Planting an indoor herb garden - part 2

Today is March 1st, and it’s time to give an update. The soil is slowly starting to dry, and hopefully the seeds are starting to germinate. Let’s check in.

Sterilizing the soil again

The top layer of soil was beginning to dry, but not enough to do a full watering/feeding cycle. Instead, I thought it appropriate to sterilize the top layer of soil. Since it has been sitting in a warm-ish location with water, the soil has potential to develop fungus. To help fight this, sterilizing soil with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and water will help protect the plants as they grow. Using a 4:1 ratio of a 30% hydrogen peroxide product and water in a spray bottle, and lightly misted the soil.

I’m hoping to avoid mold and bugs this entire process. If you recall from my last post, fungus gnats would often force me to place my plants outside, where they would develop all kinds of problems - from other bugs and mold, to ground squirrels digging in the planter box and destroying the plant.

If I can keep the bugs at bay and stay diligent in caring for my plants, they should thrive.

Natural sunlight

My plants have been primarily lit by these LEDs, but I thought it would be appropriate to expose the seedlings and soil to natural sunlight. Luckily, my windowsill gets a fair amount of sunlight throughout the day.

Each day, I turn off the LED lights and place the box under the windowsill for 4-8 hours, then move the box back to the LEDs.

Now, as you can see in the photo below, my window sill only gives about half the planter box light, so after a few hours, I’ll typically give the planter box a 180 spin as to allow direct sunlight to hit the rest of the seedlings.

I’m not sure if this is doing much of anything, to be honest, but from what I’ve read and have seen on various videos, giving your plants some natural light will give them healthier growth. Again, in a few hours, I'll be rotating this so the other side can get equal amounts of sunlight.

Better labels

This isn’t conducive to good plant growth, but I decided to use actual plant labels instead of cardboard cutouts. For two reasons:

1. I didn’t really like how they looked
2. I noticed they were soaking in water, which I felt could be problematic for any nearby seedlings having to compete.

My labels have the name of the herb, the date, and ‘PM’ indicating I planted them in the evening. This allows me to keep track of which section of my planter contains which herb, and helps me to keep track of how long I’ve been tending to them. This helps me ensure they stay on a healthy feeding cycle, and serve as a subtle reminder to be patient and wait for the sprouts to show up.