WELCOME BACK! After a long winter hiatus, this gardener is ready to go!  How about any other garden friends reading this blog?

First, I would like to share how I start my seedlings. I know most large scale gardeners plant each seed tray with the same seed, then label that tray with the type of seed planted. He/she usually doesn't bother with jiffy seed pellets like you see below, but rather plants the seeds directly in some sort of seedling starter/ soil mixture. But since I am a small scale gardener with limited indoor space, I plant many different seeds in the same seedling flats. In the tray below I have red peppers, 4 varieties of tomatoes, 2 varieties of basil, yellow strawberries, kale, kohl rabi, cauliflower, red cabbage, cilantro, and stevia.  There are also a few flowers/herbs, including chamolmile and calendula. 

As the seedlings outgrows the jiffy soil pellet, I repot them in small individual pots filled with a mix of perlite, organic soil, and peat moss.     As I move one jiffy pellet out to re-pot, I add a new jiffy pellet with a new seed to replace it in the black tray.  So that I don't get mixed up what seed is planted where, I have devised this system:  The black seed trays I reuse every year have 6 rows up and down and 12 rows across (a total of 72 spaces for jiffy pellets).   On a colored piece of   8x11 cadstock, I draw a grid making 6 rows up and down and 12 rows across. (See below--only my picture cut off atrow 8 of the page).  I pencil in the type of seed I put in each space.  That way, when I take out the seedling to re-pot, I erase it on my cardstock template.  

You would be surprised that you can't really tell a cauliflower, kale, broccoli, or cabbage apart when they're seedlings, so this really saves the confusion of having a bunch of "mystery plants".  (Except for one year when one of the little grandchildren toppled the tray by mistake. )