Day 8 - So Many Sprouts!

I have so many Snapdragon sprouts coming up!  It is so exciting!  My impatiens haven't done much.  There are a couple that I think may be sprouts, but I'm going to wait a day or 2 to make sure.

Yesterday, I took a 2 hour class at the local community college on Seed Starting.  I didn't really learn a whole lot of what I didn't already know, but it was still fun to go to and listen to someone talk about it and their experience.  She talked a little bit about growing new plants from cuttings of old plants.  This is something I didn't know anything about and I thought it was interesting.  I'm going to look into this a little more and hopefully be able to blog about doing something like this!

She also suggested, when labeling your plants, don't use wood sticks.  They absorb too much water and can rob the plants of water they need.  Plastic is the best for something like this.

One way to help keep plants warm when you don't have a heat pad is hanging a plastic sheet over the fixture, so it drapes over the sides and covers the trays.  This helps keep the heat in that the fixture emits.  I might have to try this!

Overall, I love taking the classes at the community college.  They're usually only a 1 day and inexpensive.  It's a great way to learn basics before jumping into something, or a just a refresher!  For those of you in central Illinois, these are the classes I usually take: http://campusce.icc.edu/acp/category/category.aspx.  I'm considering taking the Prairie Gardening one if anyone is interested in doing it with me!

The instructor also gave us some hosta seeds, so I will be starting those soon!  I will have lots of hostas if anyone wants some!

I have officially taken the germination sheets off and am leaving the light on 12 - 16 hours a day.  By the way things are going, the snapdragons are taking off well and I hope to soon see some action with the impatiens.  I will keep you updated!

Enjoy!