Raising the Root

I love seeds.  Seeds are the first indication that the gardening season is indeed returning, even if it’s currently 15 degrees and there is still snow on the ground.  Seeds say, “Yes, you will be eating fresh tomatoes off the vine in just a few short months!”  Seeds conjure memories of reading books in the Sky Chairs on the back porch.  Seeds are the promise of a delicious summer.

Hubby will tell you that, yes, I do in fact have a seed addiction.  They call to me, drawing me into their seemingly innocent display stands, and I am absolutely compelled to bring the poor little babies home with me.  It’s worse than passing by the cheese counter at Tony’s or the clearance rack at DSW.  Really.

I usually end up planting WAY more seeds that we can actually use—or that we have room for in our itty bitty house.  The kitchen becomes a mini-greenhouse, with trays of seeds on every surface near a window.  (It really is a problem.)  Luckily, I have lots of friends who don’t grow plants from seed, but are more than happy to take extra seedlings off my hands.  I can only hope they give my babies good homes.

Of course, you can just as easily (ok, MORE easily) grow a garden from plants that you buy at the nursery or the big box store (or mooch from me).  If you want to go that route, log off right now, and save yourself from reading about effort involved!  This is going to be a super-long post (most likely the longest one I will EVER write), and I will definitely not be offended if you aren’t committed to the seed idea.  Go pour yourself a glass of wine and put your butt on the couch.  But if you aren’t scared…

A quick run-down of the pros and cons of starting from seed:

Pros:

• Seeds offer more variety—you are more likely to be able to find those crazy heirloom varieties in seed form than in plant form.
• Price—seeds cost a tiny percentage of what plants cost.

Cons:

• You need to have patience.  Some seeds need to be started inside long before they can actually go into the garden.
• You need to check and water seedlings every day, diligently (in my brain this isn’t actually a con, but an act of love).
• You need to have enough space and light in your house to make them grow (no, the garage is probably too cold).
• It takes time to actually stick those little things into soil!
• You need to be organized—you can’t just set aside a couple of hours one weekend and think you can do it all at once.  Different plants have different germination periods, so you will have to take time several different weekends to get your seeds started (but football season is over, so you have time, right??)

If you are still on board and want to take the time and effort to start seeds on your own, here’s what you need to get started:

Shopping List:

• Seeds:  I can’t offhand think of too many things that I have started from seed without at least some success, so grab anything that looks interesting and, of course, delicious!  You can get your seeds from anywhere—on line, at a nursery, the big box home improvement store, the grocery store—anywhere.  I am sure there are some brands that are better than others, but I haven’t experimented too much.  For a beginning gardener, though, until you have a good grasp on how to plant different varieties of veggies, I highly recommend going with Botanical Interests.  You can find their stuff at most local nurseries, or you can buy them from their website.  Their product is wonderful—high-quality seeds, lots of organic and heirloom varieties, they are emphatically against genetic engineering, and they are a local company out of Broomfield, CO—woohoo!  But the seed packages are the key here—they have a ton of info on them—when to plant the seeds, how deep to plant the seeds, when to move them outside, etc.  Some seeds do better if they are soaked overnight before planting, or stored at a cold temperature before planting—their packages will tell you all of this, where a lot of others won’t.  For a beginning gardener (or any gardener, for that matter), those packages are key.
• Soil:  Get a seed starter mix from Echter’s.  I usually mix 3 parts of that with 1 part vermiculite, which you can also get there.  Vermiculite is like little bitty sponges—it soaks up lots of water and stays moist for a long time, helping to keep the soil around it moist.
• Containers:  There are several different things you can buy:
  • They have these convenient little trays at Echter’s (or Home Depot, or pretty much anywhere this time of year) for pretty cheap—they have a black plastic base tray, a clear plastic cover, and then a bunch of little compartments that sit inside the black tray.  You will at least want to get the trays, even if you don’t want the inserts.
  • Peat Pods, which look like little brown disks (they swell up when you add water).  They also sell those with the top and bottom trays.  Peat pods are nice because you don’t have to yank the plant out of a little plastic container later—you just take the netting off the outside of the peat, and plop it in the ground.  You also don’t have to buy potting soil for those—it’s all built in.
  • Peat Pots are another variation—they are little containers that look kind of like they are made of mashed up cardboard.  You can start your seeds in these, then they can go straight into the ground—the pot itself will break down over time.
  • I have discovered that tomatoes do better in bigger containers.  For those, I have a bunch of yogurt*** and sour cream tubs I have collected over the years with holes drilled in the bottom.  You can also use containers from plants you have purchased in the past.  Again, you will want to put them in a tray so you don’t get water all over the place.  If you use your own containers, be sure to sterilize them in some bleach-water (about one part bleach to 8 parts water) and rinse them thoroughly before planting anything in them.
    *** Important News Flash!  This year I used Greek yogurt tubs for a bunch of my tomato seedlings.  NONE of them made it, even after sterilizing the tubs with bleach water.  I will experiment with some other seeds to see if the result is the same, but my guess is there is some enzyme in yogurt that tomatoes just don’t like.  Or maybe it’s all those probiotics?  Who knows?  Just don’t go there.

