The Importance of Sterilizing your Seed Trays
Amy Miller
It's so much fun to peruse glossy catalogs of beautiful veggies and flowers in the depths of winter. It's even more fun to grow unusual varieties that no one else can buy at the garden center by starting your own seeds.
One often overlooked step by gardeners before they start planting seeds is to do a thorough cleaning of the seed trays to be used. If you skip this step, you might escape unscathed, but you might also be planting your vulnerable seeds into cells that are harboring pathogens and bacteria that will harm the plants or even kill them (a disease called damping off).
I recycle my seed trays from year to year and this is how I get them ready:
1. Use a stiff wire brush (a bottle brush works great here) to get into the nooks and corners of the seed cells and remove any loose dirt or debris from last year's seedlings.
2. Next, scrub your trays with warm soapy water (I use Dawn and an old sponge) in your utility or kitchen sink.
3. Finally, I buy hydrogen peroxide at the drugstore and pour it into a spray bottle (label it for future use annually to save yourself a step) and spritz the trays with the peroxide. I spray the cells and the backside of the trays and then I let them hang out in the sink for 20 min. You can spread them out to completely dry on your floor or in your garage or in your driveway if it's a sunny day. That's it! They are ready to use.
It's an easy step to get your planting off on the right foot!