Winter Seed Starting

Now is a good time to get a jump on your spring garden in Texas. We start seeds indoors about two months before the last expected frost. It is important to choose crops that work best in not only your climate, but for your soil type as well.

Our dining room had turned into our green room of sorts as we start our seeds indoors. We only do certain crops inside. We use a special soil to give our crops a boost. We first use compost for nutrients. Next we use potting soil for moisture and nutrients. The last part is sand for drainage. The recipe is one part compost, two parts soil, and one part sand from our garden since we have sandy soil.

The seeds we have started indoors are tomatoes and peppers. We are growing wild tomatoes and grape tomatoes. The wild tomatoes have been good to us. Even when the temperature hit over 100 degrees, they were going strong. They may not be the biggest and plumpest, but they handled the heat well and gave us plenty of tomatoes.

We have three types of peppers started. They are Redskin, Cayenne, and a custom hybrid of Anaheim. My husband has worked on the hybrid for the past few years. We always have such an abundance of peppers that we recently started making our own paprika. If you are interested in our process, you can read about it here.

Once the seeds start to sprout, we put spot lamps on them. We also start to acclimate them to the outdoors a little at a time. Initially they are placed outside for a couple of hours a day when the weather is good and the time is gradually increased.

When the time comes, we put them in the ground and wait to enjoy the fruits of our labor. My husband puts a cover crop around them and that has helped to retain moisture. It reduces the need for watering and the temperature of the soil.

Have you started any seeds indoors? What are you growing this year?

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