Starting tomato seeds 101

Visiting Eden Project has inspired me to think about gardening a little bit early this year. Tomatoes came first to my mind. Although I have grown them for few consecutive years I have managed to make many mistakes along the way. One of the mistakes I have often made is that I started the seeds quite late. growing tomato plants indoors under less than optimum conditions (less light and lower temperatures), you can expect each growing stage to progress somewhat more slowly than normal. I of course did replant ready tomato plants outside, but they often struggled to produce fruit (not veg) before the autumn. So I decided to follow my grandma’s example this year, who starts the tomato seeds right in January. I know I know, the tomato seed packaging disagrees with this, but I think it’s worth a shot!

Since I did not find any degradable seeding pots to buy in the shop at this early season, I have made them myself (really proud!). I used empty toilet paper rolls for this. I folded in on one side (pics.2-5) and flatten it from the inside (pic. 6).
I have placed ready pots into the plastic container ready to be filled with compost :-).

Next step is to fill the pots with the compost and sprinkle the seeds on top. I often have little faith in the seeds thinking that many of them won’t sprout. In many of those cases I am wrong as many of them come out and I end up pulling the access sprout out.

Finally cover the seeds with the little compost (1cm layer maximum) and place the pots on the windowsill.

Enjoy this mini session of gardening ;-)

Rasa xoxo