{"id":151,"date":"2025-05-15T17:37:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T01:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/?p=151"},"modified":"2026-01-17T16:21:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T00:21:19","slug":"starting-plants-from-seeds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/15\/starting-plants-from-seeds\/","title":{"rendered":"Starting Plants From Seeds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-06-03_seedlings-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\" data-id=\"153\" src=\"https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-06-03_seedlings-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-153\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-06-03_seedlings-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-06-03_seedlings-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-06-03_seedlings-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-06-03_seedlings-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-06-03_seedlings-scaled.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-06-17_seedlings-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" data-id=\"154\" src=\"https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-06-17_seedlings-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-154\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-06-17_seedlings-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-06-17_seedlings-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-06-17_seedlings-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-06-17_seedlings-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-06-17_seedlings-2048x1536.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-06-25_seedlings-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"558\" data-id=\"152\" src=\"https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-06-25_seedlings-1024x558.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-152\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-06-25_seedlings-1024x558.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-06-25_seedlings-300x164.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-06-25_seedlings-768x419.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-06-25_seedlings-1536x838.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-06-25_seedlings-2048x1117.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In April I planted seeds for the first time: bell peppers and onions in small plastic cups with drainage holes, and a few in small square ceramic pots. The ceramic pots were a bad choice. We bought them on impulse because they looked nice. At that point, I didn&#8217;t understand up-potting at all. When starting seeds, container size and flexibility matter more than appearance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By May, I&#8217;d figured out what a proper seed-starting tray was and picked up 1.5-inch cells with a bottom-watering tray and a clear humidity dome. The dome has plenty of critics, and later trays showed me it isn&#8217;t strictly necessary. Once seeds germinate, too much humidity can actually cause problems. Damping off is real, and excess moisture makes it more likely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Looking back at photos of seedlings in those trays is still strange. Some of those tiny starts became full pumpkin plants with leaves nearly two feet wide. It&#8217;s a good reminder of how misleading scale can be early on, and how much patience seed-starting actually requires.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In April I planted seeds for the first time: bell peppers and onions in small plastic cups with drainage holes, and a few in small square ceramic pots. The ceramic pots were a bad choice. We bought them on impulse because they looked nice. At that point, I didn&#8217;t understand up-potting at all. When starting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":176,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions\/237"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonfoust.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}