When you are a vegetable gardener you must develop the habit of long-range planning. It’s not as easy as “plant today, harvest tomorrow.” There are often many steps and many days between start time and harvest. Thankfully, Jiffy Peat Plugs help a ton.

Being a vegetable gardener also means your favorite recipes have an extended prep time and non-kitchen to-do items. After preparing the soil, planting seeds or young plants often is the second step in a months-long process of making your favorite dishes.

For example, I just started one of my favorite recipes, Black Cherry Tomato Ketchup. An heirloom variety, the Black Cherry tomato is a dark and sweet cherry-type tomato with both low acidity and a surprisingly juicy core. They are a crazy-prolific plant, producing more fruit than tomato has a right to; even so, Black Cherries are such easy plants to grow, I always want to grow several just to feel the pride of growing such a successful plant. In other words, I have more cherry tomatoes than I can handle.

Start Seeds Indoors with Jiffy Peat Plugs

The easiest way to start seeds of any summer-loving and heat-loving plant like cherry tomatoes is to use a Jiffy peat plug. These are the little soil cells you see in the photos above. The soil is contained in a lightweight mesh that has been dried and compacted down to a ¼-inch thick disk. Once this disc is placed in water, the soil takes up the water and swells to about 1.5 inches. Once swollen, you can see that the disc has a small slight in the top of its mesh, and that is where you plant the seed.

Jiffy sells the discs alone or within a dish. Mine came with a set of about three dozen Jiffy peat plugs in a tray and a corresponding clear top like a takeout container. The top is meant to hold heat and humidity in the tray to aid in germinating the seeds. Once the seeds germinate, prop open the lid to help bring fresh air into the chamber. Keep an eye on the moisture in the chamber, especially once you prop open the lid. Moist but not saturated peat plugs is what you are aiming for.

Step 2 is transplanting these babies outside into the garden. Let’s hope it warms up soon!