Veggies

April 2, 2004

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A Beginner’s Guide to Vegetable Seed Starting

Guest post by miss gard(e)ner

Inhabit Hardiness Zones 5 through 8?
Ready to start your growing season?
The much anticipated moment has arrived.

Planning

Keep the following in mind when planning your garden:

Climate: What grows well in your region?
Space limitations: How extensive will your garden be?
Domestic habits: What would you like to eat from your garden?
Production levels: How many tomatoes do you really need?
Aesthetic desires: How would you like the space to look?

Make a list of your top ten most desired veggies. Start with them.

Seed Sowing Schedule

This seed starting chart will help you figure out exactly when to plant different seeds.
First, determine your region’s frost-free date. Ask your local plant nursery or gardener neighbor. Alternatively, check out almanac.com. The reality of weather makes an ‘exact’ date rarely exact. Keep in mind the forecasts for your region. A colder, longer winter? Push the date forward a few weeks. As they say, better safe then sorry.

Sowing Set-ups

Materials:

Desired Seeds
Spray bottle
Containers
Seed-starting soil

Containers: Gardeners have the choice of separate pots for each plant or flats holding many plants. The choice depends on various factors including your space limitations and the fragility of your desired plants. I use the separate pots or plug trays for most of my plants because there is less of a chance of damaging roots when transplanting. However, trays may be the more practical choice for lettuce, spinach, kale and other small seed crops.

Reuse last year’s small nursery pots if you have them. Alternatively, ask friends and family. Most gardeners have them lying around. If neither of these options work out, any container two to three inches deep will do, including disposable cups, yogurt containers and milk cartons. You can also buy kits at your local plant nursery. My favorites are compressed peat discs and re-useable plastic plug trays. Make sure your containers are clean by washing with hot water. Ensure that each pot has good drainage, i.e. a hole or two in the bottom. Place containers in a water-catching tray lined with pebbles. This ensures that the drained water stays out of the pot preventing root rot.

Seeds and seedlings are extremely sensitive to disease and nutrient levels. Seedlings will appreciate it if you buy a seed starting mix from your local nursery. Fill each container with soil up to 1/4 inch from the top of the container.

Ready, set… SOW!

Sowing the seeds: Moisten the soil in the containers before sowing the seeds. Put two seeds in each container to ensure something emerging. Generally, gardeners cover the seeds to a depth about 3 times the thickness of the seeds. Be sure to read seed packets for seed specific instructions. Pat the soil lightly and water with a fine mist.

Cozy Climates: Cover containers with plastic wrap to keep their environment humid. Place containers in a warm, protected place. Most seeds with germinate well at about 70 degrees F (20 degrees C).

Labeling: Be sure to label each container with the plant name and date sown. Popsicle sticks are perfect for indoor containers. Commercially available plastic or metal labels from nurseries are better for the outdoors.

Leftover seeds and packaging: Empty seed packets should be filed for future reference. Leftover seeds need to be placed in an airtight container in a dim, dry place. Seeds over 2 years old may be past their prime. Decide whether it is worth the risk next year.

Whisper best wishes to your seeds until…

They’re up! As soon as the seedlings have emerged, remove the plastic wrap. Place containers in a south or east-facing window. Gardeners may also use lights to extend the `sunshine’. Seedlings need not be as warm as emerging seeds. Keep seedlings away from radiators and heat vents to save water. If more than one plant comes up, clip the smaller one at soil level. Do not pull the plants up by the roots as this could damage the other seedlings.

Ongoing Maintenance: Mist containers with spray bottle as needed taking care to not to drown the seedlings. Remove diseased plants immediately to prevent spread.

New digs: If necessary, transplant plants from crowded trays to their own pots after they grow a second set of leaves. Some plants that spend more time indoors may need to be transplanted into larger pots. Tomatoes and peppers are likely candidates. As needed, choose the healthiest seedlings to move to 6-inch pots.

