Prairie glow acres

Hello fellow northern gardener! 

I’m so happy you’re here and you are wanting to learn with me about how to create the garden of your dreams all from seeds you start indoors.

Now, on to my tips! 
Starting with the most important part, light!!! 

It’s very important to have enough light for your seedlings at the right height. This is about a maximum of 3” above your seedlings at all stages. 

I use just twine tied in bows to hang my lights so I can adjust them to get higher as my plants grow taller.

I’ll also take the slide on “reflectors” off my grow lights as my plants get bigger and I need the light to reach farther across all seedlings.

In my latest reel, you’ll see I have one light in the centre of each rack, but in my actual setup I have 2 lights on each of the bottom 3 racks so I can cram in 2 flats of 72 cells on each shelf, with adequate light. 

GETTING STARTED GROWING INDOORS

What type of soil do I use? Seed starting mix. I have used all brands and I’m personally buying whichever is cheapest. I get mine at Home Depot, or Canadian Tire, or Rona.. 

For my personal setup, I use flats (the big black trays that all the packs fit into in garden centres) that fit six 12 cell packs into each. This means I have 72 cells per flat.

The reason I use this set up over soil blocking, is that my personal setup requires a lot of moving the plants around. I will pull out my trays to water, I move them around inside the greenhouses depending which like it cooler (bottom racks) and which like it warmer (top levels). I also put any slower to germinate seeds up higher, as they also like to have it warmer before they start to pop those first little leaves out, which are called Cotyledons. Then all my plants move out to the greenhouse or to cold frames or in and out of my garage to be hardened off. This whole rigamarole is not good for soil blocking. 

I am a huge supporter of doing things how they work best for you. Soil blocking is an excellent, low waste, and effective method of starting seeds too! So you can find links to those in my links below too!