Seeds and Planting
An important phase of planning your spring garden is the selection of the vegetables you plan to grow. Many buy starter plants to plant in their garden. There is a distinct advantage to this as you have a well grown plant that gives you an early and healthy start. At Sprainbrook Nursery our plants are grown organically and will adapt quickly to your garden. You can also opt to grow your own plants from seed. Here you can choose from a wider selection of options. You will need time, a medium and a location to germinate them in. Seed selection and plant selection should take place by reviewing what you have successfully grown in years past, what foods you and your family like, and what your location will best support. For those who are starting a new garden research the needs of the vegetables you plan to grow. Those who have done this in the past and have kept records can make evaluations. Make the selection of your seeds early. Develop a list of all the seeds you plan to grow. Many gardener’s collect their own seed. Add them to your list. Once you have come up with a complete list of seeds you want to grow you will have to develop a timing chart as to when to seed them. Many crops need to be started early while others are better started late and some can be seeded directly into the garden. This requires organization, research and developing a seeding and planting chart. If you have done this before and listed the information in my book, making the necessary adjustments will be easy. If not, read your labels and work backwards to determine the date you need to sow your seed. Determine the length of time to germination and then to grow it to the size you want and the date you plan to plant it in your garden. Gather as much information as you can on the seed package but also use your own judgment. Timing is very important so record all of this information in my book and stick to your schedule. Timing adjustments can be made the following year and the more years you do this the better you will get at it. If you seed too early, plants will often get straggly and weak due to lack of light and if you seed too late, you will shorten your harvest season. Remember a green thumb is a thumb of knowledge and experience. I have kept an accurate record throughout all of my years of growing plants of the exact day I seed and what I seeded. This journal is essential in my daily running of my business. Timing your crops for spring sales is essential to the success of your vegetable garden.
To get started sow seeds indoors, using a plug tray with sterile organic soil. You could also recdcle your old cardboard egg cartons. Mist seeds daily and cover seeds with a sheet of plastic to keep seeds constantly moist. Most vegetable seeds need to be covered with a light layer of soil for they like to germinate in a dark location but follow the directions on the seed packet. Some gardeners like to add shredded sphagnum moss to the covering medium as it posses anti fungal properties. Provide bottom heat as this is essential to high germination. . Once the seeds have germinated remove the plastic cover and give the plants as much light as possible. Light is a growth inhibitor, making seedlings strong by preventing them from becoming leggy and weak. Than transplant seedlings that have become crowded into larger containers once they have reached the two-leaf stage.
REQUIREMENTS FOR SEEDING
Good bottom heat using a heating mat, heating cable, radiator or top of a boiler
Use small plug trays. Trays without divisions are more apt to have fungal problems
Use an Organic sterile soil or a sterile peat-like mix
Follow the specific requirements on the seed packet.
Develop a method to keep seed moist until germination
Place in a sunny location as soon as germination has taken place
Transplant when plants become crowded and have reached the 2 leaf stage.
Keep them growing in a sunny cool location.
To work out your seeding program you need to know when to plant your vegetables in the garden. I have divided this into three categories’. Cool Weather crops, Warm weather Crops and Hot-Weather Crops.
COOL WEATHER CROPS SHOULD BE PLANTED ABOUT TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE LAST KILLING FROST
They include Beets, Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Celery, Garden Peas, Kale, Lettuce, Onions, Radishes, Spinach and Turnips.
WARM-WEATHER CROPS SHOULD BE PLANTED JUST AFTER THE LAST EXPECTED FROST IN THE SPRING
They include Cantaloupes, Carrots, Corn, Cucumbers, Peppers, Pumpkins, Snap Peas, Squash, Swiss chard and Tomatoes.
HOT WEATHER CROPS SHOULD BE PLANTED ABOUT THREE WEEKS AFTER THE LAST FROST IN THE SPRING
They include Eggplants, Field Peas, Lima Beans, Okra, Shell Beans, Sweet Potatoes and Watermelons.
My book has lots of open pages for notes and observations. Record as much as you can in it so you can refer to it year after year. It is the ideal place to record when you seed each crop. It needs to be your reference sheet for the following year.
In my book ‘12 Steps To Natural Gardening “ I have a Monthly Vegetable Calendar to follow. This will give you monthly applications that we recommend. Next week I will wrap up my segment on the ‘Vegetable Garden’ . You may want to download these pages and make them into a small pamphlet. Send this information on to anyone you think might be interested and get them to check out our new website and join the discussion board at www.naturalgardennews.com.
I need to relate to you a story that Tor told me during the time he played music at the local organic farmers market held in the small town New Lebanon, New York. The farmer was a local organic farmer who Tor bought organic vegetables from. The farmer was growing his organic vegetables in a very unique way. He developed rows of compost piles that he ran on his land. The rows were 2-3 feet tall and about 6 feet wide. He collected compost from many sources and mixed the product before laying it out in very nice rows. He concentrated on collecting as diverse a mixture of rich organic matter that he could find. What he was able to create were rich raised beds within his farm land property. He then took the seeds he wanted to seed and put them into a jar and shook and mixed them up. He seeded this mixture onto these long mounds of compost beds. Once he seeded these areas he saturated the soil to provide enough moisture to ensure good germination. What he found was the plants decided where they wanted to grow not where man wanted them to grow. Plants that needed more water thrived and took over the bottom of the pile while plants that liked a more arid soil thrived better on top of the pile and many thrived in areas in-between. He said by letting the plant decide where they wanted to grow he grew the best crop of nutritional vegetables he had ever grown. He also ended up with a bumper crop that paid good dividends. The food web is hard at work in situations like these teaming with lots of activity and these rows of compost piles will yield many nutritional crops in the future. This is the type of innovation and agricultural thinking we need our farmers to go back to. We need to concentrate our production on nutritional quality instead of quantity. We need to go back to the organic approach.
