All the crosses have been made, pods have been gathered, seeds placed in envelopes with the cross on each and placed in refrigerator. We have logged all into computer and assigned each one with a number. Now it’s time for all the fun to begin.

(1) In the first picture you will see our list with the crosses assigned number and some of the envelopes with seeds in them and ready to be planted. Here you can see Bruce making a label for each seeds cross. We place the label at the beginning of each cross. Check and recheck!

(2) The next shot shows each seed laying in its on cell. Every one of these are hand seeded. Each tray is 200 cells. We did 20 ½ trays. You do the math. NO JOKE! I cannot imagine some who do 8000+ seed!!! UNREAL.

(3) After all trays are seeded we take more soil mixture and place over the seed. We rake off any excess. We have tried to take pictures of each step.

(4) As in one picture you will see one tray without soil and another with the soil before we wipe of the excess.

(5) Then you will actually see us wiping off the excess soil mixture.

The next step, we load all the trays back up in the Mule and off to the greenhouses for the final stage of seeding.

(6) They are then run through the section of the seeder for some perlite and hot water bath. Several folks have asked us how hot is the water and why do we do this. The water is not but 105 and normally done for the winter months. It just warms the dirt. Remember…they just came out of the refrigerator and now are in a warm bed. The moisture, once wrapped, will form like an incubator inside the plastic, for the seed to germinate.

(7) You will see the picture of a couple of the workers at the greenhouse lending a hand in stacking them on the pallet.

(8) Then, once this is done, they are wrapped tightly in plastic with the date written on top. Right on time…same time as last year, 08/16/17.

(9) Now they are moved to the germination room to wait for the first head to pop up. This will probably be around 10 to 14 days, but we start checking daily at 7 days. This is crucial because you don’t want the seed under the top trays to start pushing up against the next tray. If this happens it will ruin them.

So…here we are…checking and waiting for the next step.