germinating seeds in a Baggy

Have been inspired by this site and I am trying out a "baggy" to germinate some seeds. One set that seem to be quite slow to germinate  in a compost tray (it's only been 1 week, I'm impatient! I will of course let the compost set do their thing for comparison) and another that I'm worried will do poorly. Aquilegia vulgaris aka columbine, and viola "Johnny Jump Up" respectively.


The baggy involves spacing out some seeds on a moistened piece of (coffee) filter paper which is folded up and put in a plastic zip lock food bag, left in the dark (or light depending on the seeds) and re-moistened with a sprayer. In theory 7-10 days later some or all of the seeds will have germinated and can be planted in compost. This saves space and lets you keep types of seeds separate, also you can see for yourself the germination success rate and conditions preferred.

If it works well I will try some more this way too! Less messy, and will only use compost and valuable windowsill space once the seeds have already successfully germinated.

I think it's really too early to start many seeds but I'm itching to get started, this is still only a few of the seeds I plan to grow. Meant to be 6-8 weeks before last frost date, but I have got away with earlier. May just mean taking extra care of them to not let plants get too leggy or watered too much, so for this year's tomatoes I'll wait a bit longer.

I'm thinking of growing a taxi courgette again as I have a few seeds left, last year's had plenty of flowers of both sexes but apparently wasn't fertilised! The fruits dropped off before they grew much. I think maybe the pot I used was too small so may get a bigger one this time. (Smallish garden so preferred a container). Or just unlucky with weather/bees.

Growing indoors

At the moment it's snowy outside, so 2 primroses I bought are having to shelter on my windowsill until it melts. And this is my Tropicana sponsored seed germination pot (sweet peas).