• Brussels sprouts
• any herbs
• sweet pepper
• Swiss chard
• chives
• eggplant
• tomatillo
• secondary sowings of lettuce and cauliflower

I’ve been so busy sowing tomato seeds and tending to seedlings that I’ve let these other veggies fall to the wayside.  I only got around to sowing lettuce this past weekend as I planted in ready-to-use Jiffy 7′s instead of having to fill up yet another 9-cell pack.  I hope I can pull  it together to direct sow the peas and spinach seeds this weekend as well as the basil indoors.  Between finishing up a debilitating cold and the dog’s spay, I think I’m doing alright.

On the weekend, I did sow one of the few hybrids I’m growing – Momotaro.  It’s described as being “the most popular tomato in Japan”.  Can 127.7 million people be wrong?  How surprising when I opened that packet and shook out bright blue seeds:

There’s a fair number of varieties that don’t have any seedlings as of yet: Goose Creek, Matt’s Wild Cherry, Pink Pink Pong, Eva Purple Ball, Evan’s Purple Pear, Brandywine Pink (Sudduth’s Strain), KBX, Zapotec Pink Pleated, Gold Medal, Break O’Day, Tommy Toe Red, Azoychka, Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye, Berkeley Tie-Dye and Cherokee Purple.  I’m hoping they come up soon or I’ll have to do another sowing.

The ones that are doing really well (100% germination rate so far) are Black Krim, Purple Russian, Jaune Flamée and Brandywine Cherry.  Woohoo!

I’ve also moved my entire grow-op into the living room upstairs.  I decided that I couldn’t be counted on to go downstairs into the basement on a regular basis to care for seedlings (out of sight = out of mind, even though this is supposed to be one of my passions!)  Here’s a shot of my 5-tier wire shelf with three pairs of shop lights on the bottom three shelves:

On the right-hand side, you can see a bit of my emergency blanket that I use to block the light at night.  I’ve rigged it up so that it attaches to the shelf with rare earth magnets that are super strong.  It’s less irritating when watching t.v.!

You can see six 72-cell trays with clear domes that are housing my tomato seedlings – I like to keep the domes on to help retain moisture and to aid in removing the seed coat if left on the seedling.  Not shown is another 72-cell tray on my heat mat.  There are also two more trays of hot peppers and cole crops such as broccoli, cauliflower and kale as well as parsley, onions and leeks.

I like having the shelf in front of the south-facing window.  In the evenings, I turn the fluorescent lights and close the curtains.  In the morning, I turn off the lights and open the curtains so the seedlings can still get sunlight throughout the day.  The shelf is on wheels and I can swing it around or move it if I need to clean underneath.

In preparation for my yearly seed swaps, trades and round robins I like to get all my extra seeds packaged up and ready to go ahead of time. This year, I decided to add lots of information on each packet. Writing all the information by hand seemed like a drag so I created a bunch of 2” x 2 ¾” labels (finally, a use for obsolete floppy disk labels!) with fun clip art. I included the name, seed source, year, my website address and notes on each seed package. How handy, how organized!

Apparently I wasn’t organized enough as I completely forgot my list of things to look for at Seedy Saturday. Yikes! Thankfully, I got my partner to email me the list to my Blackberry, which I kept re-reading while maneuvering through the throngs of people at the event. It’s great that there are many people interested in gardening and starting seeds, however, this year the number of attendees seemed somewhat ridiculous. Last year there was freezing rain, wet snow and icy roads, which may have kept people at bay. Here’s how things looked at 11:30 AM:

We walked in at 9:45 AM and the first stop was the seed swap table where I dropped off all of my nicely (and some not so nicely) packaged seeds. Seriously, it must have been somewhere between 30 – 40 packets of stuff, mostly seeds I’d saved and a few things I no longer wanted (goodbye Sensation squash from Stokes!). In turn, I picked up a packet of daisy petit pom pom mix, green apple eggplant, Roma tomato, striped butternut, yellow submarine cucumber, bouquet dill, patio pickles, Thai basil, snow peas and purple pole beans.

I also went a little crazy with the seed purchases and bought some Vegetable Spaghetti squash; Yellow and Black Brandywine, Old German, Opalka and Break O’Day tomato; Ailsa Craig onion; Chantenay Red-cored and mixed carrot; Provider bush bean; Lolla Rosa, Freckles Speckled Trout and Red Deer Tongue lettuce; California Wonder sweet pepper and Cherokee Trail of Tears pole bean seeds. My 8-year-old nephew wanted to start some seeds so we got him some packets of carrot and sunflower. My mom had a great time and said that she could spend all day there!

