
First off, go pick up a 72 pellet greenhouse at Lowes, Home Depot, Wal-Mart, the grocery store, wherever. I see them everywhere right now. If you’re like me, pick up 8 of them. I got mine at Albertson’s for 6 bucks. Basically, they are a tray with 72 soil pellets that puff up when you add water. Now you just need to buy some seeds. This is the fun part! Find the seed section and pick out some lovely flowers. I decided to only get perrenials because they come back every year, although there is always a larger selection of annuals. Seed packets are around a dollar each. You can do roughly 2 to 3 packets per tray. Total you will spend around $10. Not bad. Look on the back of the seed packet. Try to pick seeds that germinate in a similar length of time to put into one tray. That way they are all progressing similarly.


Dump your seeds out. Place 2 to 3 seeds in each individual soil section.


Place cover on. I like to tape on the seed packet so I remember what’s growing and have the outside planting specs handy. Guess how many plants I’m growing….576! Holy cow, I can’t wait to see them sprouting!
When small adult leaves start to appear on the stems, cut back all except the strongest seedling in the pellet. This will ensure that at least one plant in each pellet is exceptionally strong. You don’t want to plant these outside until the cold weather has passed and they are SEVERAL inches tall. Also, before you can plant them outside you must harden them (accustom them to a new environment) by gradually increasing their exposure to outdoor temperatures over about 2 weeks. Each day place them outside in the shade. At first leave them for a couple hours for a couple days then bring them back in the house. Then bump it up to maybe 4 hours in the shade for a couple days, 6 hours, etc. Eventually give them partial sunlight until you reach full sunlight. The result is you will have happy plants with thick, hardy stems.
My last piece of advice is to hurry and get started! If I had thought about it sooner I would have started my seeds back in March so they were almost ready to plant now. I worry about planting these in the hot, summer, Utah sun but hopefully if I harden them enough to the outside temps first they will do fine. But, now I know. Next March, I’ll do another 576 plants.