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I thought that I’d pass this tid-bit along.

A couple months ago in my quest for eating healthy, I bought a Micro-Green germinating tray and a pound of seeds. The tray has a bottom that holds water and then a perforated tray that fits over the bottom and then a clear cover to hold the moisture in.

Well, germinating the Micro-Greens worked great but pulling them out and trimming them for a salad was way too much work. But, I thought that if the tray can germinate Micro-Greens, it should be just fine for flower seeds.

Yup, started with a variety of Sunflowers, Zinnias and Marigolds. All germinated in a few days to a week. I had put a layer of kitchen paper towel down on the bottom of the perforated tray to keep the tiny seeds from falling through to the bottom, but found that some types of seeds, pretty much as soon as they germinate, try to dig their root down into the soft paper towel which makes them difficult to transplant to dirt-cups for the next stage of their life.

So I started using normal white copy paper. The roots just grow/expand along the surface so that you can pick up the new plant with plastic tweezers for transplanting. The advantage of germinating the seeds in the tray is that you can see the germinating growth rate, monitor the moisture level and get a much better percentage of germinated seeds compared to just putting them in dirt. I transplant them to small plastic “Solo” cups with soft potting soil (the cups have a hole drilled in the bottom, and then after they have grown for a couple weeks and the roots are established, transplant to normal size Solo cups (with holes) Then a couple weeks later, to the ground.

This would work very well for most any vegetable too. I removed the seeds from an elderly Russian Black tomato a few weeks ago, (I put the tomato seeds in a screen colander, wash them with dish soap to remove the goo and then put them out in the sun to dry), put the dried seeds in the germinating tray and I now have 100 Russian Black tomato seedlings growing in Solo cups. No idea what I am going to do with them all but it was fun doing the process.

I’m in mid-Gulf Florida so I’m trying to get all the outside “farming” work out of the way (1/4 acre canal house) before it gets too hot/humid here. Lots of new flowers growing in the four flower gardens that were formerly grassed yard when I moved here last April. The soil here has lots of silica in it so you really have to blast the water hose into the soil to get it down and mixed. Dish detergent helps to break the surface tension at the beginning of the growing season.

By using the germinating tray, you can have a constant fresh supply of seedlings/flowers as the old one’s die off. Perfect for Sunflowers…Bob