Elisabeth I use the 2 inch soil blocks. Soil blocks work great. As others have mentioned for large onions only one seed per block. I grew Candy in blocks and they were the largest of all the onions I grew last year. Start your seeds in the blocks and then when ready plant out spacing plants (not blocks) about 4 to 6 inches apart. Plant just deep enough that 1/4 inch of soil covers the block. It's that simple. There is one down side to blocks. A 1020 tray will only hold 36 two inch blocks. I want 200 storage onions this year so for me that would be 6 trays. That is half of my light area. From your post you are new to blocks so I will tell one thing that helped me. Get web trays and put them into the 1020 trays when you make your blocks. To bottom water I take another 1020 tray and put water in it and then lift the web tray containing the blocks and put that tray into the water. Let it sit till the blocks absorb the water then transfer the web tray back to the original tray. That makes it very easy to water the blocks. Good luck, Donnie Mac

Ashley: Carrots are notoriously slow to germinate. I plant them in my garden each year. It can take up to 15 days before they are up and visible. Be patient when growing carrots. I also find they are real slow growing for me once they do germinate for the first 1/2 of the season. I often wonder if they are going to amount to anything, then they always surprise me with how much root and shoot growth I get in August/September when they start sizing up nicely. Everything I planted in my garden in late may is growing well, big and looking good except my carrots. They just sit there for weeks on end and now are just starting to get some height. I know by Late September they will be good for harvest. I think eating carrots fresh picked are truly amazing in flavor. While they do store well for me in the refrigerator, nothing beats eating them very shortly after picking. Such a nice intense carrot flavor.

Your light pink geranium has a lot going for it with its great looks and blooms being both long lasting and shatter resistant ... so nice! I did read somewhere of mixed results with the 'Calliope' and the 'Rocky Mountain' series having rated rather poorly in trial garden results. 'Multibloom' are sensitive to growth checks (and don't' bounce back like most geraniums), the young plant must develop under ideal growing conditions and not allowed to be stressed in any manner, otherwise this will severely impact blooming capacity. Years ago, I had grown several colors and they DID put on a massive show, only drawback being shattering, though maybe the breeders have improved the series since then. The following year, I had neglected them somewhat by delaying transplanting or underfeeding or whatnot ... well, despite carefully tending to them afterwards, they had flowered so poorly as compared to the previous year. 'Multibloom' seedlings bulk up rapidly and produce a high number of stems, though check their growth at any time and it leads to consequences, so best to sow your own seeds (but, don't plant them too early!) or purchase vigorous young plants, rather than those already in bud or bloom and often falling victim to neglect at places like Walmart.

Tomatoes are resilient. Unless you're rough and breaking roots, when exactly you pot up isn't going to make or break your season. As for potting medium, etc. it doesn't make a huge difference. I've used seed starter, I've used Miracle Gro given to me by a relative who had no use for a big bag of it, etc. As long as it's not soil but a mix for indoor/container plants, it should work. The big issue with non-seed-starter mixes is that they might have fungus gnats in them, which can wreak havoc on your seedlings by eating their roots and carrying pathogens that cause damping off and become a real annoyance in the home. I always have water with mosquito bits or mosquito dunks soaking in them to use to water all my indoor plants, and I have no fungus gnat problems and haven't had anything at all damp off since. Not even notorious seedlings like basil. Re: fertilizer--if they look like they need it, I fertilize. If not, I don't. I find that I don't really need to if I use something like Miracle Gro. If I use sterile seed starter, I usually end up fertilizing lightly when I pot up with a dilute water soluble fert. I start off my seeds in 1.5" x 1.5 "x 2" cells, then when they're about at the point where the second set of true leaves is starting to come in, I pot them up into SOLO cups and, weather permitting, start to harden them off. They grow really quickly during the hardening off process so that they're a totally decent size when I finally plant them out. Sometimes, if things in the garden aren't on schedule, they live outdoors in the SOLO cups for a little longer. But that's when things are going according to plan. When they're not, I've planted out 2" plants with one true leaf and I've planted out plants pushing a foot and a half, and they've all done fine. Tomatoes may be prima donnas when it comes to disease, but they're tough little plants otherwise and fairly forgiving.