charlys-room: 11 Seedling Ideas for Spring

I am so excited for Spring.

For the first time in more than a few years, we are going to start a fun project...a vegetable garden.

We haven't had one since we moved to this province over 8 years ago....mostly because our Spring has been filled with hockey, but this year our son has decided not to play Spring hockey, which means free weekends for our chief gardener...my husband.

{As you might remember, I am not much of a gardener, as I wrote about in How I Stopped Killing Plants and Learned to Grow Something.}

In anticipation of our garden project, I'm getting ready to start seedlings, so I've been having fun looking around at all kinds of seedling ideas on the interwars.

I get so inspired seeing lots of different ideas....there are so many cool ways to start seedlings no matter what your budget.

Let's take a look, shall we?

Of course, as I was browsing around the Stokes website, I saw the traditional pellets for starting seedlings. This is an easy, foolproof method, but it does take some money to go this route.

There are also the popular trays that are found everywhere this time of year. Trays and popsicle sticks make excellent starting gardens for tiny seeds. I love this picture from Chiot's Run showing this method.

If you are looking for more environmentally friendly seedling trays, using egg shells and egg cartons is a popular method that has been used for years...as shown in this photo from Soda Pop.

The shells can be crushed gently when planting the seedlings in the garden later in the spring. Egg shells make the perfect small nest for a tiny seedling like we see in this lovely pic from Indiana Public Media. You can even write on the shells with a sharpie if you like.

I love this tutorial from Learning & Yearning for making seedling cups from newspapers. Brilliant use of a material that everyone has access to, and if you already have a subscription to a newspaper...this costs nothing.

Here is another creative idea from Food For My Family for using paper towel or toilet paper tubes cut and lined with newspaper. Again, another no cost way of using materials already found around the house.

And if you are super ambitious and have the time, you can make these neato cups just using a paper towel or toilet paper tube on it's own. I found this unique idea at The Tree Hugger.

And most of us have food containers that can be recylced into studier cups for starting seedlings like Powdered Green has done.

You can also use empty pudding cups and yogurt cups like Gardening in the Burroughs of NYC used for her seedlings.

And a super cute project idea can be found at The Frugal Girls for starting seedlings along in a mini-terrarium created from a soda bottle.

And when it comes to hardening those plants off, I like this idea of using rubber maid totes to carry the cups outside, like in these pictures from the Garden Web Forums site.