Sowing My First Flower Seeds Of The Season 🌱🌱🌱

It's the moment we have all been waiting for. Yes, it's seed sowing day today. It's March finally. I'm going to sow coleus, pansy, petunia, lobelia, geranium, dahlias and foxglove. So yes, it has snowed. It has been frosty. It has been cold. It has been raining. It has been winter. It still is winter but it is March and I said that I would wait till March and it killed me to wait till March but March is here. So let's do some seed sowing. I have these which are the self-watering seed starting kits which I bought online. I have lots of them. Brand new, nice and clean from a company called Garland and made from 100% recycled material. You can't get better than that. Each tray has 24 cells. I'm going to divide that in half so in each tray I would have two different types. Now this is all an experiment because I've been so keen to try straight into my greenhouse. Will it work? Will it be warm enough? I don't know but I will not know unless I try. If this doesn't work, maybe next year, I will end up with grow lights and all that wonderful system which is not a bad idea at all. I have John Innes seed sowing compost specifically for seeds because it's nice and fine. Mix it all up together. It's actually very moist already. I'm going to add a little bit of water. So when you squeeze it, water doesn't come out but it does clump together. That's how we want it. I've been wanting to do this for such a long time. We're going to press down each one like that a little bit more. That's number one done. As I say I'm going to do four trays and I have four heat mats and I've been dying to try it out straight in the greenhouse. Now it will work or it won't work but I will not know unless I try how successful it is and should it be the case that it doesn't work, it's too cold, then I'll know for another time too. How's that for calculations? Perfect and I even have special little baby tools which I got for Christmas in a little seed packet kit from my friend Tina. So they'll be good for little dibbers. As I say I'm pairing them up so the same ones go in a tray where there is the same germination rate and I'm going to look at the back of the packets each one to see how deep you need to sow them. Some of them just put them on the top, some of them quarter inch deep, half inch deep, so I will go through all that. They are all planted, they are all labelled and I've covered them over where it says to cover them because some of them says just lightly on the surface, some of them are so tiny, tiny. Anyway I've got some vermiculite, yes I have some vermiculite because I have seen that a lot of people cover them with vermiculite, it seems to work really well for them so I'm going to try that. Apparently I believe this stops mould, it's what all the good gardeners do, so it's what I'm doing and it retains moisture as well. Lottie's come to see what I'm doing, she's always very curious. Lucy's just always asleep but Lottie always wants to be where I am, she's very loyal. Lucy, she don't care. Right vermiculite is done and I'm going to give them all a good soaking of this, but the soil was already moist. They're little trays which they're going in and the humidity dome stays on until we have 50% germination, success rate of germination and we don't even do any self-watering until the plants are up and running, so not yet, you don't do that yet. I really like these trays, I'm hoping we have some success. Nice and snug, it's all nice and neat and tidy. So humidity domes are going on and the final stage is going to be the heat mats. Now this is the bit that I've been looking forward to, this is the bit that I'm hoping will make it work for me, doing it straight in my greenhouse. So these are my heat mats I have, they're called Lurwee. A product is designed to warm the root area by 10 degrees Fahrenheit to 20 degrees Fahrenheit above grow room temperature. Warning, do not immerse in water, do not allow to sit in standing water, do not place heat mat inside grow medium and do not place on objects which may puncture the heat mat. So I think that's all we need to know, I'm not quite sure how long the leads are because I have electric in my greenhouse which Richard really really kindly did for me. So I'm going to keep these on their heating mats until they germinate or maybe 50% germinates and once they've germinated they don't need heat mats anymore and we can take the domes off, the humidity domes. Right that's it, now let's see how long this is, let's see how long it is, yes that's good. The heat mats are in, underneath here we have the heat mats, there we go and they are nice and warm and the other two are over here under their nice warm heat mat which plugs in just down here, thanks to Richard for putting me some electric in. So my seeds are sown, they are in their little little trays on the heat mats which do feel, yes they do feel a little warm and we don't need to do any of the self-watering yet, apparently we have to keep the humidity domes on until about 50% of the seeds have germinated then we take those off, then we do the self-watering once the plants are up, once there's sign of life that we can start the self-watering. I will also, I have four of these which are old milk cartons and what I'm going to do is fill them up every night with boiling water, just put them in the bottom because obviously heat rises and hopefully that will help the greenhouse maybe stay a little bit warmer, so I'll do that and I never want to be the person who's saying this is how you do things, this is just what I am doing in my garden and if it works it works, fabulous, if it doesn't work then maybe this time next year I will be having an indoor starting kit with lots of grow lights but I will never know if it works or not unless I try, will I? So let's keep this greenhouse as warm as I can and see what happens. So thank you for watching, I will sow some more seeds probably in a week's time and do a succession of seeds, I have lots of other nice seeds to sow, lots of flowers and some more vegetables so that will be fun. So thank you so much for watching and take care and I will see you very soon, bye!