Our first seed snails

This week's post was supposed to be all about Highland Park's first Repair Cafe event, which was scheduled to take place on Sunday. But that didn't happen, because this happened instead:

The storm that I imagine future generations will call the Blizzard of '26 blew into town last night, leaving 14 inches of snow in its wake. Brian and I have spent most of our afternoon so far digging out from under it. (This has left me once again cursing our yard's awkward layout and trying to decide if it would be worth dropping a couple of grand on heated mats to keep the driveway clear.)

But before we went out to face the snow, we spent a little time indoors starting seeds for this year's crop of leeks. And this year, we've decided to shake things up a bit. Rather than deploy the extra-narrow seed-starting tubes we generally use for leek seedlings, we're testing out a new method: seed snails.

I learned about this method from a YouTube video that popped up while I was doing my daily "walk and watch" (my ecofrugal exercise of choice in unpleasant weather). The gist of it is, you layer soil on top of a sheet of plastic or paper, roll it into a spiral shape, turn it on its end, and plant your seeds in the top. This takes up less room than pots or seed trays and uses less soil, yet provides plenty of depth for the seedlings to develop long, healthy roots. And when it's time to transplant, you can simply unroll the spiral and lift the little seedlings out. This is the perk that really sold us on trying this method for the leeks in particular. Although we have a dowel that's meant to push the entire soil plugs out of each narrow tube, in practice the soil always falls away. So if all we're going to have to plant is the little seedlings themselves, we might as well extract them the easy way.

To create our first seed snails, Brian went hunting through our stash of reused bubble wrap. The gardener in the video recommended this as the best material for seed snails because it's flexible, it holds moisture well, and the air bubbles insulate the seedlings' roots while adding structural strength to the roll. Since our current seed-starting tubes are 4 inches deep, Brian took a piece of bubble wrap one foot wide and cut it into three 4-inch strips to make the seed rolls. Then, taking another tip from the video, he wrapped each strip of bubble wrap in a layer of baking parchment paper to protect the seedlings from microplastic contamination. Our parchment paper was in individual sheets 16.5 inches wide rather than on a roll, so he cut each sheet in half, folded it over, and tucked the bubble wrap inside. Each bubble-wrap strip took one whole sheet, plus about half of a second one, to cover it.

We then repaired to the basement, where Brian dumped out the garden soil he'd dug up for seed starting into a tub, misted it with water, and mixed it with his hands until it was about as moist as a wrung-out sponge. The YouTube video claimed this would help the soil stick to the sheets of bubble wrap and also "prime" it with moisture so it would be easier to water later. Once he had it moist enough to form a good, solid clump without turning into mud, he patted it into place over top of the parchment paper, creating a soil layer about half an inch thick. However, he didn't extend the dirt quite to the top of the parchment. Instead, he left a gap of about a quarter inch to layer some seed-starting mix on top of the spiral, so the seeds could start their lives in a medium designed to support them.

He then carefully rolled up the soil-covered sheet into a spiral shape and secured it with rubber bands. (The video recommended using painter's tape to hold the loose end in place, but he couldn't get it to stick to the moist parchment.) He nestled the completed spiral into a little plastic tub that had formerly held mushrooms, which he'd gone and fished out of the recycling bin as soon as he decided to try the seed-spiral method. After that, he repeated the whole process with a second strip of bubble wrap and parchment, giving him two neat spirals ready for seeding. He got out the packet of leek seeds and carefully dropped them into the dirt along the top of the spiral, aiming for a spacing of about half an inch. 

Once both spirals were planted, he spread seed-starting mix over their tops and gave them both a good misting to get them thoroughly moist. Finally, following a final tip from the video, he covered each one with a clear plastic bag to help hold in that moisture so they wouldn't need as much watering. The two completed seed snails then joined the parsley seeds that are already (we hope) germinating in their tubes on the seedling table.

To be honest, these two seed snails don't actually take up noticeably less space than the milk carton full of narrow tubes in which we used to start our leeks. On the other hand, they most likely contain more individual seeds than the tubes did. And most important, we hope, they'll give us more healthy seedlings to plant out when spring arrives. That may still be a month or two away, but all this snow has to melt sometime, and when it does, we'll be ready.