Other stuff you’ll need:

• Light:  Seedlings really need a lot of light to do well, once the sprouts have emerged.  16 hours a day is recommended, but regular lights don’t do the trick.  You can buy grow lights and/or bulbs at Home Depot—I have a florescent light that we hang on adjustable chains so it can be moved it up and down—the seedlings like to be close to the light source.  I have also just stuck them all in a southern-facing window and not worried about it, and they seem to have done fine.  But I think using a grow light does produce better plants.  If you have a situation where you can provide 16 hours of a light a day, do it.  Be sure to rotate the plants every day or two.  Plants will grow toward the light source, and if they don’t get rotated, they will all lean to one side.
• Temperature:  Seedlings do not like the cold—they need temps above 65 degrees.  As long as you have them in your house, they should be fine.
• Water:  You want to make sure the soil stays pretty consistently moist, without being saturated.  Don’t let them dry out, but don’t soak them, either.  I have some little squeeze bottles I use to water seedlings so I can give them just a bit of water at a time—a big watering can puts out too much water, and can send soil and seeds all over the place.  Check them every day to make sure they aren’t dry.
• Time:  Each kind of vegetable seed will need to be planted at a different time, some up to several weeks before they can go into the ground.  The first step to creating a schedule is to figure when the last frost will be.  Of course, particularly with the crazy weather in Colorado, we really have no idea, but it’s usually around Mother’s Day.  So I plan on the last frost around middle of May.  I usually plant seeds each weekend leading up to that, counting back from middle of May to figure out when to plant what.  BUT—if you subscribe to my blog (just click the “Follow” button over there on the right ——> ), I will keep you posted on when to start everything.  That’s just the kind of gal I am.  🙂

Those are the basic requirements.  If you aren’t scared yet, keep reading for a step-by-step on how to actually get the little buggers into the soil…

• Fill your containers with your seedling/vermiculite mix.  You’ll want to do this on a day with very little wind, or it will all blow away.
• Check the seed package to find out the correct planting depth for each seed.  Just poke a hole in the top of the soil to the correct depth, drop the seeds in, and cover them back up with more soil.
• This part is REALLY IMPORTANT—label your seedlings somehow or keep a chart of what’s what.  Everything will look the same once it starts growing, and you will need to know exactly what you have when you start transplanting.  Carrots can be planted in beds just an inch apart, where tomatoes need at least a foot and a half, so you can see how mixing those up would be problematic.
• Water.  For the first watering, put ¼ to ½ inch of water into the bottom of one of your big black trays, then put the containers down into the water.  Once the water is all absorbed, add more to the bottom of the tray.  Keep doing this until the soil feels moist on top, then pour off any water left in the tray.
  

  Here is what your seed trays will look like while the seeds are germinating. The condensation inside is a good sign!

• Keep your seeds in a warm place covered with the clear plastic lid until you see green.  After the first sprout comes up, you can remove the lid and save it for next year.
• 

  An onion sprout! Once you start to see these, uncover your trays, and get them as much light as you can.

  Once the seedlings start coming up, you will want to thin them out so that you have one seedling per container.  I usually do this when I have one that’s about two inches tall.  Just pull out any that are shorter growing up around the tallest one.  Do this very carefully, and hold the soil down while you are doing it, so you don’t also yank the primary seedling.

• Then all you have to do is baby them for several weeks until they are ready to go outside!
• A week or two before you want to transplant, you will need to harden off the seedlings.  To do this, start by taking them outside, and put them somewhere shaded and protected from the wind for a few hours.  Then bring them in for the night.  The next day, leave them out a couple more hours in the same spot.  After a few days, put them in a sunny spot for a few hours, preferably in the morning when it’s not too hot.  Then move them to shade.  A few days after that, leave them in full sun for the afternoon.  The idea is to gradually build them up to the point where you can leave them unprotected out in the sun all day and overnight before you plant them.  This helps prevent your little babies that you have spent so much time nurturing indoors from going into shock when you plant them outside.

A few other random notes on seeds and gardening in general:

• 

  My Seed Box. (Yours doesn’t need to be this organized.)

  Most people think that seeds can only be used one year, and if you have extras, they will just go to waste.  False!  I have used seeds that are up to a few years old, and the plants are just a good as the first year.  This is particularly true in Colorado, where it’s pretty dry.  All you have to do is make sure you store them properly.  I usually take each open seed packet, and stick it into a zip top sandwich bag, then put all of those in a shoe-box sized plastic storage bin.  Stick them somewhere dark and cool for the winter (and not someplace damp—you want to keep them away from moisture), and they should be good for at least a couple of years.  The older the seeds, the more I plant at once, assuming that a higher percentage won’t work if they are a little older.

• There are only a few veggies that don’t transplant well—peas, beans, radishes, carrots, corn, parsnips, turnips, spinach, and cucumbers to name a few.  But go ahead and buy those seeds, too!  They can all be planted straight into your garden—I’ll address that soon!

I hope I have inspired you, rather than deterred you, to take on starting your veggies from seed.  Happy planting!

3/22/12 Update:  Check out this post I found on making seed pots from newspaper–the newspaper will break down just like a peat pot.  Genius!

Seed-Starting Pots From Newspaper – MrBrownThumb