Pat Meadows wrote:

Two seed-starting questions...

1. How do you put small seeds in the little six-cell packs
(or whatever else you use)? Do you use a gadget for placing
seeds?

I shake the right number of seeds into a little glass
custard cup. Then I wet a pencil (ordinary pencil) and the
wet pencil point will pick up one small seed at a time. I
bought a little plastic gadget, but can't get the hang of
it.

I just shake a number of seeds out of the packets onto the palm of my
left hand and then put two each into each starting pot. You can always
pinch one off but two gives better odds of good germination. I have one
of those little plastic gadgets too. You just tap it with one finger and
guide the seeds out into the pots. Too clumsy for me so I do the palm
and finger thing.

2. How do you keep seeds?

I'm keeping them in their packets, but this isn't really a
terrific system - in the case of succession plantings, I'm
cutting a bit more off the packet each time (and
scotch-taping it together). Some of the packets will be
totally gone before very the end of the season!

At present, I'm keeping the packets in photo-pages in an
album - the pages into which you slip a 4'x6' photo. This
works fairly well. But I'd welcome other ideas.

Pat

I keep some in their packets and some in paper coin envelopes. You can
get about a zillion coin envelopes for a couple of bucks at an office
supply store. I don't cut the packets down, I scotch tape the opening
shut, that way I have all the data on hand. The coin envelopes can be
written on on both sides. I also ship seeds to friends in coin
envelopes, don't weigh much and ship easily. All seeds are kept in a
plastic one-gallon container that sits on the bottom shelf of our
refrigerator. To keep from pawing through the whole thing to find
specific seeds I use those cheap storage boxes like Gladware. One for
ordinary veggies, one for chiles, one for flowers, etc. Those fit inside
my gallon container and the lid fits on top of that. Seeds stay cool,
dry, and easy to get too. It may be a little anal retentive but it works
for me. HTH

George