advice

Seed-Starting Overview (part three)

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Proof, above, that deer will bite into daffodils. You can see the poor remains of a flower that was trying to come up. The deer in my yard, after that trial, have left my daffodils alone, and I have too many daffodils to use my expensive deer spray on.

 

More on seeds:

If you grow annuals in pots, early spring is the time to freshen the soil with compost. Or, if you dump the dirt from your pots into your flower beds to top them off, as I do, it’s the right time to buy new topsoil and fill pots again. I use bags labeled topsoil rather than potting mix, because topsoil, as the commercial suppliers make it, has a lot of wood chips, and none of the added fertilizers. I think it’s better not to overfeed your potted plants.

Most annuals can live outdoors in early May. A few, like dusty millers and bachelor’s buttons, have thick, hairy leaves, and can endure a frost, but this is no rule of thumb, as other hairy-leaved annuals, like tomatoes and sunflowers, can’t endure cold temps at all.

Be prepared to carry pots indoors or cover them—but in a typical year, late April is the frost-safe, as opposed to frost-free, time. Early May (6b) is when, historically, frost doesn’t occur.

 

Do home-gathered seeds germinate better than commercial ones?

I don’t notice a difference when starting seeds indoors. Gathered seeds, in my observation, germinate better than commercial seeds when sown directly outdoors. That’s probably because they were “born” with fungal or bacterial influences drawn from my locality, and so root happily in the home soil.

A six-pack of annuals, dotted here and there, is underwhelming, but a swath of marigolds, crowded in with cosmos, zinnia, tithonia, salvia, sunflower, etc., is a beautiful sight. Create swaths at the edges of beds and paths by scraping a hoe across the surface, loosening lawn grass and weeds (and discarding them!). Then sow seeds densely and tamp them in, so they don’t immediately attract birds. You can cover a sowing with straw, lightly applied. Mulch is too heavy, and will inhibit germination. 

 

Can you start a garden entirely by direct sowing?

The first consideration is timing. You would want to research which plants can grow to blooming size in your zone in the space of 120 days, most of the frost-free planting season. Rudbeckias, Gaillardias, Butterfly Weed, Heliopsis, are some perennials that have bloomed for me their first year from seed. Annuals give far more choices, but even zinnias and marigolds may not actually bloom until July (in 6b, + or – in 5b, 6a, and 7a), if sown directly. Another consideration is creatures. Ants are large consumers of seeds, and have the military organization to find them. Scratching birds may also discover a good portion of your seeds.

For vegetables, a lot of the good stuff is typically direct-sown, as corn, beans, peas, squash, potatoes, onions. (I mentioned last post the advantage of starting corn in pots, if you have squirrels.) Tomatoes, timing-wise, are on a thin margin, and won’t work well. Some skinny peppers may fruit; bells are unlikely to fatten up without starting under lights. 

The two points to consider, then, are: How soon do you want to see flowers (fruits)? How much of haphazard results are you willing to tolerate? You can save a ton of money with all-direct-sowing, and can try the experiment in just a portion of your garden. 

 

 

Seed-Starting Overview (part One)

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Photo of bright yellow coreopsis blooms

 

Photo of seed-starting shelves and lighting

 

January is a good time to get your setup going, if you want to try stocking your garden with seed-grown plants. For the next few posts, I’ll provide what experience has taught me.

Any four-shelf unit really gives you three, unless you have a way of rigging lights above the topmost shelf; but this shelf makes a place to store your gear—spray bottles, pots, labels, etc. The ones I use are sold under the Amazon Basics brand, listed this year at 64.96, not including sales tax. They consist of wire shelves, hollow posts that screw together, and plastic fasteners that hold the shelves in place. They are not very trying to assemble, and also pretty attractive for use at other times as household furniture.

What you’ll want, if starting 500+ seeds (which sounds like a lot, but for any largish garden, is barely enough) is at least three sets of shelves. Each shelf can hold two flats, oriented short end to short end, for maximum exposure to light. When seedlings are large enough to be potted on (as in photo above), fewer will fit in a flat, and the shelves need spacing higher—the reason you need three units, instead of two.

For lights, daylight (blue-toned) LEDs work fine; I have not found any deficit in the light they provide to seedlings. The best choice is the shoplight type (at various stores, around $50 for a set of two), with two tubes per unit, and a four-foot length—and you’ll be happier if you buy lights that connect to one another, so that you have one cord per six lights in your surge protector, instead of a big tangle of cords. You can add up the wattage to be extra careful, but even three shelving units with eighteen lights altogether should fall well short of the load-capacity on a modern household plug.

Eighteen shoplights are a strong investment, true, but once you’ve purchased your seed-starting equipment, the cost-per-year over the lifetime of the equipment is reasonable, and even cheap. If you compare the cost of this same arrangement as sold by garden suppliers (as much as $300 for a two-shelf unit, or $1200 for four shelves), you’ll appreciate that a $700 (approx.) investment for three four-shelf units with lighting is a good bargain.

Any room with a door you can close against curious pets works as a growing room. I use a spare bedroom, and protect the carpet with drop cloths. Even LED bulbs will add heat to the room. I find I can’t use more than the three sets of shelf/light combos without the temp approaching the 80s (F), which is too stuffy for most outdoor plants, especially perennials. I move surplus maturing plants down to the garage. At this stage they’re fine, if not happier, in a cooler space, but if your seed-starting racks can only be in an unheated garage or porch, you’ll need heat mats.

The window of time for seedlings, from dropping the seed into the medium, to hardening off well-grown seedlings outdoors, should be about two months. This formula is usually calculated backwards from your local frost-free date, so that a May 5th date carries you to March 5th. But most perennials take longer than annuals to geminate; at the same time, the majority of perennials hardy in your zone can go in the garden earlier than the frost-free date, once hardened off (exposed to outdoor sunlight and wind until the leaves and roots toughen up). Exceptions are hibiscus and butterfly weed, both of which emerge from the ground after frost, and would be harmed if planted earlier.

 

(to be continued)