Took some time to face the chaos of seed packets I have on hand. Most are from previous years when I ran out of time to actually start seeds — this is one area where my eyes are regularly bigger than my stomach, so to speak.
They should still mostly be viable, though, so I hesitate to give up on them. I think I may end up giving away a lot of seed packets this year, though, because I really don’t have the capacity to plant this many.
Nonetheless, there was prep to do. I started by checking the back of the seed packets and labelling them clearly: 2 weeks, 4-6 weeks, 6-8 weeks, 8-10 weeks, after last frost, as soon as soil is warm enough to work. I bundled those into little rubber-banded packs.
Then I checked farmer’s almanac for last frost date — April 17 for my region. Then I started calculating back the Saturdays from there, sometimes adjusting a bit for when I’d be out of town and need to plant a day or two ahead. Added dates to the packs, and now I just check every Saturday going forward, see if there’s seeds to start.
I’m a little confused about tomatoes, though. Most of my seed packets say to start tomatoes indoor 8-10 weeks before last frost. But the new set I got from Johnny’s says 6 weeks before last frost. I think all that means is that if I start them sooner, I’ll have to transplant them one or two times before it’s warm enough to plant them out? More thoughts welcome.
I didn’t think there was going to be anything to start right now, but I bought delphinium seeds for the first time, and they say 10-16 weeks ahead! We’re around 12 weeks now, so I guess I’ll be starting some delphinium seeds tonight…
First, though, I need to go through all the ones that don’t have clear dates on the backs and look them up and figure out when they’re supposed to be planted…some of the seed companies are oddly inconsistent about this.
