Some years my seed starting ambition is greater than others. I really can't attribute it to any phase of the moon but it might be possible to nail down the reason for it if I knew more about leap years. I can only say that one year I went hog wild. My family thought so too. It was the year I became a flower farmer rather than a flower planter.

I suspect (since I live in tobacco country and salvaged a pick-up truck load of styrofoam, i.e., extended polystyrene seed starters) my little windfall had something to do with it. If you've never seen a tobacco seed starter they have just under four hundred cavities with a small hole in the bottom and are designed to float on water and bottom feed. I was prepared to start thousands of seeds to get hundreds of flowers as the saying goes.

I was faced with some immediate problems to solve. One being where to to set the trays. Next, where would I find the time to put one seed each into six thousand four hundred holes.

I went through my starter trays and pulled out sixteen that were undamaged (these trays were previously used). Then I washed them with a bleach solution. Then I built a frame out of landscape timbers that would hold 4 wide by 4 long equals 16 trays. I stapled inside the frame a large sheet of plastic so that it would hold water and filled it half full. I drove in nail spikes at an angle where I could hoop over half inch pvc for ribs and covered it with plastic and stapled it down on the sides. Instant water floater greenhouse.

That done I recruited my wife and children to help me plant the trays. "One seed, each hole," I told them. "No cheating," I told them. That meant, of course, not to sprinkle seeds and say, "Daddy, I'm done."

Usually when starting seeds I put one seed to plant, one seed to push and one seed to grow, but this time I meant for every seed to come up whether that happened or not. I was on a campaign.

During the hours it took us to complete this task we griped and laughed and planted seeds with our little tweezers. When we'd run out of a variety of seeds we'd label another popsickle stick, stick it in a hole, and move on with another seed variety.

The task of putting the trays in the little float greenhouse I had made was like playing with boats in a bathtub. I was amazed at how quickly the sprouts came up and how healthy they were. Then shock set in, not on the plants, but on me. How would I ever get so many plants in the ground? I got out my shovel and started making new gardens and all the while I dug I was thinking of friends and neighbors I could give flowers to.

Unless you have extraordinary indoor space starting as many seeds as I did that year would not be possible. Starting seeds indoors is a much better choice and I hope you have the opportunity to do so this year.