Sprouting update

Germination Begins!

The first of my seeds have begun to grow and only one day into the process; must be some potent seeds! Thus far almost all of the Romanesco Cauliflower are sprouting and the bell peppers look as though they are about to start moving too. Very little action can be seen in tomato territory yet.

Seed Organization System

And so it begins! I got those first seeds into the soil today and now I anxiously await their germination to take place. It’s going to be a long week or three in some cases.

I’ve done a bit of re-purposing over the winter in preparation for starting my seeds. First, I saved and sanitized all my bedding plant cell pots and flat trays from last year; the ones that I got with nursery grown plants in them. I’m not using the cell pots yet, but reserving those for the first transplanting. I also have some yogurt and cottage cheese tubs for later transplants.

To start the tiny seedlings I’ve been saving cardboard tubes- the kind from toilet paper, paper towels, and even Christmas gift wrapping. I cut the tubes up so they are roughly 3-4” long and filled them with organic potting soil. The potting soil has a little bit of unflavored gelatin diluted with warm water mixed into it. This serves two purposes- one is to hold the potting soil together in the bottomless “pots” and the other purpose is to provide a tiny bit of nutrients to the seedlings when they emerge. I have also saved egg cartons for seed starting- the cardboard kind, not styrofoam.

So far I have all of my tomatoes (except for the chocolate cherry tomatoes which have yet to be shipped- thanks for nothing Park Seeds!) potted up, along with globe artichokes, romanesco cauliflower, sweet bell peppers, and lemon balm. I intended to have most of this planted a week ago, so I decided to hold off a week on the scallions which I originally planned on planting today as well. I’ll wait and put the scallions in when I do the broccoli and cucumbers next weekend. Hopefully by then I will start to see some action in the trays!

So, the toilet paper “pots” are sitting on the re-used trays covered with a translucent white trash bag under a fluorescent grow light. The trash bag keeps in the moisture and heat which builds from the warmth of the light. No fertilizers are needed at this point since I used the gelatin mixture.

It’s nice to have dirty fingernails again after so many months trapped in the house!

Garden Diagram

Let's Begin

This is my first posting. So to begin, I am documenting my garden from planning to harvest. In the past I have had many vegetable gardens in many different forms and locations across the country. My largest and most ambitious up to this point (and most successful) was in Connecticut in the summer of 1988. I had a nearly endless amount of land at my disposal located on a vacant 3 acre lot next door to my house.

At that point in my gardening life, I had little idea of what I was doing, so the amazing part here is that I was very successful- purely by accident. That summer I grew everything from seed started in my house months before setting out using make-shift growing trays that I suspended, macramé planter style, in my sunroom windows.

Later that summer I harvested somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 pounds of tomatoes, a few of which were 3-5 pounds each. I grew a lot of things that summer, mostly common vegetables that I knew a little something about from growing them before in my first little garden plot the summer before in Kansas City or in my mother’s garden growing up.

Back to the present.

A great deal of the planning for this year’s garden is complete at this point and I am on the verge of planting my first seeds! This of course means I need to back up a little and explain what has happened thus far.

I sat down with my 9 year old son, who is always interested in gardening and all things nature related. He and I discussed the types of vegetables our family enjoys and eats a fair bit of. We looked thru a stack of garden catalogs and circled things we liked (he liked almost everything).

I decided to do some reading, being that we are now living in the upper mid-west and it has been a while since I did any serious vegetable gardening in this climate. I have dabbled a bit the past two summers here, but focused my efforts more on my perennial garden. I discovered last summer that I really don’t have enough sustained sunlight to grow a good variety of vegetables, so decided to join the community garden this year.

After checking out my assigned plot (roughly 1/6th acre) and talking with the community garden coordinator, I began to plan in earnest what I would plant now that I have a huge plot with full sun all day. My only challenge there will be fencing it to keep the deer and woodchucks out! I have narrowed the list my son made to approximately 50 items. The physical space I intend to plant is 27’X 55’. This allows several long planting beds, one large block on one end for corn and beans, and several smaller blocks on the other end for carrots, herbs, and such.

I have laid out the garden plot on graph paper utilizing a crop rotation system- “A” plants are the leaf and legumes (nitrogen fixing plants). “B” plants are the brassicas or cabbage family. “C” plants are the fruiting plants like tomatoes and peppers. In this way I can keep track of where things are planted from year to year rotating their locations. This reduces certain garden pests and helps keep the soil nutrients from depleting.

I spent a lot of time researching the best varieties of the plants I chose to grow. Then I spent even more time researching which vendors sold these varieties and at the best prices. Lastly, I began to compile my orders- sometimes shifting from lower priced sources in order to make fewer orders. Once it was all decided upon, I placed the orders and sat back to wait for their arrival.

Interestingly, the smallest seed companies got my orders to me within 2-3 days. The larger seed companies took in one instance almost a month- and that order was sent as a partial order! This fact might just factor into my ordering next year. Perhaps it’s best to pay a little more and support a smaller business that ships orders out faster.

So, here I sit with almost all of my seeds. Next I needed to devise a system for organizing them so that they all get planted at the right time (there are A LOT of seeds). I read over the seed packets and any additional information I could find on the internet to determine the timing and method of planting. What I decided on was a filing box with index cards to file the seeds in order of their planting- whether pre-started indoors or direct sewn outdoors. This didn’t matter, only the date I would first put seed to soil regardless of in or out.

Each packet of seed has an index card with the following information on it:

 Full name (common and scientific) of plant and variety
 How much space I intend to use for it in the garden (or how many individual plants)
 Crop Rotation A,B, or C
 Method of planting (Direct or indoors)
 Timing of planting and timing of set-out if seeds are pre-started indoors
 Days to harvest
 Any other pertinent info

The seeds and their corresponding index card are filed together, in order of planting dates, in a plastic shoe box. To make it easiest to put them all in order I decided to make a calendar with the vegetable names written on the appropriate planting dates. This calendar is color coded (purple for indoor starting, orange for set-out dates, green for direct sewn outdoors dates). Once all this info was on the calendar it was simple to put them in order in the filing box. Now I can see at a glance what needs to be planted each week. I also included the important dates on my calendar like average last frost, average first frost, 55 degree nights, etc. Everything is stored together with all my supplies so when the calendar says it’s time, I’m ready to go!

Now all I need is a few hours of spare time to get those first seeds growing. Maybe tomorrow. Or not. I’ll keep you posted!