Received Boca Bob's Seed Starting Kit today!

I got the seed starting kit today that uses coconut coir to start your seedlings in. I am very impressed. It is made of very good quality materials, not flimsy at all. The dome is very high which is great and has 2 vents, not just one, it also has a deep tray and the little baskets fit snugly into this other compartment that sits in the tray. I am going to enjoy using this one, and already, I'm really impressed with it. Remember ya'll, I have just about every seed starting kit available out there except Park's Bio Dome and it is to be delivered around the 12th. This one gets watered from underneath where your roots need to get their water from and there is plenty of room for the plants to breathe in between the little pots you plant them in.
joy112854

I also got Boco Bob's kit and it is everything you said it was. I am really looking forward to trying it out. I don't have a lot of experiece growing from seed but ever year I learn something new and get a little bit better.

Annie

Joy, So happy for you! What a great beginning for your baby plants! You are so excited that it is contageous. I have coir coming from BocaBob soon. Devota

I ordered some BocaBob starting kits yesterday. Ordering was so easy. Bob called me this morning to confirm that my order will be shipped tomorrow. While I had him on the phone I also ordered some refills and fertilizer. Bob's stuff is the very best available IMO.

fiddle I ordered a seed starting kit and blocks of Coir from Bob yesterday too! I am a believer and compared them heavily with the Park's sponge system before ordering. It was the hands down winner for me ☺

I'm really looking forward to Spring and using it. I was beginning to get discouraged about starting my own seedlings but now I've regained hope that I can do this.
joy112854

Dreamer, looks like you and I are in the same zone, so about when will you start your mater seeds and when will you plant out?

I was hoping to get an early start this year, since it got too hot too soon last season.

Ok, he told me mine was on the way, so any day now as I'm planning on sowing seeds this weekend and next! Thanks for the great previews!

Hey fiddle! Yes, I am very near you actually, in Tyler....I am wondering about that too. Maybe Feb 1? Hoping someone will advise us on this....I actually live in the middle of what's considered the "tomato capitol of the world", we have Tomato fest, so on and so forth. Tomatoes are in huge abundance and sold very early until very late here, maybe from the end of May until Sept? So I am thinking it would be fairly safe to plant them early, after the last frost predicted for our area, which is March 1.

my plan is to start seeds indoors the weekend of Jan. 17 and plant out the first week of March. I will protect them with a wind breaker of some sort (maybe a bucket or wrap row cover around the cages) until the Weather Underground forecasts are favorable.

Wow, so early? I thought the last frost for here was in late March, so was going to start mine about the end of February at the earliest? TPlant: help, when should I plant seeds?
joy112854

last season I planted 6-week tomato plants out the last week of March and that was too late. I know that the first week of March is early and risky, and I will try to offset the cold with some buckets and row cover cloth. may not work, so I will have replacements ready.

Stagger plant and you'll always have a supply in reserve just in case of a freeze!

One way to get early tomato's, (other vegy and flowers)......cheap!! You will need:

One each BocaBobs five gallon coir grow bag.......or equivalent. Maybe I should just say a container with grow mix or starter mix.

A stob about 16 inches long. Some folks might say a stob is just a stick but here in Texas, we know a stob is a stob is a stob. About 1/4 to 3/8 inch in diameter is fine, small enough to pass through the cap of a water jug. I use last years sunflower stalks. Goodness knows, I have plenty of those, they dont compost well, and I might as well get some use out of them.

A one gallon water jug or milk jug. Water jugs are best as it is very difficult to get the sour smell out of a plastic milk jug.
Cut the whole bottom out of the water jug and throw the cap away.

Now for the thrilling finale: Stick the stob precisely in the very center of the container. Now place the water jug over the stob with the stob sticking up through the cap of the jug. Presto......a greenhouse! The only purpose of the stob is just to keep the water jug from blowing away. The small opening around the stob where it passes thru the water jug cap is a vent to prevent overheating on very sunny warm late winter days. If the container is the one you are going to grow a tomato in, and assuming you have prepared the grow mix in advance with fertilize or whatever concoction you believe in, place one lonesome seed near the base of the stob.

Lets face it, most of us have containers waiting for plants later on when it warms up. By converting each container to a mini greenhouse we can get a big jump on the season. You can plant only the seeds you wont to grow in the pot or you can plant quite a few seeds and have plants to transplant later. Did I mention that this system is cheap!

Filtered sunlight is probably best for this system in my part of the country but I have had good luck putting them out into the sunlight or in the shade. They grow faster and better with sunlight but should never be too hot to damage the plants. You can put a cheap little thermometer in one of the jugs to see how things are going. If you cant shift the pots around to control the sunlight they are getting you can shade them on real sunny days.....or......lift the water jugs off on some mild days to let the plants acclimatize themselves to their new world....or..... cover them on cold nights. Experiment. Your containers dont have to just sit there waiting for the weather to break.