I ran into some familiar faces: Bernie from La Vie En Rose (I helped her dig up her iris bed a couple of years ago), Mary from the Cottage Gardener (we visited her farm last year and did a bit of impromptu throat singing), another Kemptville area gardener as crazy about tomatoes as me and Telsing from The Veggie Patch Re-imagined.  Here she is with her two kids at the seed swap table:

The one thing I wish I had done last year was to make a list of all the vendors who had attended – I had contacted the organizer after Seedy Saturday 2008 who lamented that there were too many and didn’t have the paperwork handy.  So I decided to make my own list this year.  Here are the majority of the attendees for this year’s Seedy Saturday in Ottawa (in no particular order, * denotes a seed vendor):

• a seller of honey from Morrisburg, ON
• La Vie En Rose Gardens *
  
• Patri-Semences/Les Serres de Chez Nous *
• Greta’s Organic Gardens *
  
• Cosmoz Design
• Capital Worm Ranch
• Yuko’s Open Pollinated Seeds *
  
• Honey Pie Hives and Herbals
• a seller of cocoa camino
• Eternal Seed *
  
• Karen’s Naturals
• La Ferme de Bullion *
• Terra Foods
• a few sellers of baked goods and breads
• Heritage Seed and Produce *
  
• The Worm Factory
• Tucker House CSA
• Tomboy Tools
• Square Foot Gardening
• Arborisan Wood Craft
• Urban Harvest *
  
• Just Food
• Savour Ottawa
• Canadian Organic Growers – Ottawa
• Green Party
• USC Canada
• Keriba Inc
• The Collective Conscience
• The Green Collection
• Eastern Ontario’s Gardener’s Tour Guide

If you’re in the Ottawa area, have missed Seedy Saturday and don’t mind driving, you can go to the Seedy Saturday being held in Kingston this weekend, Saturday March 14, from 10 AM to 3 PM at Kingston’s Central Branch Library, 130 Johnson Street.  Admission is $1.  I’ve called ahead and found out that the following seed vendors will be there:

• Seed Savers Exchange
• Eternal Seed
• the Cottage Gardener
• Greta’s Organics
• Heritage Seeds
• Terra Edibles

If the roads are good, I can get to Kingston in an hour.  Hmm, something to think about.  Happy seed hunting!

Pre-sprouting is a great way to get your seeds up and running quickly, cutting down on the number of days needed to germinate.  I use a coffee filter, Ziploc bag, heating mat and Sharpie to pre-sprout my seeds.

Fold the coffee filter in half and dip in water to get it fully wet.  Place your seeds on one side of the half-filter and fold it again into a quarter.  Put the folded filter in the Ziploc bag and label with the name and date.  Place on a heated surface like a heating mat or on top of your fridge.  Check everyday to see if the seeds have sprouted and to make sure the filter hasn’t dried out (add a few drops of water every other day to keep it moist).  Once they sprout, carefully transfer them to your seed starting trays and put them under fluorescent lights or in a windowsill.

Here you can see my pepper seeds that I started this morning:

Once I get home tonight, I’ll write today’s date on each of the bags.

Oh, BTW, I’ve been able to source the jalapeno and habanero seeds from a local gardener and will be pre-sprouting them tonight as well.  I had called around to a number of nurseries and garden centre with no luck.  Eventually, I remembered there was a hot pepper store out in Navan, ON called Chilly Chilies and, once I called, I found out that they have all kinds of pepper seeds for gardeners.  Neat!

I got the boxes at Solutions and they are called Keeper Flexible Sealware with Japanese writing on the top. They’re a perfect shape, 8.5″ x 6″ x 6″, for my seed packets.

All of my seeds are in 4″ x 5.5″ craft bags from the dollar store.  Most of my seeds are in larger envelopes that fit perfectly into the craft bag.  Some seeds that I’ve received are in smaller envelopes and baggies.  For these ones, I cut up old file folders into 8 cm x 12 cm pieces to use as stabilizers in the craft bag.

Right now all my seeds are in alphabetical order, which made sense to me in the beginning.  Whenever I wanted a particular seed, I just went to the corresponding box and shuffled through it until I found the one I wanted.

But now I’m thinking that’s not such a great idea.  Maybe I should organize my seeds the way Skippy’s Garden does it – by sowing date.  I mean, who cares if it’s in alphabetical order if you miss the week that you’re supposed to sow it?  Doesn’t it make more sense to organize your seeds by sowing date rather than the alphabet?