First Week: Seeding lettuce into the pots

 Things that you need to prepare:
-two large rectangular plastic greenhouse trays (labeled as 1020 NH Tray, you can check out in this website: http://www.greenhousemegastore.com/product/1020-trays/seed-starting)
-one smaller square tray (sorry, I will update on the labeled name later)
-some perlite (instead of normal soil)
-some water
-108 2-inch plastic net pots
-forceps
-a dirt tray
-some plastic labels
-three plastic sheets (or wraps)
-three bags of lettuce seeds (ones that were used in this project were Morton's Secret Lettuce Mix '14, Philosopher’s Mix, and Freedom Mix from Wild Garden Seed. You can purchase these mix from this website: https://www.wildgardenseed.com/index.php)

To prepare an incubator environment for your lettuce, use Tom's Magic Method (professor Michaels' method.)

In a relatively clean dirt tray, pour out enough perlite. It is important to be careful not to create too much dust, since dust from perlite can cause some health problems. Then, add some water to make it wet. You should add more water than you expect to need, because perlite absorbs a lot of water! After mixing perlite and water, you should be able to form loose dumplings from the mix. Fill up two big rectangular greenhouse trays and a square tray with the mix. But, do not fill them up completely. You should leave (maybe) 2-inch space between the edge and the mix.

Then, with the rest of the mix, fill up 108 2-inch plastic net pots very loosely.
Now, it is time for the fun part!

 After filling up everything with the perlite and water mix, seed three lettuce seeds in each net pot. Use 36 pots for each population. (32 pots go into each rectangular trays and 4 from each population go into the same square tray, just label them clearly.)

Try to seed in the center, left and right of each pot with forceps. You should put each seed deep enough into each pot, but not too deep. Before you forget which tray belongs to which population, make sure that you mark each tray with the labels.

Put 8x4 net pots into each rectangular tray and 3x4 net pots into square tray. Just try to lightly squeeze each net pot into perlite. Before putting your trays in the greenhouse, add some more water to each tray so that you can create a "bog-like" environment. (A "bog-like" environment is one with enough water sits just under top perlite.)

After you bring all the trays to the greenhouse, put plastic sheets on top of each tray to help the seeds to germinate faster.

Next week, we are going to thin sprouts from each pot!