In the long winter months, I don’t spend all my time salivating over glossy seed catalogues and planning next season’s perfect garden. I must confess that I spend many happy hours reading murder mysteries, in particular British crime fiction. In addition to enjoying descriptions of plants that I cannot successfully grow in the Ottawa Valley, I love encounters between British sleuths and old duffers in their garden allotments. The detectives find that the allotment gardeners make the most reliable witnesses. They are “in the moment”, connected to their surroundings, and notice what goes on around them. I feel something similar as I connect with growing plants and am able to still the craziness in my head.
Taking a break from ways to poison my adversaries, I focus on seed catalogues that fuel fantasies of the most amazingly productive vegetable garden imaginable. It is time to get practical. Am I going to have a tomato crop with the best-tasting heritage variety, or should I pick the new hybrid with all kinds of disease resistance? Perhaps a compromise — grow some of each!
Why go to all the effort of ordering seeds and then growing tender little seedlings under lights when you can just pick up plants from the closest box store? It is really a matter of choice. Garden centres tend to have very limited selection, often not even listing the name of the variety. For example, I want information about days to harvest, taste characteristics, and disease resistance.
After four months of winter, gardeners are understandably eager to plant some seeds. But this is a case where timing is critical! The length of time seedlings can grow indoors before they need to be planted in the outdoor garden varies considerably. Melons, squash and cucumbers only need four to six weeks; broccoli and cabbage five to eight weeks; tomatoes six to eight weeks; peppers and eggplant eight to ten weeks; celery, parsley, onions and leeks ten to twelve weeks.
Similarly, frost-tolerant veggies such as onions, leeks and brassicas (cabbage family) can go into the garden in the first week of May, but frost-tender seedlings such as tomatoes, peppers and eggplants will not want to be transplanted outdoors until the last week of May.
So if we are exercising restraint, our seed-planting schedule should look something like this: onions and leeks mid-February; brassicas, peppers and eggplant mid-March; tomatoes first week of April; cucumbers and melons mid-April.
I have tried starting peas, corn and beans early indoors, but have found virtually no benefit — they are just so much happier growing directly from seed planted in the garden. Also, root vegetables such as beets and carrots do not transplant well. Peas can be planted directly in the ground probably by mid-April; carrots and beets by the first week of May; and corn and beans close to Victoria Day.
The approach to growing seedlings that I am describing is one that has worked well for me for several decades; however, many other approaches are possible – plants are pretty flexible.
The key to growing seedlings successfully indoors is lots of light. If plants don’t have enough light, they will be spindly and weak and will not be able to handle the transition to outdoor conditions. I use artificial light as I have found that even a very sunny window is unlikely to provide sufficient light — although I do know some successful window-sill gardeners.
The set-up does not need to be fancy or pricey. I use utility wooden shelving and suspend fluorescent fixtures by chains between the shelves so that I can adjust them to keep them within a couple of inches of the seedlings. Used fluorescent fixtures are available for next to nothing at garage sales. I use only the cheapest four-foot fluorescent tubes, as my results have been just as good as with special “grow” tubes. On the other hand, some gardeners spend many hundreds of dollars on LED full-spectrum lights and nicely built stands.
I try to do one-step planting — for example, I use plug trays with 39 cells and put one seed in each cell. The other approach is to put a bunch of seeds in a small container and then transplant into larger pots or cells. I use a commercial seedling medium that I moisten well before filling the cells. Is a heat-mat required? I generally use them only for seeds that prefer warmer temperatures to germinate, including peppers and eggplants.
I turn on the lights first thing in the morning and turn them off when I go to bed. I water only when the growing medium is dry to the touch but before the seedlings wilt, and then drain off any excess water that has not been absorbed in a couple of hours — watering from the bottom is preferable.
Seeds contain all the nutrients required for germination. I use a diluted organic fish-based fertilizer weekly after seedlings have been growing for a few weeks.
Seedlings are very vulnerable to viral diseases — commonly called “damping off” — which causes apparently healthy plants to topple over from the base and die. I have found that this is virtually eliminated by using a commercial seedling medium, new plastic cells/plugs, and ensuring good air circulation by keeping a fan running constantly. The air movement also produces stronger, stockier plants.
Vine crops such as cucumbers and melons do not like to have their roots disturbed when they are transplanted, but they do benefit from an early start, so I start them in biodegradable pots that I can plant directly in the garden.
One thing I do after planting the seeds is to maintain charts of what I have planted — both indoors and outdoors. At times I supplement this with labels, but I find that these get lost, move or fade. No job is finished until the paperwork is done!
It is also necessary to harden-off seedlings before moving them to the garden by giving them gradual exposure to outdoor conditions. As I transplant these lush green growing plants into the garden, it seems miraculous to me that just two or three months ago they started from small hard apparently lifeless objects!