Hello everyone,

I am BlackLion. I hope to document my adventures in permaculture by picture and story here on this blog. I am new to the Principles of Permaculture, yet I will do my best to adhere to my ethical and ecological intentions in this process.

In any event, today I planted my first seedlings. With a seedling tray that holds 72 cups, I filled each one with a paper cup that I created using newspaper. I used a strip about 4″ wide by one newspaper page width. Then I used a shot glass to wrap them around (between ample shots of tequila, rum, jagermeister, kahlua, pine sol, and compost tea, yuck! – j/k the liquid would have spilled out if I really used any) to make little cups.

Turning over the shot glass onto the open end, I then folded the flap in and proceeded around 4 or 5 times to make sure it tucked under and stayed closed. I rolled the base on the table to make sure the folds I made were firmly in place, then tucked each one into the tray, making sure the bottom wasn’t open.

I looked down into all of the cups to make sure there weren’t any flaps that had sneaked open while I wasn’t looking.

Next I took some organic premium soil (Dr. Earth Mother Land Premium Soil – fyi the bag is kinda heavy 😉 ) and moistened it with water in a bucket, enough to make it like spongy moist earth right after a fresh spring rain shower – perfect for little seed friends. Here’s the tray and the bucket o’ soil:

I filled each cup with a couple scoops using a chip of wood that scooped about half-a-cup’s worth per scoop.

After filling each cup with moist soil, adding water to the tray to be absorbed from below by the cups, and then picking up T from lacrosse practice, I sat down and added a whole bunch of seeds to the cups. Here’s the breakdown:

Rows I – VI: Cosmonaut Volkov OG Tomatoes. I put 3 seeds into each cup and with 36 cups x 3 seeds = 108 little potential tomatoes for our upcoming Hugelkultur and some seedlings to give out to the community. These are gonna be August early plump juicy tomatoes, great for eating off the vine or making lots of salsa!

Rows VII – XII: Ovation Greens Mix. The package said to put ~60 seeds in a 2″-4″ wide strip about a foot long. I did some quick math and figured I could put 4 seeds in each 1.5″x 1.5″ cup in a strip of 6 cups or about 9″. Could have done 5 per cup (may have a couple times), but either way I’m looking forward to some greens in the next couple weeks. I wanted to get a jump on spring planting this year since Maine has such a short growing season.

Here is the finished seedling tray, with water underneath in the tray, and a clear plastic cover to keep in the moisture:

The ideal temperature for germination is about 75-85 degrees F, yet our house is on the cooler side hovering around 65 or so, depending on the night time lows. I’ll just be patient and let them grow at their own pace.

Up next, another tray, some garlic chives to plant and I will chat about my new LED grow light for these little seedlings (when they pop up and show their green little faces).

Until next time…Blessings!