How Starting Seeds Of Vegetable Plants - By Following My Step By Step Photographs And Instructions... Will Maximise Your Success

Place some peat into your sowing station and if possible have a sieve available. I made this sieve myself from four pieces of wood nailed together and 6mm(¼") wire mesh nailed to the edges.

Here I am using a small tray or flat for starting seeds. I'm not sowing the vegetable seeds in large quantities so this will be plenty big enough.

Overfill the tray with peat.

Using your fingers just gently prod them into the peat to make sure that there are no spaces below the surface of the peat, especially around the edges and in the corners. Don't press down too hard as you will not want to compact the peat.

Overfill the tray again with peat and this time give the tray a little shake and a couple taps on the bottom of the seed sowing station to settle the peat into the spaces on the surface - don't press the peat down at this point.

Get a small piece of wood as illustrated above and placing it on the top edges at one end of the tray just slide it along the top and slice off the excess compost.

Once that is done you will have a nice clean 'canvas' on which you will be starting seeds - just one more step to go though before you sow. Take your length of wood and gently press down the peat over the whole area of the tray to about ½" below the top - well done... you've completed this stage - give yourself a pat on the back.

Apart from a sieve, what you see here are the 'tools' I use for starting seeds. Essentially a seed planting station, peat, a tray for the peat and vegetable seed to be placed into and two sizes of wooden baton for large and small trays (or flats). If your wondering, the white envelope was just to act as a background to the photos to give a greater contrast to the tray profile - I'm not really geekish ;-).

Here is the tray (or flat) prepared and ready for starting seeds and in this tray I am planting seed of the brussel sprout vegetable. I am sowing seed of two different varieties - one will crop earlier than the other so giving me an extended harvesting period into the following year.

You should be able to make out where I have sprinkled the vegetable seeds over the surface of the peat/compost. Also, take note how I have divided the tray in two by using a plant label as a seperator through the middle. The seed has not been sown too closely together to prevent overcrowding.

When starting seeds it is good practice to label them. As you can see here I have made a plant label clearly showing the: date of sowing, the type of vegetable, the vegetable variety and the expected cropping period.

To finalise the second stage I now use my home made sieve to sprinkle peat over the seeds so seed growth can begin. The final depth of the seed can be found from seed packets but as a rule of thumb the larger the seed the deeper you will set them. Very fine seed will not need to be covered at all but just pressed into the surface.

Your sown vegetable seeds will now need to be watered prior to placing them in their final resting place where they will germinate. I don't like watering from above when starting seeds as the danger is the water dropping from above will be too harsh and disturb or even wash out the seeds. My prefered method is to get a large tray - a cat litter tray is ideal (as above) partially fill with water then place your seed tray onto the water ensuring you have not filled it enough to overflow over the surface of the seed tray.

I place my completed seed trays in a heated propagator in my greenhouse. I like to cover them with a piece of glass to keep in the moisture and warmth, so I place the plant labels down the edges of the trays on the appropriate sides. When the seeds are begining to germinate I remove the glass and place the labels in an upright position. Placing a piece of glass on the tray is not necessary so don't be too bothered by this. Keep the trays moist but not water logged.

The picture above shows the brussels sprout seedlings begining to grow. The leaves that are showing are not true leaves but are what are termed the seed leaves and are what the plant fed off as it germinated. Once a couple of true leaves have grown I will pot-on into a bigger tray or more likely into seperate pots as mentioned earlier.

Here is another example of a tray of germinated seedlings. These are purple sprouting broccoli.