I'm getting ready to start my early season seeds and I thought I'd do a
little experiment this year so I got four different seed starting kit from
different places and I'm going to see if it makes any difference as far as
germination or seedling vigor health or anything like that this is the jiffy
seed starter greenhouse I'm just going to slide that off of there and you can see it's got these little peat
cells and underneath here we've got some plant food and some little plant labels
set those in there let's also go to humidity dome down here we're gonna use
my organic seed starting mix and just fill all of these trays up and then I'm
just gonna moisten this seed starting media ideally I would just take this
outside and use the soaker hose but it's really cold outside right now so I'm not
going to one thing I really do not like about some of these seed starting mixes
that you buy in particular at the big-box stores they've sat around so
long that they can actually become like hydrophobic and they just don't even
want to soak up that water so I let this jiffy kit sit and soak for a while and I
sprayed the top again with my sprayer for my sink and we're finally starting to
get a little moisture in there I'm gonna go ahead and plant these just make a
little planting divot in each cell the next kit is the Burpee self watering
system we've got some Illustrated instructions so our first step is to
remove all the parts from the watering tray this is our wicking system and
that we've got some plant tags in here and a germination sheet that is what's
going on here I don't think it's supposed to rip like
that and we have a burpee plant-ogram where I can write down everything that
I've planted so says we want to place all the pellets
flat side down so you can see they're kind of flipped around in there
so we're just going to make sure that they're all flat you can see like
just to give you a better example that's what the pellet looks like and we're
getting them all so they're sitting like that the next step is to add warm water
very slowly and evenly to the pellet as needed add the warm water to each of
these little pellets so if you can see in here these little pellets they've
soaked up I think most of the water that they're gonna soak up and then the
instructions say just to break up the soil which you can see they're still
pretty solid so I would just need to break these all up but this part pain in
the tuchus quite honestly so I'm getting very frustrated I've been
trying to break these little pellets apart for I mean I think it's been like
five minutes but it feels like a really long time I've used a similar
kit to this before and I don't recall having quite this much trouble getting
these broken apart I don't know this one just maybe sat around too long or what
the issue is but this is not incredibly user-friendly so once we got all these
cells filled up I had to remove some of the excess water from the bottom the
next part is actually take these out and place the trays or the stands rather in
here and then place fully moisten self-watering mat black side up on
raised support so this is not fully moistened yet but I will get some water
over here and do that and then just set those back on top and
then we can plant our seeds okay and then the last step is to put this
germination mat which basically works I I'm guessing in the same way that's like
putting plastic wrap over your seedlings would I think this is supposed to be all
one nice sheet I'm not sure why mine is shredding apart like this it is
compostable which I appreciate which is also probably why it's falling apart but
you just cover it up I'm gonna put that on my seed starting rack and fill up
that reservoir with water but that sheet that we laid down is supposed to wick
water up to the bottom of those trays and then the soil wicks it up to the
seedlings the next kit is from Gurney's and this has
humidity dome and like I said you just pop these grow plugs into the styrofoam
tray they already have a pretty good amount of moisture in them but once I
get everything seeded I'm gonna fill up this bottom reservoir with water and the
plugs will soak that up to the seedlings as needed and then they've already got
pre-dibbled planting holes so I'm just gonna pop the seeds right into those
holes I'm just gonna fill up that bottom reservoir with water we put the humidity
dome on and we're done and the final kit is from Parks it's very similar to the way
the Gurney's one was set up so reservoir tray with
a Styrofoam tray and these little grow plugs pop right in there I will just go ahead and
seed these as well these guys are a little smaller have to be
a little more precise and how I'm seeding these I'm gonna put the lid on
and this is vented so right now until these germinate I want to keep this on and
keep humidity high once they're up I can vent it and eventually take it off so
now we've got all four kits here planted and the humidity domes are put on the
one from Park seed the one from Burpee the one from Gurney's and this is the
one from Menards the jiffy kit make sure to check back because I'll be giving
updates on how all of the seeds are germinating and how the seedlings are
going as the season progresses