Not As Much Fun As Gardening

As a joint initiative toward straightening up the cellar and preparing for this year's garden I have spent a couple hours the past three days cleaning the little pots, six-packs and trays that I use for starting plants from seed. In addition to vegetables I will also be trying to germinate a lot of milkweed for Monarch Waystation distribution. As a result I need to clean a lot of pots and six-packs. I generally use little green 2-inch pots for vegetables and will use the six-packs for the milkweed (and maybe the marigolds and nasturtiums). Each tray will hold 36 pots or 8 six-packs.

I wash out the pots and six-packs with warm soapy water, trying to dump out any potting soil left from the last use first. After they have soaked for a couple of minutes I clean them out as best I can with my fingers and transfer them to a basin with warm water and a little clorox bleach. After that I set them on trays and let them dry for a day and then stack them up ready for use. It's not exciting but my hands are pretty clean when I am done.

I have space for two trays of seedlings under fluorescent lights in the cellar. But with the milkweed (and the increase in the variety of vegetables that I plan to start indoors) I will need to set up more space for more trays. That's one of the reasons to start cleaning up way in advance of the time (around March 15) when I actually start seed germination.