Starting the Growing Season

January 18, 2025

You get an early start on spring when you’re a gardener. It’s January, and it’s the time for plenty of things to go into the dirt! Mainly Capsicums—or peppers. Other things might need some extra time, such as flowers like Vervains, Sea hollies and Pelargonium. My Vervain was gorgeous last season, so I am planning on getting them started this year, too!

This year, I got some brand new shelves for my “growing corner”. New projects that get me tinkering with supplies is what really gets me productive for the new season. Last year I had a very annoying setup that didn’t let me get the most out of my grow lights, as the shelf was too short for them. This clearly meant it was time for an upgrade, and now I have found two cheap shelves I’m going to put together for the perfect light-to-plant ratio! I’m very excited about this, as assembling furniture is another huge interest of mine.

So, how do we get started on the actual planting? Assuming you’re not all supplied up like I am, there are a couple of things that’s necessary for growing in January-February, if you come from a cold and dark climate like I do.

1. Important supplies

  • Grow lights*
  • Spray bottle and small watering can
  • Small pots or a tray for plugs
  • Clear plastic or a small greenhouse/transparent lid
  • Potting mix for sowing or plugs
  • All-purpose fertilizer
  • A surface that may get very dirty

Optional supplies

  • Miniature garden tools
  • Labels: quite useful to keep things apart

*I have three 80cm grow lights. A good quality grow light can be rather expensive, and an investment into the hobby (Mine were about $180 put together, but they were purchased in different years as I expanded). Grow lights do prove absolutely necessary when you sow this early in the season. The result is absolutely gorgeous plants, so I’d say it's totally worth the investment! If you are happy to only sow faster growing plants such as tomatoes and cucumbers (or if your summer season is long enough for later peppers), these plants can happily live in a sunny window from March onward.

2. Sowing the first seeds

Capsicums in particular are light propagated plants. This means that they should not be buried at all, something that felt strange to me to do as a newcomer. You simply plop these seeds on the surface of your pot—after a good spray of water on the soil, I must stress!! You press these seeds down gently with a finger so that it sticks to the surface, and then you cover the pot. Covering your seedlings can be done in several ways as listed above, but I usually use clear plastic with a few holes poked through (I recycle these, by the way. Plastic waste feels miserable, so I’ve torn off handy pieces I’ve used over and over for the last 2 years!). The point here is to keep the environment moist, condensation on the plastic is exactly what you wanna see.

3. Soil or plugs?

2024 was the first time I tried using plugs. I’m still struggling with the terminology for these in English, but in simple terms, these are compressed little soil-based pucks that expand into a planting space by adding water. There are several advantages to this technique. They are their own self contained pots without the use of plastic, and repotting simply means shoving the entire thing into a larger pot of dirt—Fantastic!

I really liked using these. As I was cautious at first, I only used these to sow my Asters in 2024, and it was SO convenient. I “heard” no complaints from my plants, and I knew I had to repot them as soon as I simply saw the roots emerging on the surface. For the Asters in particular—a very slow growing type of flower—I had no need to pot them up at all. I simply shoved the entire plug into their final pot outdoors -and presto! Gorgeous plants that produced flowers the entire season! While I will continue using potting soil for the more sensitive plants, I’m going to try out more types of plugs in 2025, starting with Nelson Garden and reporting back about what I found.

I will continue using potting soil for several reasons. First of all—I love the feeling of dirt in my hands! Secondly, I can predict the quality of the soil content much better. Lastly, repotting just feels a lot more natural. This year I will put more care into the potting soil pick. Last year I went for a very cheap brand that stagnated my seedlings MASSIVELY. Nobody died, mind you (they recovered after fertilizing). But the progress on my chili was hampered enough that I barely got anything out of it. So, lessons learned! This year, I will open my wallet and buy a higher quality soil. You don’t need much of it for seedlings, so it won’t break the bank to buy a 10 liter bag for a fiver. You’ll make mistakes and learn constantly in this hobby, and the dirt part will be a continuous effort to get right!

4. Moving further into the season

As a rule, your seedlings should start getting fertilized with a basic liquid fertilizer as they reach around 10 cm, or 3-4 inches in height, or earlier if they show signs of stagnating growth (especially when it comes to the slowest of growers). They’ll need this drink once a week to stay healthy, but missing it a few times isn’t going to outright kill anybody!

For now, there are not many more steps than this that you would need to take. Hopefully as my own plants progress, I’ll keep posting updates about the handy little things that keep your seedlings happy and well fed.