of soil and squeeze it.  If it drips water then you're watering too much.  If it crumbles in your hand then it's too dry.  If you squeeze it and let go and it more-or-less holds it's shape then you're watering perfectly!

When to fertilize:
Most people over fertilize or don't even fertilize at all.  If you get a good potting mix then it should already have fertilizer in it and you shouldn't need to fertilize.  If you're growing organically then I recommend using a 2 teaspoons of worm castings around the base of the plant when you transplant it in the ground from the seed tray.

Follow these steps above and I guarantee that you'll have plants that you can brag about!