Germinating seeds indoors

Here is a fun and easy way to germinate seeds indoors. I used a carboard egg carton, filled it with home made soil-less soil, (perlite, peat moss, vermiculite mixed in equal parts), add a stick for a lable as well as a make shift tent pole of sorts and covered it with plastic wrap. The plastic wrap holds in the moisture and in about 4 days you will see the plants starting to emerge!

My indoor seed starting trays and plant markers

Here you can see some of the seeds I used in my seed starting trays.

For  my plant name labels I used paint stir sticks that I broke.

Seeds ready to germinate under a 4 foot flourescent light ballast. I have one warm and one cool bulb that come on for 18 hours.

Here is how I broke the paint stir sticks to use as my plant name markers.

Pumkins growing from seeds in compost pile

I uncovered the compost pile today by removing a thin layer of newspaper from the top. Just before I was going to turn the pile to get some oxygen into the organic ingredients, I noticed something really cool! It looked as it something had sprouted from within the compost pile. At first glance it  looked like it was a sun flower, however, I now think it is pumpkins we thew in the compost pile after Halloween. The roots were all the way from the bottom of the pile and I kept finding  more and more seeds sprouting as I dug into the compost pile. I thought this was so interesting and cool! These seeds had grown from within our compost pile! Covered by almost 2 feet of organic material, these seeds sprouted and grew through the maze of produce and yard waste and were just about to find away past the top layer of newspaper. I suppose that says something about the quality of good compost :)

Notice the two seeds near the middle left.

Two more seeds that have sprouted.

Just for fun I pulled some out of the compost pile and decided to see if they would grow in a container below the compost pile.

So many seeds sprouting in our garden

The heat here in Arizona has been on a steady increase for some reason. Nothing record breaking, but still way above average. While checking the saoker hose in our raised garden beds today, I noticed a lot of seeds have started to sprout. Both our wild flower and our vegetable seeds are doing extremly well as far as I can tell. I've noticed the sun flowers, peas, corn, lettuce,spinach, lima beans and a few others have broken through the top soil to see the sun!

I hope to have some images to share with you in a day or so.

Blue Lake bean seeds sprout in 2 days!

Something told me today to check the seeds in the zip lock baggies for roots...I am happy to report that the Blue Lake bean seeds have germinated very well in ONLY TWO DAYS!

I have added these to the mini garden and moved it to an East/ South East facing window. I hope to have more great news soon on the rest of the seeds.