Frugal Home and Health: Starting Seeds

I'm going to share a series of photos ... like I said in the last post, I am really behind this year but thankful that I have a system in place already. I had to adjust my system just a tad since I was in a hurry, and I'll show how it all unfolded in the photos:

The first photo is a general overview and reflection of the chaos that's inside my head. And since I am totally not capable of only doing one thing at a time, I was also making dessert for our family meal tonight, canning chicken bone broth, getting tax stuff ready for 4 different people, and other stuff that I forget now. Normally all of my seed and gardening boxes are nice and tidy, but in the process of moving two years in a row DURING the start of gardening season, I was happy to just have everything in the same spot. Several attempts had been made to get things in order, but other priorities came knocking ... like my oldest son's wedding ... and unexpected trips out of town ... and my 3rd grandchild being born ... and family coming to visit ... and my mom and stepdad MOVING here [!!!!!!] ... and ... and ... and ...
I'm so thankful that I have been settled here at my new place for almost a year and see no plans of moving ever again, unless it's to a new house on the same property.
Anyway ... here's the picture:

The photo below is a close up of the rows in the photo above. Each row has an index card that helped me organize the seed packs. Since I am already BEHIND in starting seeds, the first row on the left is the row that MUST GET STARTED NOW!!!! Some of the seeds should have been started a month or so ago, but most of them should have been started last week. I am posting this blog post a day or two AFTER I actually did this, so hopefully I am now on track ;)
Note: just because I have them in the rows does NOT mean I will actually plant them all. This is just the way I 'brainstorm'. The final decisions will be made in a few steps.

The next step: I took everything from the first row on the left and pushed it all up top to empty floor space. After that, I organized them even more ... basically flowers, herbs, peppers, and other stuff.

Life has been way too crazy and we have NOT had a chance to get to my favorite garden supply store yet this year. Normally we try to go in January or February to beat the rush and stay ahead of the game, however with all the stuff going on so far this year it has just not happened yet. THANKFULLY I still had 4 new tray inserts [72 cells in groups of 6] left over from last year AND a full bag of organic seed starting mix [a really big bag]. I washed the bottom trays, too, because they were used last year. Since I am limited to 4 trays right now, I had to make do ... and am actually glad because it helped set a boundary. SOOOOOOOO, below is pictured the first "rough draft" of what and how much ...

Second draft of what and how much...

And the final draft of what and how much :) Because I now have things finalized, the next step is to make the tray markers. I put DOTS on the markers to indicate how many of each I have planted. To keep it even more simple, I do things in multiples of 6 ... since that's how the tray inserts are made. You might have noticed the two at the bottom? Those are milkweed (common and pleurisy) ... they need to go in the refrigerator for a few weeks before camping out with the other starts. And the Moringa ... I've never grown that before and am going to attempt to grow it in a pot so I can bring it indoors during the colder months. We'll see.

With the remainder of the seed packet rows: I put them all into their own ziploc bag with the index card facing out so I can see when I need to start the next ones. The ones on the left can be started outside any time now ... but my kitchen garden has not yet been finished, so I'm patiently waiting :) The bags will then go into the plastic shoe box like I shared in my post about 5 years ago. I will also add a few more bags because this is only what needs to be started inside (besides the stuff on the left that can go outside right now). As in my older post, I will still be adding ziploc bags for what needs to be direct-sown after danger of frost, as well as what needs to be started inside for fall planting and all of the cold weather stuff that can be direct sown in the fall.