On Wed, 8 Feb 2012 11:07:45 -0600, "Snag" wrote:

http://www.leevalley.com/US/garden/p...=2,44713,40757

Those are really nice trays , but I'm looking for a cheaper alternative .
The clear plastic cups that sell for like a buck a hundred are more where
I'm looking .

The nifty trays that The Cook posted a link to are heavy duty,
expected to last several seasons. Unless you're overpaying, the
standard 10.5 x 21" 72-cell starter trays are in the sub-dollar range
(IIRC, about $0.79 or thereabouts at the local farm supply, and I'm in
the San Francsico region where everything costs more as a rule). They
handily have a matching size water tray and dome (additional
purchases, but reuseable - moreso than the germination trays
themselves). I splurge on the more rigid water trays, not the light
duty ones - they'll last much longer, and that means you get your
moneys worth out of them.

I make a written "cheat sheet" to identify what I planted where in the
trays - put a tray ID stake in the "home cell" (upper left corner),
and ID the columns as A-L, and rows as 1-6. i might plant the same
variety of something in A-C, then just 2 cells of something else
(D1-2), etc. I've also madea more graphical chart (cells for each of
the cells in the tray), but that was too much repetition of writing,
though was handy for noting different germination dates.

Cardboard and plex I already have , just need to cut it into
strips and notch it for interlocks .

Yea, I did that as dividers for a set of wooden seeding trays I made
(with weed barrier fabric and hardware cloth underneath). A neighbour
constructed a 3-car detached garage, and I glommed onto the cardboard
sheets which were used to separate the individual panels of the
segmented rolling doors - nice flat undecorated pieces of corrugated
cardboard. if you need a supply, consider contacting a local garage
door installer. MUCH nicer than messing around with breaking down
cardboard boxes of varying thicknesses and dimensions. When zipping
them across the tablesaw, bear in mind that cardboard is tougher on
the blade than oak...

I save TP and paper towel rolls, and cut them to length equal to half
of a TP roll (paper towel rolls = 5). These I arrange into the above
mentioned seeding tray, then fill up with soil. See following:

http://www.professional.org/snaps/in...ing/20110326a/
http://www.professional.org/snaps/in...ing/20110326b/

Aviary screen frame above the germination box so they don't get raided
by birds:
http://www.professional.org/snaps/in...ning/20110327/

The bean seedlings were transplanted into the garden just 4-5 weeks
after I seeded them in the tray.


I don't have the nifty ribbed trays like "The Cook", but I have about
_400_ of the circular plug trays (got them for free from a local
premium olive oil producer - they'd stacked a lot of them and they
stuck together, and when time is money, the effort to separate them
was more than they were worth - but I only need 10 per season, and
know that chilling them will separate them easily enough).