In the past, I have used popsicle sticks from any craft store to mark the seed locations. Since I didn’t like adding 72 sticks, I would mark the upper right cell of a group of cells. This worked fine but was still a lot of work. The popsicle sticks also were tall enough that they would hit my lights. This year I am taking a different tact.

I have created three pdf documents for the three different plug flats that I have purchased for this season. 72 is the common size, but I also have 50 cell and 128 cell documents. Why the different sizes? Simply, different sizes of plants benefit from different sizes of cells. Small slow growing plants like onions and leeks do well in the 128 cell, and large extremely fast growing plants like melons, cucumbers do well in the 50 cell flats.

The documents have circles in a grid representing each cell in the flat. There is also a notes section at the bottom. In use, I mark the front of my flats with a number for identification and a reference for which edge of the flat corresponds to the top or bottom of the cell graph document. I then just enter the number in the notes section on my sheet. I also give all of the seeds for each season a unique number. I can enter this number in the cells, beside a row, or under a column if I am planting multiple seeds.

Hope these are helpful. Please comment if you want different cell counts or have ideas on how to improve the document layout.

72 cell
50 cell
128 cell

The Columbus Insider’s Club is offering a coupon to get one free admission, with a purchased admission now through April 30th.

Buy one, get one free
Columbus Museum of Art

The actual downloads are about half way down the page.

Amazon.com: Free New Year’s Downloads from Your Favorite Magazines.

Suze Orman’s Free Book Download.

Public.Resource.Org

I personally could take or leave it. But, if you, like Drew, find yourself craving the stuff from the leading coffee retailer but can’t quite make it to the store, dig into this electronic book for recipes to make your own.

Free Starbucks Coffee Recipe E-Book

Free Online Course Materials | MIT OpenCourseWare

I will proceed to enjoy my ignorance of this columnist. I will say that I have no idea what the good old boy stands for. I will say that my save-the-world sister Kathy put me up to it (she’ll actually do it too). I’m sure that I disagree with everything he says, but to support my sister’s efforts I include this blurb.

Thomas L. Friedman, columnist for the New York Times is giving away his most recent book, in e-book form, The World is Flat. All in favor, say giddy up!

Giveaway | Thomas L. Friedman