I talk about seed starting a lot. Obviously, there can’t be a garden unless we’re able to get the plants into the ground. Though I’ve always been a big supporter of direct sowing, I find that I like starting seeds into trays more and more with each season that passes. This season is no exception to this. Normally, I would use the winter sowing method to start all of my seeds – but this year has been weird. Since this spring has been extremely cool and very wet, I’m roughly three weeks behind in starting the garden. Since the last frost date has already passed, I simply started these seed trays without use of the unheated low tunnel.
I’ve seeded a considerable amount of trays this spring. Most of them are filled with zinnia seedlings of assorted colors, some amaranth seedlings, cosmos seedlings, tithonia seedlings, as well as some sunflowers. Since we’ve gotten 5 inches of rain in the last 4 days, germination was a breeze. In fact, some of the zinnia trays sprouted in less than 24 hours. It’s amazing.Â
The tiniest of the flowers are the celosia seedlings. Though they look small now, hopefully, they will grow into flowers which are quite magnificent. As you can see, it was pretty difficult to plant the tiny seed sparingly.
We’ve had lots of rain in the past few days, and I can almost see the plants growing. The zinnia I planted near the mailbox are so thick, it looks like a forest. I can’t wait to see these blooms!