Sowing Flower Seeds Indoors: Geraniums, Snapdragons, Rudbeckia & more

Starting flower seeds indoors: Geraniums (pelargonium), snapdragons, rudbeckia, creeping thyme, rosemary, and onions.

My Amazon Storefront with many gardening products I use:
https://www.amazon.com/shop/monicakatiesgarden

0:00 Seed selection
1:07 Seed Starter Kit
3:21 Seed starting soil mix
4:01 Geraniums
6:04 Snapdragons and Rudbeckia
8:56 Rosemary, Onions, and Thyme
13:15 Germination update

today I starting some flower seeds indoors I have four different types of geraniums also called pelargoniums zonal geranium or scented geraniums I have the Maverick Quicks silver Maverick salmon Bullseye light pink and Maverick Apple Blossom I will also be starting some Snapdragon seeds I’ve got an orange Wonder an apple blossom uh candy tops red and I also have some redia seeds I’ve got a Cherry Brandy as well as a Sahara and both of these are very old these are from 2021 and so I’ll try to overseed these and lastly I have these creeping th seeds I was very excited to find these These are called Magic Carpet and these seeds are so tiny and I’m really surprised at how little there are in this package but we’ll grow every single one of these seeds so to start my flower seeds I’m going to be using these trays from Gardener Supply which is the grow ease seed starter kit and I bought two different sizes I got the 12 cell uh kit as well as the 24 cell kit and these are self-watering uh tray and I’m sure many of you have seen Laura from garden answer use these trays so to show you what comes in this kit you will have everything you need to start your seeds except for the grow lights um so this is the platform which will support your seed tray and you’ve got your seed tray some nice holes at the bottom and a sturdy tray and then you’ve got the water reservoir as well as your humidity Dome and your wicking mat so this will help water your seedlings and one additional feature is that the reservoir tray platform and the cell tray are all dishwasher safe if you wanted to sanitize your supplies now this platform you can turn it around and then you can use it to pop out your seedlings once you’re ready to get them out of the cells and Transplant so to set up the self-watering system you will want to put the platform inside of the reservoir tray then the black Side Up of the wicking mat and you will also want to make sure that a portion of that wicking mat is down into the water so that it can absorb the water up through the capillary mat and then water your ceilings that sit on top so for today I’m not going to be using that and I’m going to be putting the uh tray straight into the reservoir and then the Dome on top until the seedlings germinate at which time then I will go ahead and start using the self-watering system for my soil I am using some coconut core which I have sterilized in the microwave so I added here three parts of coconut core and also one part vermiculite and I’m also going to be adding some osac Co I’m only sprinkling uh a few tablespoons in here and this is a recipe that I got from the southerners Northern Garden um and I’m also going to be adding some mosquito bits which he did as well um to try and prevent fungus snats early on so I’m starting these geranium seeds on February 23rd and my last frost date is usually around May 10th so I’m at 11 weeks before my last frost geraniums are said to be slow growing and can take up to 15 to 18 weeks to mature and flour I’m only going to start six of each variety which will fit this 24 C tray since I don’t have much room I do hope to be able to keep these seedlings in these two in cells until I can get them outside in early May then I can take them outside and pot them up so that they can get bigger so I may not see flowers until the end of June or early July I have really started to love geraniums because I find that they are relatively easy to care for for and I can overwinter them so easily I want to try to propagate them this year in order to expand my collection and I also plan on probably growing some new varieties next year to add even more variety my plan to using all these flowers that I am growing this year is that I plan on filling my deck stairs with lots and lots of pots of different color geraniums I also plan on adding a three to your plant stand at the top stair landing and adding even more geraniums for display and I also want to include maybe some nice uh small varieties of Basil maybe some Bonas just create this beautiful array of flowers all up and down those [Music] stairs it is recommended to start snapdragons 10 to 12 weeks before your last frost so I’m just in time to get in these started snapdragons are also slow Growers and since it is best to pinch them uh when they’re about 3 to 4 in tall to encourage bushier growth these should be able to stay small and compact before uh getting them planted outside I will be putting in lots of seeds into each of these cells because I do plan on potting them up uh into something else once I see how many germinate and I really only want about maybe four to eight of each [Music] variety [Music] [Music] Johnny’s site