Raising seedlings for dummies

Baby Broccoli

So far I’ve been a seed raising failure. I can plant stuff in the ground and it seems to grow, but when it comes to planting seeds in trays, I seem to always kill them before they reach the transplanting stage. I have a mini greenhouse that I bought at Bunnings for the purpose, and the first time I tried it – fail. Everything germinated fine, was looking brilliant, then they died on the first really hot summer day. I figured that as long as I kept it wet, it wouldn’t get too hot. Wrong. Everything died.

So since then I’ve been experimenting with the location of the greenhouse. I’ve learned that direct sunlight is bad. I’ve learned that a dingy laundry isn’t much better. I’m now trying my front porch, and I’m having better luck, but I’ll be convinced once I have something that vaguely resembles something at the nursery. Not sure if it makes a difference or not, but I’ve mostly been using egg cartons as seed raising trays. My thought was that I could just tear off the cell and plant it in the ground as is. The roots would just break through the cardboard as it rots down. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.