Great show, Jack. I believe the big seed/plant company you might be speaking of is Bonnie Plants. Which is what we sell at the Home Depot I work at.
http://www.bonnieplants.com/
I have also been using the trays with the peat pellets the last few years.These are distributed by Burpee seed Co. I find they work out great. One I transplant everything into my garden, I rinse them out and put them away for next year. They do sell replacement packs of peat pellets at Home Depot and other box stores. We have just recently gotten all of our spring shipment in of seeds and trays. I’m looking forward to starting my garden this year.
John R
Long Island, New York

@ Tom: While it *is* possible to purchase a home soil testing kit, I would still recommend using your local extension agent or university. Most Agriculture colleges/universities have these facilities & directions for taking samples on their websites. There is usually a *small* fee, but I find it useful & extremely helpful for the typical home owner.

A nice well thought out book “The New Seed Starters Handbook” by Nancy Bubel is a great resource. May be out of print.

For people who’re complete gardening newbies like me, I found this site useful.

http://www.chestnut-sw.com/growform.htm

You enter your frost dates and it gives you a table that tells you what you’re supposed to be doing in a given week — starting things indoors, sewing things outdoors, hardening off, or transplanting. It’s so helpful for folks like me who just don’t know where to start.

Jack referenced a video on making his growlight and linking it but didn’t add the link. doesn’t anyone have it?

Great podcast

Are there any seeds that you would say are better off being started in a soil cube over trays? Any transplanting situations that would cause one to work better than the other for certain plants?

Hey Jack — great show, very informative! One thing that I didn’t hear you talk about, though, is cloches. I used them to direct seed tomatoes last year, as well as get pepper transplants out a little early, before all of the danger of frost had passed.

Basically, I took gallon milk jugs and cut the bottom off. I left the top off so that it acted as a vent to prevent it from getting too hot inside. Then, I cut an “X” to make a snug hole in the top of the handle, and used a long, thin stake of bamboo pushed through that hole, through the handle, and into the ground in order to hold the cloche in place and keep it from blowing away. When I put the cloche in place, I pushed it down a little bit and piled up a small ridge of soil around it to prevent any gaps around the bottom edge.

I also surrounded my transplants and seeds with a ring of small stones inside the cloche as well. That way, when the sun shines during the day the rocks act as a heat sink When the sun goes down at night, they slowly let it off, keeping the inside of the cloche warm enough to prevent any damage to the seedlings on cold nights. By doing this it’s not out of the question to gain an additional 2-3 weeks on your growing season, unless you get an EXTREMELY hard frost during that time.

Thanks for all the great info you gave in this show, and keep up the great work! Hopefully you and/or some of the other listeners can find this simple cloche idea to be helpful. Cheers!

I’m going to do a post about this to my blog in the near future, along with pictures, which will help make it clearer if it seems a little muddy right now.

I just stumbled on this:

http://www.jlhudsonseeds.net/Germination.htm

Has some pretty intense information for the more challenging seeds out there.

Hello Jack, thanks for the show. I have a question regarding your grow box. I constructed one like in your video but I have one question that has not been addressed. You say the seeds need a lot of light but for how long? Should I run the lights in the box continuous or for 12 hours a day? Could use your help, thanks.