Starts for the Spring garden

Ten days and counting. Boy do I have spring-fever. We planted lettuce, broccoli, carrots and two kinds of peas Monday night in our starter trays and by this morning they had already sprouted and pushed their heads up through the soil. I will be moving them outside on the fourteenth. I tried two approaches to see which would perform better. Half the seeds went in a 72 cup Jiffy Greenhouse Kit and the other half went in biodegradable peat pots filled with seed-starting potting soil and covered with cellophane.

I found the Jiffy Greenhouse Kit cumbersome, but it does appear to be performing better than the pots I filled with soil by hand. The peat pellets in the kit are compressed and dehydrated and come as small wafers. Before use, you must rehydrate them with an eighth a cup of water and slice open the top of the fabric that holds them together so that you can get the seed inside. The raised plastic lid also appears to be regulating the humidity better than the cellophane on the others. The cellophane is also going to have to be removed once shoots get much higher than the edge of the peat pots.

The only real obstacle that I foresee is distinguishing between each of the plants while they are young as my toddler has removed my markers.