Getting garden soil prepared to start your seeds.

[Bobberman]

I strained about 20- 5 gallon buckets of my garden soil and put it into my solar greenhouse to be used in Jan. My problem is getting the weed seeds to die. Will the weed seeds die if the soil is covered and slightly wet in the buckets ! Most of the grass roots were taken out by the strainer! I will take this soil and mix it with sand and mushroom compost to make my own seed mix that has all the garden worms ect to help the seeds grow better. I don't just start the seeds but leave them grow till they are about 6 to 9 inches high before I trans plant them to other containers . I am talking mostly tomatoes and peppers! Any suggestions?

[PaulF]

I would never use garden soil for seed starting. Soilless mix is all I use. There are many sites on the web for seed starting methods you can explore. While your method may work just fine, this is the first I have heard of letting seedlings grow to plant out stage without transplanting just after the two true leaf stage. Interesting concept. How about photos of the process?

[imafan26]

Weed seeds are not always that easy to kill. I have to sterilize my used potting media because even when I allow the soil to dry out, the weeds continue to sprout.

[rainbowgardener]

It isn't how I start seeds indoors either. But after all plants do grow when seeds are just planted in the ground and left alone. To let them grow out like that, you would have to give the seeds a lot of space or else do a lot of thinning.

I can't think of anything you could do to kill the weed seeds that wouldn't kill the earthworms and other life of the soil, that are apparently part of your reason for using garden soil. But you are talking about a confined space and tomato and pepper seedlings are quite distinctive even at the cotyledon stage. So it doesn't seem like it would be such a big deal to just pull weed seedlings as they appear.

[applestar]

I think the way to eliminate some of the extraneous weed seeds would be to spread the soil out, compact gently, water and cover with plastic -- exactly as if you ARE planting seeds. Then you can hoe, dry out, or pull the weed seedlings that emerge... Then "rinse and repeat"

I suppose covering with black plastic will give them warmth to germinate, but deny them the light to grow strong... But you'll have to lift the plastic to see what's going on.

Do you have enough room in your greenhouse to do this?

[Bobberman]

I do thin the plants by transplanting them into flats but leave about 3 dozen in the styofoam grape containers to transplant directly into the garden. I get some weeks like last year but have very sturdy plants. I do some seeds in all bought soils but they seem to dry out faster and I do not get to the greenhouse sometimes 12 by 18 about 5 inches deep for 5 days! I inclose the Styrofoam containers in a white garbage bag and put a few holes in the bottom! The problem I noticed with the Styrofoam containers is that it takes a long time to heat the soil because of the Styrofoam! That makes it hard to heat it from the bottom!Using warm water helps since the Styrofoam holds the heat for awhile! The heat chamber should solve the problems!

[DoubleDogFarm]

The main reason, for me and maybe nurseries, for not using soil is the weight. Try lugging 500 plants to the Farmer's Market with soil in the containers. Ain't gonna happen!


Eric

[Bobberman]

About 30 years ago I had a real small greenhouse and planted my tomatoes in garden soil mixed with Styrofoam beads and it turned out to be the best plants I ever grew. You could by the bb type Styrofoam in big bags about 4 feet long real cheap. The beads are the size of a bb for a bb gun. They melt them and make 4 by 8 sheets of all thicknesses. The foam made the soil containers very light and the roots seemed to grow well! The beads are bad for the environment so I quit using them!

[rainbowgardener]

Congratulations on considering environmental impact of what you do. Last year I switched from peat moss to coconut coir in my potting mix, because peat moss is a non-renewable fossil resource that is mined. This coming year I'm going to switch from perlite to rice hulls in the mix, because the perlite is mined and then heated to 1600 deg to expand the rock. If I don't like the rice hulls, another renewable alternative is processed corn cobs. I do think we all should be paying attention to the effects on Spaceship Earth of the things we do. We don't have another planet!