For anyone starting plants from seed, I recommend that you do your research! In the past I've wasted seed and lost plants because of simple lack of knowledge. There are some great resources linked from this blog.
I purchased germination mats ($24.99 each at The Barn Nursery) to warm the soil in my germination flats. In the first of these these (planted on March 29), I sowed Holy Mole pepper, Early Girl and Rutgers tomato, and four varieties of basil. After four days, the cotyledons are up for all basil varieties and the Rutgers tomato. I can see that the Early Girl tomato is also about to poke through.
Spear's Green tomato
Yellow Pear tomato
Louisiana Long Green Eggplant
Snowy Eggplant
Chocolate Pepper
Chinese 5 Color Pepper
Emerald Giant Pepper
Yellow Monster Pepper
In addition, I've been experimenting with okra seeds. Some people recommend soaking okra seeds in water for 24 hours, then planting only the ones that swell. So, I set up a plastic egg package to test whether or not soaking the seeds makes a difference. I planted seeds from 3 different varieties (Burgundy, Clemson Spineless, Dwarf Green) in the rear row of cups, and put the little "greenhouse" in the sun.
I put the same number of seeds in water for 24 hours...
By the next day, the majority of the soaked seeds had swelled. For the photo below, I placed a dry seed below the center group to show the size difference. A few of the seed covers had split.
I planted these seeds in the front row of cups and gave the greenhouse another day in the sun. After just three days, the seedlings are coming up in both rows - but more seedlings have grown from the soaked seeds and they seem to be a little more developed. We'll see how they do in the next few days.
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