Anyone Buying New Seed ?

For small veggie type seeds such as chillies and tomatoes we use a seed sprouter. This can also be used for larger seeds.



We just lay the seeds, an inch or two apart on a dampened piece of kitchen paper in the sprouter and keep it in the kitchen. If your kitchen is cold you could keep it in a warmer room in the house.

As soon as they start to sprout we move it to a part of the worktop near the window. Each day just very lightly sprinkle some water on the paper. It doesn't matter much if you overdo the water as the sprouter has a drainage hole but don't soak the seedlings.

When they grow near to the top of the sprouter, an inch or two, you can transplant them into modules or small pots. No need to try and remove them from the kitchen paper. Just cut the paper with the seedling and plant both in the compost. The paper will eventually disintegrate.

That way you don't have to wait and wonder if a seed will be viable.

 

It doesn't work so well with the very tiny seeds that are more like dust but can work with larger seeds such as French beans.

Each layer of the seed sprouter has the drainage hole (in the top layer in the picture it is the red thing centre front. Each layer is separate so that you can just have one layer or as many layers as you want. I think they are sold with the base unit plus the three layers and make sure there is a lid.

 

Yes, that's right but you can use it for fewer. We use one layer for tomatoes and then pot on all the ones that look good and once we have got enough for what we want/need we then sell or give away the rest.

We do the same for chillies as our plants are very popular and can sell all we produce, but you can use a single lay for more than one type of seed. Being on kitchen paper makes it easy to separate them.

Of course, you can use the sprouter for it's original purpose of sprouting different types of edible salad stuff.