The 10-Minute Garden
Seed Starting Edition
One of the most popular ideas that I’ve shared has been my thoughts and tips around the 10-minute garden mindset. With social media it can be easy for me to lose sight of the fact that most of the people out there gardening are squeezing it into busy days with jobs and kids and a lot of other responsibilities (like I am). Most of the posts that I see on social media are content creator gardeners, homesteaders who sell fresh products, and market farmers who are farming for a living. This 10-minute garden mindset has been a savior for me since becoming a mom and has made gardening more fun despite expanding each year and putting more demands on growing our own foods.
Since this idea resonates with you all as much as it does for me, I’m going to be doing a series this growing season that will focus on tips for low-maintenance, low-stress gardening. Since March is when most of us kick seed starting into high gear, let’s start with tips for making seed starting a 10-minute or less per day activity!
If you’re still with me then you’re either about to start seeds or you’ve started seeds before and sworn to never do it again because of how much work it is. I’ll play out both sides of this argument -
FOR SEED STARTING
Seed starting is such a flex for me throughout the garden season. Sure, plants die. But the act of starting a seed provides a slow release of dopamine throughout the whole growing season that just hits a little different than buying starts.
It’s an exercise in intention. I typically have my kids with me when I’m starting seeds and it adds to the chaos but also provides me with this opportunity to talk about what I’m growing and how it will feed us. It’s like a blessing for the garden.
Finally, it’s an act of grounding in the winter when we are getting less outdoor time and when I personally tend to struggle to connect with nature. I recently lost a family member unexpectedly and the first thing I turned to while processing my grief was getting my hands in the soil. It’s a healing experience and connects us to the fact that we are nature, something a lot of us humans tend to forget.
AGAINST SEED STARTING
It’s a lot of work. End of argument.
Last year we thoroughly planned our garden around seed starting, started a few trays of things and then promptly let them all die. We found out that I was pregnant in February and then I proceeded to be bedridden with morning sickness and fatigue for the next 16 weeks. By the time I felt better it was time to be planting outdoors. So we bought starts. And we had an amazingly successful garden.
I tell this story because I do think that despite taking measures to make seed starting less maintenance (listed below) it’s a commitment to something every single day. Sometimes we cannot do that. I’m lucky to have my husband’s help and support but we still have trouble keeping up on the days when we both work. We don’t keep up with much of anything on those days.
Take stock of what your days look like and all that you need to manage and keep up with daily. Can you add something like seed starting or does it make more sense for you to buy starts?
START SEEDS OR BUY STARTS
We are often somewhere in the middle - we buy starts for things like peppers because we’ve noticed how much more successful the starts are compared with when we start them from seed. We also buy starts for plants that we only grow one of. It doesn’t make sense to take the time and space to grow a tray of something when when we ultimately are hoping for a single plant.
On the other side, we grow all of our tomatoes from seed. We grow a lot of tomato plants - between 50-100 plants each year - so it’s a major cost savings for us to start them from seed. We grow any unique varieties or our “go-to” varieties from seed so that we can ensure that we have them - you can’t always count on a greenhouse having specialty varieties or not selling out of something that is an absolute must-grow.
Time-Saving Seed Starting Tips
Follow these tips to help reduce the time you have to spend starting seeds and maintaining your baby plants.
Use a timer for your lights! Lights should be on for about 14 hours a day. Plants recognize patterns in light so it’s important to have consistency with your lights. Keeping the lights on for too long will also dry out your soil quicker and require more watering on your part.
Organize your seeds prior to starting any seeds. I use these dividers to organize my seeds by starting indoors or direct sowing outside and by the week that should be started. I don’t have to think about what seeds need to be started each Friday, I simply grab the rubber banded section of seeds that’s already grouped for that week.
Use a combination of compost and seed starting mix, or compost plus coconut coir and perlite. Most seed starting mix that you can buy at the store is great for water retention since that’s important for germination but it’s not great for providing young seedlings with nutrients. Using only seed starting mix means that you’ll have to pot up and transplant much sooner than if you used a compost based mix.
Choose one day a week to start seeds. It doesn’t have to be the same day every week, but by choosing one day you are doing the setup and clean up one time, not many times. The setup and cleanup takes about the same amount of time whether you’re starting one tray of seeds or three. This is especially important in the coming weeks when we will be starting more and more seeds.
Bottom water when you can. This is not only recommended for plant health but will help prevent soil fungus and will provide a slow-release of water to the roots of the plant throughout the day. It’s much faster to pour a bunch of water in the tray than it is to hand mist all of your seedlings.
Pay attention to how close your seedlings are to the light. You can put your trays really close to the light before seedlings sprout but then you should maintain about 6” from the top of the plant to the bottom of the light. This will help keep your soil from drying out too much but will also help your plants grow.
Work outside. I love starting seeds outside and carrying them inside. Clean up is basically non-existent! I also use this hack for hardening off - I will be potting up some of my spring brassicas this weekend because they’re looking gloriously large and I’ll do it outside to start the hardening off process.
What other tips would you add? Let us know in the comment section below.
Some quick housekeeping:
Thank you so much for reading :)
Wonderful and helpful tips! I had not thought of arguments for buying starts before for certain things and can def see the benefit now that you’ve described it. I like the picking one day for seeds too even just to ease some stress during the week thinking of seeds that need to be started. I had to restart all my pepper seeds and lost my celery seedlings due to over watering too… def a learning process!