Let’s celebrate Earth Day by greenifying our garden and getting some seeds in the ground!
Pea sprouts from seeds planted two weeks ago. Yum. Peas.
We have two tasks this week:
1. Plant outdoor seeds.
2. Transplant indoor seedlings for larger plants to larger containers.
This week we are ready to plant these seeds outdoors:
Arugula
Beets
Carrots
Leeks
Swiss Chard
Turnips
Watercress
If you are doing successive planting, you can also plant some more of these:
Lettuce
Radishes
Radish sprouts from seeds planted two weeks ago. (Despite my “no thinning” policy, I am going to have to thin these a bit–they should be at least an inch apart.)
We are done planting indoor seeds, but keep babying the ones you have planted until we are ready to get the seedlings in the ground. If you have any seedlings that look like the are outgrowing their containers, this is a good time to transplant them to larger pots. Larger plants, like tomatoes and peppers, are good candidates for repotting. The more room they have to grow, the better developed their root systems will be. The better developed the root system, the healthier the plant. Smaller plants, like onions and lettuce, will be fine where they are for another couple of weeks until we put them into the garden–their root systems don’t grow as large. Think about it this way–if a plant will be large above the ground, its root system will be large below the ground. These are the guys that can use a little more room to grow.
Transplanting is pretty easy. Look for a container maybe twice as wide as the one your seedling is in now. Fill it about half full with potting mix–it’s not as important to use mix specially made for seeds here (if you have some left over, though, you might as well use it up), but do use a good, moisture-retaining potting mix. Then pop your seedling out of its current container and into the new one. Fill the rest of the way up with potting mix. Water. The hard part is finding the room for the bigger containers in your already-plant-filled kitchen.
If you are transplanting tomato seedlings, it’s a bit different–tomatoes like to be buried deep in the soil, because they will develop roots all along the part of the stem that is buried. For tomatoes, start with an empty container. Put the seedling in the container, and bury all but the very top set of leaves in the soil.
Happy gardening!
After
Before
Traditional vegetable gardening has always been done in rows, where you dig a trench in your soil, throw a bunch of seeds in the trench, and cover it up. Then in two weeks, when the seedlings start coming up, you have a billion little plants that are all smashed together. Since veggie plants can’t grow that close together, you have to get down there on your hands and knees and pull all those extra little plants out. Doesn’t that sound wasteful (not to mention kinda painful)?
Raising the Root 