Spring is officially coming soon: I started tomato seeds yesterday

I have to admit, I think I’m pretty clever. I took 3 seemingly unrelated items and made something really clever and useful out of them – tomato seed starting greenhouses!

1) We’ve been saving containers and finding other ways to reuse them. Because of this we have a collection of plastic bottles in our garage. Not too original or clever in itself.



2) Chris and I went to our local sushi restaurant yesterday, and we were commenting on how you’d think sushi restaurants would invest in chopsticks they can wash and reuse instead of the wooden chopsticks. We then said that we need to put some reusable chopsticks in each of our cars’ gloveboxes so we can use them when we go out to eat… Anyway, I didn’t want to just throw away the “disposable” wooden chopsticks, so I had this grand idea to take them home and reuse them (not with food), but to either to stake something small or to poke holes in soil.


3) I went to our local Goodwill store a few weeks ago and spotted a 6-pack of 4” peat pots for $0.99. (cringe) For some reason I just HAD to save them from the store, rationalizing that they weren’t being sold by a large corporate retailer and that it was ok to buy them from Goodwill. (Yeah, I still have no idea how I did this.) I certainly won’t be buying any more peat pots because of environmental concerns, but these are really nice. Really nice. Now I can see what all the fuss about these pots is about! What a great way to start seedlings. Gardeners.com has cow manure “peat” pots, but I take issue with their exorbitant shipping charges and them not allowing me to use the free shipping coupon I received in the mail. Oh well. Their loss.

Step by Step Tomato Seed Starting, by Katie

I filled the little pots with a soil mix of my own creation. Composted organic potting soil, vermiculite, perlite, and orchid peat mix. Man, this stuff can hold moisture and drains really quickly too! I mixed in a little chicken poo fertilizer for nitrogen and crushed eggshells for calcium as well.


Using the chopsticks, I rounded a little ½ inch deep well and placed two seeds in it. Then I covered them up and watered well.




I took a plastic bottle and cut the plastic wrapper off. I plan to save the wrapper for future use where water repelling is needed. I’m on the kick that everything can be reused somehow…


I cut the bottom off of the bottle at the point where the straight side meets the bottom cap. This gave me a nice container to hold the 4” pots so they won’t leak water on my windowsill.




Then I cut notches in the bottom of the bottle. This helps in tucking the bottle into the pot, creating a mini-greenhouse (this takes a little patience to get just right).


I assembled the mini-greenhouses and put them in the sunny windowsill of my south-facing Garden Room.


The thing I love about these pots that go straight into the ground is that they can accommodate a larger, more well-established plant when transplanted. Perhaps that means I can get tomatoes earlier than July this year…but then again last year I didn’t even get my seeds until March and had to start everything outside…

I cannot wait for spring! 65 days!