It's great to find things with clear dome lids. they really hold humidity in, which is good until the first seedlings emerge.

Be sure to punch holes in the bottom for drainage!

It seems to me that if the tray or cup has biggish holes, and sits on a water-absorbent mat like cotton cloth, the bottom layer of soil mix drains better, which gives the deeper roots better aeration when I over-water.

And I like to add fairly coarse pine bark mulch chips & fibers (screened to around 1/8" to 3/8") for the same reason: encourage more water to drain out, so air can get to the roots. I don't like much peat or other fines in mt seed starting mix.

However, very fine seeds that need light and should be on the surface or barely covered NEED a fine surface, or they fall into crevices and never sprout. That's when I spread a little vermiculite on top of the shredded bark.

I eat soy yogurt and save the little cups for starting seeds and mixing paints and holding safety pins, etc.

They work very well for young starts and like Rick says you've got to punch drainage holes. Once I tried sprouting seeds in dozen egg cartons. I found they were too shallow and didn't allow seed start roots to wander and grow. It was obvious!

Egg cartons are perfect for rooting little succulent pups and also offer some insulation for the plants.

Rick,
That's a good tip about placing the flat on an absorbent mat. It probably wicks the water away from the soil, much like the earth does to a flowerbed...

Really nice tip!

Linda

I found some strudy plastic cups at the thrift store, think it was part of a game. Got 4 or 5 of them for a quarter and they already had holes in the bottom. The perfect container for starting seeds.

Tee, that's a great idea. I'll give it a try.

Thanks, Linda! Al (Tapla) gave me the idea, and yes, it is for pulling that perched water out of the bottom inch or so, giving the roots an extra inch or more.

But Al keeps reminding me that mats and wicks for pots are NOT as good as really really well-draining mix (and watering often).

So I keep trying to improve my potting mix by removing fines. In small cells only 1" or so accross (like a 72-cell tray) you can't use VERY big bark chunks! They don't fit well.

And seeds that need to sprout on the surface like petunias can't afford to fall into deep gaps between coarse chunks. I learned that last spring.

Off topic, I keep sabotaging sprouts by leaving them in shallow cells or cups too long, or even in 3" pots longer than their roots like. Partly I'm afraid to put them outside where slugs tend to mow them down, partly I never seem to have time when I need it, and partly laziness is always a factor.

Why don't soil mix recipies include a bushel of discipline as the most important ingredient?

Great tip, and thanks to Rick, too, for a tip within a tip!

Anybody else addicted to those dang Keurig one- cups? They're about perfect for this.

I eat yogurt for breakfast every morning so I generate a lot of yogurt cups. I use them for both seed starting and rooting cuttings.


My current dilemma is that I've switched to Greek yogurt, same size container (6 oz) but wider, more shallow cups. I don't like those cups as well for my plants so I need to find a different brand of Greek yogurt with cups shaped so that my plants will like them.

No fancy homemade potting mixes here. I just use a good professional mix, usually ProMix, for everything. If I want faster drainage, I just add a little perlite.

Karen

I still save lots of containers of all kinds, but for $1.00, at most dollar stores I get the different sized styrofoam cups.. some have 50-100 cups.. No transferring seedlings until ready to go out in the yard or large pots..

Larkie

Yep, I use cups from the dollar store, too. But for wintersowing, I think gallon milk jugs will always be my container of choice.



Karen

>> a tip within a tip!

Cute: what was that movie, "a dream within a dream"?

I have plenty of quart-size yogurt pots, but they are too big for most of my porpoises .

Ouch, Rick- now you're just fishing... don't try to pull that carp on us!

But you have to admit, Sheryl, that he has his cows trained well.

Karen

Good point, Karen. Saying otherwise would just be shellfish.

Karen

Mooo!

I mean: "EEEE! EEEEE!!"

I originally got that cow/dolphin photo as the punchline in a long joke ..., see if I can find it:

---

This is a very sensitive test to determine your occupational stress level from sensory clues.

A very-slightly-modified digital image of one dolphin has been pasted next to the original.

Tests have shown that more-highly-stressed people believe they can detect differences that are actually too subtle for normal people to detect. The numbers of differences that you imagine you can see in these two images accurately reflects your emotional and cognitive stress levels.

Close your eyes briefly and take several calming breaths before opening this JPG to minimize false readings.

0-2 differences - - - - - normal stress level
3-5 differences - - - - - stressed
6-8 differences - - - - - troops in active combat
8-12 differences - - - - - malfunction during carrier landing
>12 differences - - - - - (our current software project)

I'll have to show that to DH, I'm afraid he can relate to >12.....