I find it hard to believe, but this blog has been going for {almost} a year, and it’s seed-starting time again! Where has the time gone? Such is life … the seasons come and go, then return once more. I appreciate them all the more when they’ve been gone. I’ve even missed watching sprouts grow in my living room, although things this year will be more contained {more on that later in this post}.

We made a plan for our first seed-starting day of 2024. The Agenda? Plant the essentials: tomatoes, peppers, and lettuce. Of course, we had to fuel up beforehand with a Chick-fil-A lunch {I am slightly addicted to their lemonade right now, ha}, even more important since I had to work a half-day in the library before I could play in the garden. Thankfully the weather played nice and though a bit windy, it felt like early spring.

After experimenting with soil blocks over the summer, we decided to go ahead and take our chances using that method for starting our spring seeds. It’s much more compact for the sprouting stage, since they have to live in our house, and we were very impressed with how happily the plantlings transplanted.

We also are experimenting with different soil block sizes: the tomatoes we started in the 2-inch blocks, and lettuce and peppers went in the smaller 3/4-inch blocks. Once the peppers have some growth on them, we will up-plant those smaller blocks into a new set of 2-inch blocks. {In the future, we hope to add the big 4-inch block and be able to up-plant the tomatoes into those bigger blocks before setting out}. As you can see, the 3/4-inch blocks are so small they were falling through the bottom of the tray, so we had to add some cardboard. But they sure are cute!

Once we got all the blocks made, it was time to plant the seeds! Huzzah! We ended up planting 7 varieties of tomatoes: the 5 we planted last year + 2 new small/cherry-type varieties. I cannot wait for that first fresh tomato of the year, I’m missing that flavor something fierce. Only 2 varieties of pepper this year, but we definitely made sure to include nadapeños again! Not only are they absolutely delicious fresh from the garden, but they freeze really well too, so we’ve been able to treat ourselves to stuffed peppers periodically this winter. And we planted some lettuce, because homegrown lettuce just tastes better, y’all. We will plant multiple rounds of lettuce as the spring continues, so hopefully we’ll have fresh salads for some months to come.

In addition to starting our seeds in soil blocks, our other big change this spring is the addition of an indoor greenhouse! The rack fits perfectly in front of the door {don’t worry: we don’t use that one}, so the plants will get southern exposure sunlight, without having to spread out on multiple tables and surfaces. We’re leaving the clear cover off for now, but if humidity control becomes an issue, it’ll be easy to slip over the frame.

The shelves are nice and roomy too, so even when we up-plant the peppers to bigger blocks (and have to add extra trays to accommodate that), we should still be able to have everyone getting fairly even light exposure. Investing in some solid-bottom grow trays was a winning decision on our part, especially with this new system.

Another thing I love about the greenhouse rack is how easy to water/mist the seeds and keep up with how they’re growing. And yes, I said growing. It hasn’t even been a week yet and we’ve got lettuce sprouts stretching tall and proud, and very little coils of tomato sprouts are beginning to emerge! {The peppers are still thinking things over, but they’re notoriously slow, ha}.

After an exceedingly cold January, it feels so nice to be getting ready for spring (and summer) gardening. And I’m very excited to watch the sprouts appear and grow – stay tuned for updates on how the soil blocking experiment develops!

Have you started any seeds yet?