There are many ways to start your seeds before planting season, but here is one that we have found helpful. You can start your seeds in eggshells in 4 easy steps.
- Eat eggs (preferably from your own chickens)
- Save the eggshells and cartons
- Add soil and seed.
- Just add water!
It really is that easy. When we eat our eggs, we don’t wash them or anything. Just put the two halves inside each other, back into the hole in the egg carton that you pulled them from, back in the fridge with your uneaten eggs. We eat a lot of eggs around here, so we start saving shells 2-3 weeks before we want to plant (depending on how many seedlings we’re starting). The ones we don’t save go to the compost pile.
Sadly, I don’t have established compost yet, so we buy potting soil. It’s whatever. BUT we put a rabbit pellet in every eggshell with our seeds. Rabbit manure only needs to dry for a week or so and it can be put directly into soil.
After that, water like you would any other seedling and bada bing, bada boom. You nailed it.
The one thing we are going to try next year (if the greenhouse isn’t built yet) is to buy some of those plastic lids that you would put on aluminum trays and cover the cartons like a mini greenhouse. Right now we carry them in and out everyday to get sunlight and it’s kind of a drag. The worst part is the one night your two year old has a melt down and you forget to bring them in is the one night you get frost and kill your poor little plants. That’s just no bueno.
If you have any other ways or ideas to start seeds I would love to hear them! Leave them in the comments!