I will be starting seeds indoors. There’s no particular start date really. The best way is to figure out roughly when you want to start planting outdoors. I use the average last frost date for our area of April 15th. So I find the nearest weekend past that date and pick that as my goal. I then look at the particular seeds I want to plant that weekend and subtract the number of days for germination of each plus a week or two to let them get growing.

Looking back at last years posts/podcasts I did my first seed starting around April 4th in my garage under some home made grow lights (check gardenfork.tv for his episode..I built those)

I did use the “perfect mix” and got the vermiculite from Midwest Trading in St. Charles (see link to the right under ‘Companies’). You’ll need to park and go to their commercial office and pay for it and then you can drive back into the yard and pick up the bag or two. I’ll be building two or three more raised beds as well, so a trip to Midwest Trading is in order as well. They didn’t have the coarse grade kind when I went last time and I didn’t want to wait for them to ship some more so I went with the medium grade I think. Worked just fine.

One other thing. I just purchased 2 1/2 pounds (smallest I could order) of potatoes to try growing some this year. I don’t need/want them all and I’d be happy to toss some your way if you want to give them a try. Drop me an email.

Are you going to be starting your seeds indoors? When will you do that? We live in the same zone so I need to follow your lead.

Also, I’m going to be bulding a couple of raised beds this year. I know you sued the square foot meathod. Did you use the “perfect mix”? Where did you find the vermiculite if you did?

they also sell some great supplies and fertilizers you wont find in regular seed catalogs, rock minerals like Azomite for example.

plus, their catalogs are a great read. http://fedcoseeds.com/