Hardening Off: A week before the plants go outside for good, acclimatize them to the changing conditions. On a warmer spring day, move plants outside to a shaded spot for a few hours. Each day increase the plants’ exposure to sun and wind. After a week, leave plants outside overnight. Then transplant them into the garden.

Whisper, “Good Luck!” They have a few more tests to pass before bearing you food.

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March 23, 2004

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Seedy Saturday Purchases

Last Saturday I attended the Seedy Saturday event here in Toronto. The turnout seemed to have grown since last year and of course so did my purchases. Where I will be gardening this year is up in the air so I have tried to hold back on making any plans, decisions or purchases. But who goes to a seed sale and doesn’t buy seeds? Here’s what I bought:
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A Little Something About Big Pumpkins

Guest post by Beate Schwirtlich

A round this time each year huge pumpkins, some as big as a thousand pounds, are loaded–using either a forklift or a bunch of strong people and a tarp–into vans and trucks and taken to contests. Growers have spent months tending to these pumpkins that by now have become lumpy, flattened-by-their-own-unnatural-mass giants. This years’ heavyweight pumpkin of 1140 pounds was grown by Dave Stelts, and weighed in at Canfield, Ohio. Nine pumpkins grown this year joined “club 1000” (the informal name for growers who have “broken the barrier”), a record in itself. In the eighties, the heaviest pumpkin weighed in at just over 400 pounds-now a pumpkin over 1000 pounds is expected each year.

A guy named Howard Dill gets most of the credit for the size of pumpkin being grown today. He’s a Nova Scotia farmer who started growing pumpkins in the fifties and spent 30 years breeding them for size. He held the world record from 1979 to 1982. Today, he sells his own variety of seeds, Dill’s Atlantic Giant, by mail order. Pumpkins grown from his seeds are known to grow into the biggest pumpkins of any.

It’s supposed to be a hobby, but competition for first prize weigh-off contests is serious. The people who really want to win are always trying to concoct ways of giving their pumpkin the advantage-a special fertilizer mix, a certain way of a training the vines, a custom greenhouse… If it’s not money on the line, it’s skill and pride. One contest, held by the World Pumpkin Confederation, offers a $50 000 first prize, far more than any other. But there’s still cache in growing the biggest pumpkin, even if it’s not for the big dough. Other growers respect the skill of winners: they go to them for seeds and advice, and follow their methods of growing (if they are willing to share them) religiously. Howard Dill for example is actually described as the `guru’ of big pumpkins by other growers. Some even protect their prize pumpkins with elaborate security systems.

The people who are best at growing pumpkins muster all their human ingenuity and gardening know-how to give nature a winning push. A prize pumpkin doesn’t have to be pretty, edible, or even non-toxic. It just has to weigh a ton. The plants are monitored, measured, and treated scientifically but are at the same time coddled and even loved. They are fertilized according to a program, and liberally treated with fungicides, insecticides, herbicides, and anything else in the arsenal of old-fashioned, chemical-heavy style gardening—even before the grower notices a problem! These gourds are not bred to be pest resistant, that’s for sure. A site called The Pumpkin Nook pretty much expresses the feeling growers have towards the use of pesticides:

” If you are in search of the behemoth pumpkin, spraying to control insects is unfortunately a must…Fortunately those striving for prize winning pumpkins will not be eating the fruit, so health risks are lower. “

Theoretically, though, one fruit could supply the pumpkin for 900 pies. In “Training and Pruning your Pumpkin Vines” David McCallum tells a story of sacrifice in the quest to keep a giant squash safe from the weather:

” The squash was kept growing in the greenhouse with the aid of a propane furnace until November 4. The greenhouse even made it through a 4″ wet snowfall. By setting the alarm clock and getting up every four hours, my brother and I were able to keep the roof clean all night long. “

No wonder pumpkin growers describe their hobby as a sport-and he’s probably not the first to miss a good nights’ sleep over his pumpkin. One grower describes the nerves that accompany the late season, when the pumpkin is getting huge, as the time to start taking nerve pills. It seems the stress is incredible; the pumpkins grow 15 to 20 pounds a day, a rate of growth that can cause them to split without any warning, the growers’ worst fear.

