I have a lot of seeds from past years that I haven’t used so rather than buying new I am pre-sprouting them so that I can see how many are still viable to grow transplants for the garden this year. (this is a Chinese cabbage seedling that I transplanted to my garden last summer.)

After finally getting to it,  I’m wondering what took me so long, it hardly took 10 minutes and now I’m raring to get the rest of my indoor stuff ready.

I’m doing tomatoes and peppers now since those are the things that I need to plant the earliest to be ready in time for June planting.

It is probably earlier where you live so if you have some seeds laying around, you should get to it!

You don’t want to miss out this summer!

I have a growing table that I use, I’ll show it to you when I set it up, coming up soon!

here’s how…

I snapped a few pictures just in case you have some older seeds laying around and want to see how quick and easy it is.

Here are the pepper seeds before I put the top layers on…

And here are the tomatoe seeds I put in a different pan…

Here’s how I did it…

• I got an old pan that I had kicking around and lined it with plastic wrap
• then put a double layer of paper towels over that
• spritzed the paper towels
• put the seed in noting which kind it was
• spritzed again
• covered with paper towel
• spritzed again
• put a piece of some plasticy wrap stuff I had saved to protect the seed packs from moisture – you can use almost anything that won’t get wet
• laid the seed packs on top for labeling purposes and
• put a layer of plastic wrap on top to help keep them moist

Hopefully within a week I will see which ones are going to sprout and will be able to start the seedlings.

They do need to be kept moist and in a warm place but not in direct sunlight. If you are keeping them in sunlight for the warmth, cover them so that they don’t get the light right on them, it can burn them.

If you need a pan you can usually find cheap ones at places like Value Village or Salvation Army/New to You type shops – or at gramma’s! (the one I used for the peppers was my grandmothers :0)

a few extra’s can’t hurt…

BTW, if you have enough, why not do some extras for friends and relatives. Maybe you can even swap.

I had a lot of extras last year and took them to my local food bank.

It’s such a great way to save money, connect again with our food and to have ‘real food’ at hand.

a good reason why…

Here is a picture of a good reason why taken last summer…

Darn good eating!

Free and handy fresh out of the garden!

What was I doing with these?

Having breakfast!

Most mornings last summer I went out to the garden, choose what I wanted to have along with a few fresh eggs from the chicken coop.

The ‘shopping’ experience was one of the best parts of my day.

Bypassing the grocery store – priceless!

I will post some more about how I cooked them in a recipe post coming up.

if you don’t have seeds…

btw, if you don’t have any seeds, now is a good time to get some.

You can see a great selection of pretty much everything you could ever need at Richters.