I very seldom lift the the jug to water the seed area directly.......just water into the outside rim of the container around the outside of the jug and the seed area of the grow mix will suck just enough moisture from the watered area of the mix to be "jest rite" for growth. This works good with about all the mixes I have tried but the coir seems to retain just the right amount of moisture for seed germination and I havent experienced any mold or damping off like with other mixes, peat for instance.

You can grow all your flower and vegetable seeds this way. Did I mention it is cheap? How about a pot planted with one tomato seed, one marigold seed of the small stinky type that tomatoes are supposed to like, a few bunching onion seeds, and perhaps a garlic clove or two.........all in the same pot. The seeds wont all germinate at the same time but no sweat. Slap the water jug on top and see what happens. Bunching onions and garlic doesnt even have to be covered by the jug to eventually germinate in my part of the country.

O.K. you say.........this sounds like winter sowing like they talk about over on the Winter Sowing forum. Yep. Exactly. Getting the jump on springtime.........one jug at a time.

ROTF Jaywhacker! I know exactly what a "stob" is, being an East Texas girl all my life! My Grandmammy called it a stob and so do I! Thanks for the good memories, a great idea and tutorial ☺

Jay, That is a heck of a good idea.

I use bamboo stobs or cedar stays.

Something else for me to try.

Karen.........In your post above about your part of Texas being a major tomato growing center. I picked tomatoes one summer when I was about 16. 6 acres of them. We no more got them picked untill more were turning pink. Up and down those rows, pick, pick, pick. Day after day after day. Once they started ripening, it was pick hell-for-leather untill they quit producing. Gooey stuff from the tomato plants stuck all over our arms, especially those of us just old enough to start having hair on our arms. Every hair individually coated with goop. The only way to get it off was to bust green tomatoes and smear the slimy, goopy stuff all over your arms and hands. The only reason I stuck with that job was that there was a couple of real cute teen age girls picking tomato's too.

You also forgot to mention that my hometown, Athens, Texas is the blackeyed pea capitol of the world, the place where the real hamburger originated and home to the annual Old Fiddlers Contest. Some real pea-picking music went on around the Courthouse during the Old Fiddlers Contest. Ah yes, I guess them wuz the good ol days........but I aint picking no more tomato's on a commercial scale. I dont care how cute the other pickers are.

Well my gosh Jay, didn't know you were from Athens!! Who else was it in the veggie forum, a man, that said his hometown was Athens? That's only 20 miles from me, and yes Athens has all you mentioned, still the Black-Eyed Pea capitol. Jacksonville is the tomato capitol town I was referring to, about 50 miles from Athens. Sounds like good but hard memories you have. I never had to pick on a commercial scale, I know it was hard work. Tyler, Texas is the Rose capitol of the world, Gilmer, Texas the Yam capital, Poteet, Texas the strawberry capital...Gosh we have a lot of veggie and flower capitols in Texas! And alot of fine festivals and parades to attend and eat at! I guess Texas was a major exporter of veggies at one point in time. I remember my grandpa carrying his old truck full of maters to be weighed, paid and loaded on to the box cars at the train station in Jacksonville.

Hey you texans, I thought everything was bigger in Texas, does that make a stub a tree? LOL Just kidding of course.
joy112854

LOL, Joy, it just might! We have funny sayin's down here for sure....Wish I lived in Florida sometimes so my Brugmansias could grow into big trees....sigh....that's a dream of mine.

Well, I suspect I may get Boca Bob's seed tray tomorrow and I'm about ready to plant my tomato and veggie seeds in them. I just can't wait until March 1!

You sound as bad as me, with the anxiousness. LOL I like the way mine looks, you will really be impressed I'm sure, as the dome is a high one and the tray also. Excellently made.
joy112854

I got my BocaBob starter kit and extra coir today!!! I am very excited, and can't wait to begin using it.

I have to say, I think it is a good investment (the coir) for the future, but lately I have found myself wondering when/why gardening has seemed to become so complicated and costly to get it right. I am a believer in the Coir and grow bags, and the Earth Box type systems and do believe that is a necessary investment....I'm referring to my weakness in wanting to buy and try every potion that anyone recommends, every fertilizer, foliar feed, special bug spray, insecticide, grow sponge, drip system.....

Even in my growing Brugmansias I overspent the past year I know, more than I can afford anyway, trying to use everything that everyone recommends to have the perfect garden. I know this is a personal problem, but gosh, I am SO easily enabled you guys! I have to get stronger and just say NO before I go broke, LOL!

Of course I realize that gardening has come a long way, but I can't help but sigh and remember how my Grandmammy had the most beautiful yard full of flowers and the most beautiful acre sized super bountiful garden in the world and used just one fertilizer, cow patties and sevin dust on it all. (sure don't envy her carting water from the well to water each by hand though, haha!)

LOL I have to agree with you on that one. I'll be watching y'all to see how your plants turn out. I have 12 EBs and start all my veggies from seed. Good luck!
~Susan

I'll be using my Bocabobs starter kit for peppers this summer. In order to have peppers at that time I must start them in March under a heat mat.