Starting flowers from seed indoor....

[Tussiemussies]

In the past whenever I tried to start flowers indoor from seed they never sprouted. My vegetables do reasonably good although not 100%. I use the same technique for all following the package directions. Sometimes I find the packaging misleading. Once I wanted to plant snapdragons outside so I followed the package where it directed to cover lightly with soil and nothing grew. Then I was talking to a fellow gardener who told me that the seeds should not be covered at all that they need full sun to germinate.

Does anyone here start flowers indoor with good success? Thank you.

[Birdie]

I have recently started flower seeds but I put them on a heat mat indoors until they germinated. Then I moved them outside in the filtered sun until they were large enough to plant into a 4 inch pot. I found they took a LOT longer than vegetable seeds, which is all I had tried to start before. Most did germinate but some look up to 10 days or longer.

[Tussiemussies]

Thanks Birdie for sharing your experience!

[fidgiegirl]

Was it a special heat mat, Birdie, or something like a heating pad?

[iris lily]

Some seeds are dastardly difficult to germinate. I love snapdragons, but always purchased them as bedding plants. with one exception--there was one big deep red one that seeded itself year after year in my garden. So I didn't have any special knowledge about it, it wanted to propagate itself badly enough to always grow.

[Birdie]

I use heat mats specifically for starting seeds. They are vinyl coated electric mats that are either the size of one seed starting tray or double to hold 2 trays. I have both sizes since I start tomatoes and peppers, etc for my own garden and our demonstration garden too. Here is a link to one on Amazon.com that I own.

http://tinyurl.com/oqltkau

[Birdie]

While I haven't done this, I know that you can put your seed trays on top of the refrigerator or in another warm spot. You don't need bottom heat though the seeds start quicker with it. Peppers take less than a week to sprout vs 10 - 14 days without.

As a vegetable gardener, over the years I have gotten better tools to start my seeds every winter. I have multiple starting trays and use seed starting mix in the trays. I have a large supply of 4 inch pots that I transplant the seedlings into when they are big enough and I have 2 four foot grow lights on a rolling chrome rack. Last fall I added a small (6x8) double walled greenhouse which I really enjoyed having and got a lot of use out of since we had a record cold winter.

For a small garden it is cheaper to buy vegetable starts for $1.95 each in the spring. But as a hobby, I enjoy starting all my own seeds.

[Tussiemussies]

I have a rolling rack that was designed to be a mini green house. It has a piece of plastic that goes over the whole rack and I usually put it in the smallest room in the house with an oil heater we have and crank up the heat. My veggies do pretty well with this. Sometimes we have lived in homes where I couldn't fit the mini greenhouse in a small room so I bought cafeteria trays to put my starter cells on and just put them in the room with the heat up high.

A lot of flowers you just cannot get at nurseries. I really wanted double impatiens and I think I got like two out of a bunch of packs.

Have you noticed Lowes not selling that many seeds this year?