recommends to start redia seeds 8 to 10 weeks before last frost so I am a bit early on these uh I might be regretting starting these a little early uh but I’ll have to figure out what I will do with them if they do get too big for me to keep inside I do have a popup Greenhouse tent that I could use maybe to get these outside a little earlier so now since these are pretty old uh 2011 and flower seeds generally aren’t supposed to keep well um I am going to heavily overseed uh these two in hopes to get at least like maybe six to eight plants of each of these [Music] so now I’ve also decided to start some Ros Mery seeds and I have some old ones and a new packet and I’m just going to sew all the old ones because I don’t know if they’ll germinate I don’t even know how old they are um and then I’ll also add a few of the new ones to ensure that I can get [Music] some so I also decided to start two different varieties of onions and I have first the red weatherfield onion and I’m also going to be sewing some wala wala onions and this is my first time trying out onions uh so hopefully I’ll be successful in getting some onions this year because I absolutely love onions and everything now I am heavily overseeding each one because onions can be together uh very very close together and uh I don’t have to separate them until I put them out in the garden so they will pretty much stay in here until they’re ready to be planted [Music] out [Music] [Music] so now I’m also going to be starting St ing two different types of thyme seeds so this is your normal culinary type of thyme and I’m going to overseed this tray with the two varieties um so this one is very very old so I’m just going to use up all the seeds that I have and then I’m also going to do this Creeping Time and the seeds are so tiny um and I wanted to try and spread them evenly so I decided to put them in this plastic tray so I can pick them up with a toothpick but then as you’ll see when I tried to pick it up with a toothpick all the static electricity was pushing them away instead of me trying to be able to pick them up so I gave up started picking them up with my fingers and just spreading them all over wherever I could possibly you know spread them out and I’ll have to prick them out and upot them later [Music] w [Music] so here is my seedling setup and all my seedlings are here with their domes and covered so that they can keep the humidity in and hopefully I will get some germination within the next week so now it’s only been 5 days since I started the seeds and all the geranium seeds have germinated except for a couple of them and I took off the Dome because they say you should take it off once about 50% germinated um these germinated in like 3 days and there was a few that didn’t and for the ones that didn’t I added these little domes that are technically for my um Hydroponics um to help them keep that moisture and hopefully I’ll get these last four to germinate there were a few others in here that I did the same thing with and those germinated beautifully um so I’m hoping that these last four will also germinate as well and then over here it’s very hard to see in there but the redia has germinated already and actually a ton of seeds germinated a little too many um but you know we’ll see what I can do with them um I also have some Snap Dragons that I have started to see uh germinate and I also have the onions I definitely saw some in there um the uh th definitely is all germinating and also the Rosemary just started today uh so yeah I think I’m going to have a pretty good success so far um as hoping that we can get them growing on and continuing to get larger um this is my first time really trying to do this um for flower seeds and so I’m very inexperienced in this but um it’s quite exciting to be able to sort of check on the seedlings every day um most of the time I do my growing with winter sewing um which is pretty hands off and you’re only checking on them once in a while um so this is a lot more handson and uh yeah we’ll see how it goes and I don’t know if you noticed but I also now started with the um the watering so I do have the capillary mat on that one since now the seedlings have germinated for the most part um a good amount of them and eventually we’ll um these have to get potted up into something else so I haven’t quite worked that out yet um maybe I’ll do this other ceiling tray that I have that has a ton of um smaller ones and and maybe I’ll do those I’m not really quite sure where to put them because then I also have to upot the Rosemary as well as the time and I have to figure all of that out um but yeah I’ll do another update along the way because I do have other seeds I have to start indoors and I really just don’t have that much room I’ve got this additional shelf and you know there’s still some room on these two shelves but once these all get up potted that should take out these two shelves which only leaves me with this and I still want colus uh Peppers eggplants and uh some ornamental basil anyway uh well thanks for joining me and um if you have any questions drop them down below and I’ll see you next time bye