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Start seedlings - PEM BB gardening.straw.startseedlings

BB gardening - straw badge

posted 1 year ago

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This is a badge bit (BB) that is part of the PEM curriculum. Completing this BB is part of getting the straw badge in Gardening.

It's convenient to purchase seedlings (baby plants in pots) from a nursery or home center. Often the selections aren't ideal for our location or they don't have much selection when we want organic seedlings. Inorganic seedlings have been nurtured with a chemical cocktail that we won't be replicating in our garden so they may not do well. Let's grow our own seedlings!

General seed starting video:

Natural seed starting pot options:

Minimum requirements:
- Grow 5 different types of culinary seeds into seedlings
- Annual, perennial or biennial
- Homemade natural pots - examples include:
- Newspaper
- Toilet paper tubes
- Soil blocks
- Cardboard egg cartons (not the best)

Provide proof of the following as pictures or video (<2 min):
- Raw materials for the pots
- Completed pots
- Seeds you'll grow
- Five different types of seedlings at least 3" tall

COMMENTS:

Christopher Weeks

master gardener

Posts: 3289

Location: Carlton County, Minnesota, USA: 3b; Dfb; sandy loam; in the woods

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posted 3 months ago

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I might as well be the Guinea pig!

Mike Haasl wrote:Provide proof of the following as pictures or video (<2 min):
- Raw materials for the pots
- Completed pots
- Seeds you'll grow
- Five different types of seedlings at least 3" tall

I experimented with four different kinds of 'home-made' potting for germination this year. Filling a partitioned shipping carton with soil and making paper pots failed -- the cucamelon and tomatillo both germinated fine but then failed to thrive. Luckily I have enough successes to satisfy this badge bit. I tried that spiral-planting thing that went around social media this year, though I didn't use plastic, and I also planted in toilet paper rolls, which I've succeeded with before.

The raw materials that I started with are pretty basic:

Here are seeds:

And five of the seedlings that are either with a tape measure or obviously tall enough:

chickpeas:

cucumbers:

runner beans:

sweet "garleek":

summer squash:

ETA: While getting this together, I realized I couldn't find a picture of the sweet garleek seeds and it looks like I planted the whole pack. So I'm adding a picture of the celery growing out of a TP tube, obviously over 3" so that I'm not at risk of edge-casing things...

03_a_celery.jpg