I’ve had a few questions on what to do once the seeds sprout on the napkin/plate shown in a previous post. It’s all very easy. You can throw the seeds that haven’t sprouted away. These are seeds that you would’ve normally planted in your garden and ended up wasting a lot of time by trying to get them to grow. Once sprouted on the napkin, it’s safe to plant into cells(potmaker cups for me.) You just poke a hole in the growing medium with a pencil and then place your small, sprouted seed in that hole. You don’t have to plant it very deep and you cover it lightly with soil. Sometimes I’ve just laid a sprouted seed right on the surface of the growing medium without even burying it. Then you lightly water-being careful not to drown it. In 3-4 days you’ll get something that looks like the last picture. These are all shots of kohlrabi-something I’ve never grown before but tasted for the first time a few weeks ago. I loved it.

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I tried to order some Kohlrabi from the local seed company two weeks ago.  They informed me they didn’t have any and that last year’s seeds were a failure.  After a short discussion the receptionist excused herself and asked me to wait for a minute.  When she returned she gave me 3 packet of kohlrabi-2 purple and 1 white. She explained they had a batch from last years lot left over and didn’t charge me a penny for them.  I asked her what the problem was and nobody knew.  This is how I sprout seeds.  It’s very easy and very effective.  All I do is wet a paper towel with warm water and then ring it out.  I place the towel on a plate, sprinkle some seeds on it, and then cover everything-plate included-inside a plastic Ziploc bag.  Leave it in a place where it’s over 70(our home is set at 72)and see what happens.  What you don’t see is the 18 other kohlrabi seeds that have fully sprouted and have been planted in potmaker cups.  Every single one of these seeds sprouted, which means they can be grown.  Doing this eliminates all guesswork.  You now know which seeds are viable because those are the ones that sprout.  All you need to do after that is put them in potting or growing soil and treat as you normally would.  These will grow into full plants with water, and light.  I plan on showing this to the store as they wanted to know if I could get them to grow.  Now we know the seed wasn’t the problem.  The growers either tried to grow this at the wrong time of year(hot weather doesn’t work very well with these), or their soil was the problem.  Maybe a combination of both.  I suppose another problem would be trying to plant them in freezing weather which could also lead to failure.  Either way, these sprouted in a mere 3 days.  I just gained about a week by doing it this way.  More good stuff.  If you’ve got things that need 10-14 days(or longer)to come up in potting soil, doing it this way will get you growing those a lot faster.  More fun stuff.

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But it’s green inside! Going down to the basement and seeing signs of new green life gives you a beacon of hope of things to come during the dead of winter. And it’s been a hard one. In anticipation of selling an early crop of veggies and produce I thought I should probably get some things started indoors. The weather has been horribly cold for weeks now. I planted 36 potmaker cups on Saturday and here it is-3 days later-about 25% of my cups have sprouted. That’s pretty quick. I had a heat mat underneath the tray and made sure to keep the soil damp. It looks like we’ll have nasty weather through the weekend and then it starts warming up to normal temperatures. If that’s the case I should be ready to plant for my mini-CSA that I provide for 5 families.