Less earnest accounts tell of increasing the heft of pumpkins by injecting them with growth hormones (the story I’d heard about feeding pumpkins milk turns out to be a myth), filling the hollow with water the night before the weigh-off, patching up cracks with silicone and disguising signs of rot. But if the rules for pumpkin weigh-offs are to be followed, they mostly use every trick in the gardening book, many of them extravagant.

I always thought that this was an innocent hobby. It’s actually rather cutthroat and involves a lot of fertilizer and water in the name of being number one. If you ask me, it’s more a human accomplishment that happens to involve a plant. Here are some tips of the pumpkin growing superstars, things that may seem a bit odd to the uninitiated. If you ask me, only true pumpkin maniacs would go so far in pursuit of a giant, unedible vegetable.

Soil is most important. Most how-to articles recommend digging a pit five foot square and three feet deep (!) and filling it with a mixture of sheep, chicken, horse and cattle manure and leaf litter all mixed together with topsoil.
Before germination, seeds are put in water and aerated with a fish tank bubbler “to introduce lots of oxygen into the water and to the seeds”.
“Avoid touching the fruit with your bare hands…Wear clean gloves if you must,” writes one grower. Apparently pumpkins can suffer viral problems if actually touched.
Growers keep diaries of daily measurements and progress of their plants
Dowsers are sometimes hired to find a source of underground water. Growing pumpkins get as much as a thousand gallons of water a day.
“Pumpkin cabanas” shade the actual fruit during mid-summer, while elaborate windbreaks protect them from the wind.
Special heating units are dug into the soil before transplanting outside, so that the soil can be heated from below and above.
One grower suggests treating transplants like newborn babies.
Avoid soil compaction in the pumpkin patch: “Wear snowshoes if you must.”

I’ve realized that I don’t have the right personality type for this hobby. I’m not meticulous enough, I don’t own a pick-up truck to cart the thing around, and I think I’d rather have a messy pumpkin patch with lots of small happy little pumpkins for making into pie. Is there a contest for the happiest pumpkin patch?

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October 4, 2002

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Ensure Your Bounty of Peas

Guest post by Arzeena Hamir

No matter what zone you live in, garden peas are one of the first crops that can be planted outdoors. Even though the weather may be mild at this time of the year in your zone, the soil is still quite cold which often results in poor germination. In addition, peas started in very cold soil are more susceptible to root rot and other soil-borne diseases. However, with a little planning and a few shortcuts, even gardeners who have to wait for a thaw to plant can get a jump on their pea harvest.

The hardest decision to make is choosing a variety. If you prefer shelling peas, I would recommend Maestro, Green Arrow, or Knight. These varieties are relatively early and give good yields. If you have a cooler season & are willing to wait for your peas, Alderman (Tall Telephone) is amazingly sweet. For snap peas, Sugar Snap is an old-time favourite with excellent taste. However, the vines are often 6ft tall. For a shorter earlier-maturing variety, try Sugar Mel or Sugar Ann. Finally, for snow peas, I love Oregon Sugar Pod II as well as Oregon Giant. Even if some of these pods get lost in the foliage and end up forming peas, I’ve found them to be quite sweet.

Although peas can survive weather down to 40º F, the seeds still require warmth to germinate. Cold, damp soil will retard germination, making the seeds susceptible to fungus & insect damage. An easy trick is to start the germination indoors. Pea seeds are easily sprouted between damp paper towel and once the root appears from the seed, it can be planted outside with a higher chance of survival. In colder areas where the ground is still thawing, the seeds can be grown as transplants for a couple of weeks longer.

Some sort of trellis will be required and should be erected before the plants emerge. Most peas grow to a height of 3 ft although many of the heirloom varieties can reach 6ft or more. Pea netting or even fish netting is ideal to allow the tendrils to form a good grip. If trellising just isn’t in the picture for your garden, I would recommend growing a semi-leafless pea variety like Novella II. The plants produce an abundance of tendrils and can support themselves if planted about 1 inch apart.

