The Craftiest Workshop

I like to start seeds indoors sometime in early April expecting that most things will be able to transplant into the garden by the end of May. Most years I have just started tomatoes and peppers as well as a few herbs and flowers. This year I wanted to go big on the flowers but I quickly realized that I would run out of space for plug trays. I decided to try seed snails instead.

We have a fair amount of packing materials from all the times we have moved. I dug into the box with bubble wrap and start cutting some strips 4-6” wide and about 3ft long.

The soil that goes into the snails needs to be the consistency of wet sand. It was a bit challenging because my miracle potting soil was frozen in the greenhouse. I had to bring it inside to thaw. I put soil to about 3/4 of a 5 gallon pail and then started adding warm water.

I placed a strip of the bubble wrap (bubbles down) on an old cookie sheet. Scooping the soil, I spread it on just so it was all over the plastic. I rolled it and then slid it up onto the tray to keep adding soil.

After it was rolled up, I taped it closed with packing tape and placed it in a plastic container. We get a lot of square containers when buying mushrooms at Costco. I put seeds in with their normal planting spacing. On some of my longer rolls, I got 40 seeds in there. I labeled the plastic container with painter’s tape.

This is clover seeds of which we have thousands.
We want to add more clover to our yard as the bees love it.

I ended up doing three different planting afternoons so the seeds are at different stages of growth. The marigolds, zinnias and tomatoes are doing the best so far. If any get too leggy I have lots of other containers that I can transplant things into.

It will be awhile before anything can get moved to the greenhouse. There is still 3ft of snow in the garden. Nighttime temperatures not above 0° and daytime highs still around 5°. Trying to move some snow away from the house so it will go downhill into the yard.

Most of the seeds that I used for my seed snails are seeds that I collected from last year or left over seeds from last year’s bought seeds. The only newly purchased seeds were verbena and new type of marigold. Collecting seeds makes these types of experiments easy because, if it didn’t work, chances are you still have loads more seed to throw in the ground later. I have two full large Cheez Whiz jars of marigold and calendula seed but lots of others as well.

Two great things about growing the plants in these snails is that they get longer straighter roots and you can water from below. I should be able to wash and reuse the plastic for next year’s starts. I picture myself giving the plastic a bath in our kiddie pool in June.

I would recommend cutting tape for closing the roll and make labels ahead of time. Your hands get pretty messy so it is hard to cut tape during the process.

I still have a few things that I want to start but I have run out of plastic for snails so they will have to go into starter pots or plug trays. I decided that I will not start any squash type plants this year and just direct sow them into the garden.

If anyone starts plants, give the seed snails method a try and let me know how it goes for you!