Seed Starting Progress

So far this season I have done three separate plantings of seeds that will be going into my garden this spring once the weather warms up a bit.  The first planting involved celery, broccoli, peppers and basil.  I started the celery and peppers so early because I know from past experience that they are both very slow growing and I wanted them to be a decent size by the time they were ready to be planted in the garden.  The broccoli will be one of my first crops from the garden this spring and I am already preparing a bed for them to go into when they are ready in a month or so.  The basil may have been planted a bit too early, but if worst comes to worst I can always trim it and dry it for future use or sell them as seedlings at the farmer's market in the spring.

The second planting was my onions seeds.  I am trying a different technique this year and have tried to plant 4 seeds in each cell.  When they get transplanted into the garden these seedlings will stay in clusters of four which will hopefully make it easier for me to keep them weeded and easier to harvest later in the season.

The yellow onions are the ones filled in nicely on the left side of the tray.  They look like they are happy growing in their tray and hopefully will continue to grow that well after they go out into the garden.  The red onions on the right side of the tray have been having a much slower germination than I would have hoped.  I think I will still get quite a few more to come up, but they are definitely not doing as well as the yellow onions are.  I may have to do another planting of seeds to make sure that I have enough for all my cooking needs over the next year.  

My third planting was another round of peppers and celery since those seeds didn't seem to germinate in large numbers either.  I also filled in 24 cells with various tomato seedlings that included two varieties of paste tomatoes that I hope will produce well for me this year.  I also planted another round of basil.  I guess that I will be making a lot of pesto this year if I can't sell fresh basil at the farmers market.

I still plan on planting one more round of onion seeds in a couple of weeks, but after that I think I will be finished with starting my indoor seedlings for the year.  The next stage of my garden will involve a lot of transplanting and the seasonal dance of moving seedlings outdoors daily to start getting them hardened off to the conditions in my garden.  Spring really isn't far off now.