Ultimately, temperatures will rise and will support growth outside. Whether you’re direct seeding or transplanting, peas grown in early spring will benefit from the addition of inoculant. Peas, like other members of the legume family, have the ability to supply their own nitrogen from the atmosphere through a relationship they have with Rhizobia bacteria.

Although rhizobia are naturally occurring, in cold soil, they are not very active. Inoculant contains millions of these rhizobia bacteria and often comes in the form of a powder. Gardeners can either coat the seeds directly (like “Shake & Bake”) or mix inoculant into the soil where the transplants will grow. Either way, you will see a benefit. In trials, inoculated pea plants yielded 77% more peas than uninoculated plants. One word of caution, once the inoculant is moistened, use it all & do not let it dry out or you will kill the rhizobia.

Since peas can fix their own nitrogen, they require less nitrogen in their fertilizer. A fertilizer too rich in N (the first number) will promote leafy growth and delay flower & pod production. Before planting, compost or aged manure can be dug in. Peas also respond well to the addition of phosphorus (the middle number) so digging in bonemeal or rock phosphate will help with pea production.

Pre-sprouting, inoculating and extra phosphorus will all help your peas to get a jump on the weather and produce a bounty of harvest.

Arzeena Hamir is an agronomist and garden writer based in Vancouver, BC. She has worked in the organic gardening industry for 8 years as a consultant and trainer. When she’s not planting peas or harvesting zucchini, she runs Terra Viva Organics.

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October 4, 2002

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Start Healthy Tomatoes

Guest post by Arzeena Hamir

Tomatoes are one of the easiest vegetables to grow from seed. However, unless you live in the tropics, your summers are probably too short to direct seed these heat loving plants. Starting tomato seeds indoors gives them a jump on the season, especially with late maturing varieties. Start seed 6-8 weeks before your last frost. Check almanac.com if you’d like to check your frost dates.

Did You Know?

Tomatoes are native to South America.
They were first cultivated by indigeneous peoples in prehispanic Mexico.
The fruit is botanically a berry.

Tomato seeds themselves are easy to handle and can be planted in any type of container you have around the house: yogurt containers, milk cartons, etc. Try not to use too small of a container (egg cartons for example) or else you’ll be watering more frequently.

The key to starting tomato seed is to keep the seed moist. Pre-moisten the potting mix so that it’s wet but not soggy. When you squeeze it in your hand, no water should come out. The soil should form a ball that falls apart when you poke it. Fill your container and place one or two seeds on top, covering them lightly with more soil. Next, cover the container with either a plastic dome or plastic wrap. Not only does covering prevent the soil from drying out, it prevents you from overwatering the soil as the seed is germinating.

In addition to moisture, warm temperature is the key ingredient to helping tomato seeds germinate. At 75-80° F, seedlings will emerge in just three to five days. Bottom heat is best so place your containers in a warm spot like on top of the water heater or even on top of the VCR. Alternatively, you can use heating cables or a heating mat under the containers.

Once the seedlings are up, move them off the heat and provide them with lots of light. If you have a bright, south-facing window, keep them there. However, if you notice that your seedlings are getting lanky, it’s an indication that you need to provide supplemental light. Grow lights or fluorescent shop lights can be used to keep plants short & stocky. Suspend them close to the plants, no more than four inches from the top of the leaves.

Once the seedlings have developed at least one set of true leaves, pot them up into their own individual containers. Each time you do this, add some fertilizer to the soil mix. I find worm castings to be a great source of organic nutrients that won’t burn the seedlings. Other options include compost or half-strength fish fertilizer.

Each time you pot up your seedlings, take off the bottom two sets of leaves and bury the entire stem. Why? Tomatoes have this wonderful ability to sprout roots along their stems. They are, after all, related to potatoes. Burying the stem & stimulating more root production ensures that the seedling has a well established root system that will withstand the fluctuating moisture conditions in the garden.

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