Growing at Home Part # 2 - Seed Starting

When you live in a place like Vermont, you have this pesky little thing called a 'short growing season' which, when combined with our 'long winters', pose a challenge to those of us that can't have a green house. One solution to this problem is starting your seeds inside in the early spring so that by the time you move them outside you've got toddler size plants ready to take on the world!

Seed starting takes time up front, a little bit of cash, and lots of patience. Not all of your seedlings will start, and those that do my inexplicably die when their still babies. I haven't nearly mastered the craft yet, but the following is what I've picked up over a few years:

SOIL: Soil is dirt is soil, right? I took a Plant and Soil Science class in college, and if the professor overheard you talking about dirt, you'd lose 5 points for the day. Yes, it's that serious.

What we've used this season...we've had great luck with our seeds so far!

To boot, not all soil is created equal. Were you to walk into Home Depot, you'd see potting soil, transplant soil, top soil, moisture retention...there's a designer soil for every need. For seed starting, I do go ahead and use specific seed starting soil. Why? There's cheaper soil out there! For starters, seed starting soil is designed for just that. I'm all for mixing up other kinds of soil, but seeds can be finicky enough as it is without sticking them in some inhospitable dir...er, soil. Starting soil tends to be better balanced for moisture retention, air circulation, germination friendly nutrients, as well as being clean of any bad guys (microorganisms) that have it out for your babies. This year we bought organic mix from Gardeners supply, and I'm not even finished my first bag. It's not cheap, but it does go a long way and as far as I can tell has been worth it.

CONTAINER: You have your seeds, your soil - now what to put them in? I've tried a few things over the years, from yogurt cups to the plastic wells and this year onto peat/manure pots. I moved to the peat pots for a reason: come transplant time, a season has not gone by where my roots were heavily damaged from taking plants out of plastic containers. This contributes significantly to transplant shock, and sets my plants back a good week on the growing schedule - a week I can't afford to lose up here in the mountains. Peat pots are cheap, provide nutrients to your plants as they compose and, best of all, you just pop the whole thing into the ground. Come transplant time, make sure you bury the pot completely, covering the top edges with at least a half inch of soil.

Our basil and cilantro seedlings in peat pots

WATER: Seems easy enough, right? If it's dry, add water. If it's too wet, don't add water until dry; repeat step one. That may work for some of your houseplants, but seedlings are exceptionally susceptible to wild swings in moisture. My healthy inch tall cilantro seedlings were dead after a day and a half of no water after a soaking. I left the lid on my grow dome after some seeds had sprouted, resulting in dampening off disease (tip - as soon as seeds have sprouted, take the cover off!). More dead plants, their green blood on my hands.

Water can also be a terrifyingly strong force to weak little roots systems, tearing soil from tiny little root hairs, bending fragile stems. This is why when I'm dealing with young plants, I only use self-watering systems, or watering from below. Water starts at the bottom of tray and is absorbed up through the peat pot and the soil till it reaches the roots. It's faster and easier to water this way, and it's much gentler on the plants.

Tomatoes in a fish tank where the stay warm and wet, just like they like it (Grow dome in the background).

In addition to plastic trays that you can get at any home goods store, I keep my humidity loving plants in a fish tank; it was $11 at PetCo. I can throw a clear lid on for extra humidity, I simply pour about a 1/2" of water in every other day to keep them moist, and most importantly - the cat can't eat them.

HEAT: There are two things that wake a seed up from suspended animation - water and heat. They're still under soil, so they don't really give a crap about light yet. Water was manageable, but as I mentioned in an earlier post I have an affinity for cold farmhouses. I thought lights might do it, but the spectrum of light that makes a good growing light doesn't give off a lot of heat. So this spring, I cracked the piggy bank and picked up an official seedling heat mat:

 True to my Maine roots, I got the double wide. I have enough room for the fish tank, half a seed tray with  the lid, half of one without. The best part? It seems to be working! My seeds are sprouting days to a full week ahead of what they were last year - this is a huge advantage. After the grow light, if you can spare $50 this is the tool that could be your germinating missing link.


LIGHT:  See prior post for DIY light. My 4ft' home depot lamp is still at the cleaners getting desmoked, so I bought a relatively overpriced lamp at Gardeners Supply. Other than being much shorter, and only one bulb, it does have a reflective hood. I'm not so sold I'll be getting more, though I do like that you can chain multiples together.

If money weren't an issue, I'd be so down with one of these bad boys

FERTILIZE: While it may be tempting to fertilize the crap outta those suckers - don't. Remember how sensitive the little guys are, and the special seed starting soil already has what the seedlings need to get started. We'll wait till they're older before we add anything.

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I won't lie and say 'There! That's the basics!' because what I just dribbled all over the internet doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. The above have been my experiences, but I fail and flail every year and learn a little more each season.

Post up your seed starting stories!

Growing at home - a start to your garden - Part #1

It's hard to find fresh veggies in the dead of winter in New England. The selection at the grocery store is thin, and was is there has been flown or trucked thousands of miles. Living in small town Vermont, we're limited to blah tasting freezer veggies or tubers. Not too exciting, eh?

Yum?

It should come as no surprise that as much as I love buying fresh food and veggies, I love growing them even more. Despite winter being my favorite season as far as playing outside goes, I desparately miss getting my hands dirty and feeling the warm sun on my back as I work my garden. Why not bring some of that into winter by growing a garden indoors?

There are a few options when it comes to growing your veggies into winter. Cold frames are an excellent option for extending your season, and if you've got the space and the $$, go for a greenhouse or a sun room. If you're like us, with a tight space and an even tighter budget, you can try a grow table. A grow table is a flat surface with a grow light over it. Easy enough, right? You can buy these things pre-made, starting around $140 from major players like Burpees and Gardener's Supply Co. While they are snappy looking, those were way above our meager budget of about $100 (supplies, planters, soil, seeds).

Originally I had designed a wooden platform with side arms from which a grow light would hang. This would involve some carpentry skills and patience. As soon as I got to the store, I saw wire metal shelves for $30, the same that we have in our kitchen and storing our gear. The shelves are movable, and the mesh strong enough to tie supports to and hang the lights from. Plus, the unit is free standing, unlike the table top one I designed. When not in use for plants, I can dump junk on the shelves. Finally, this would take three minutes together, as opposed to gawd knows how long for a hand built one. Throw in the $12 hanging 4' shop light and two grow bulbs for $8 each, I had what I needed - more, really - for $50. We assembled the unit, setting the shelves at good heights for us, suspended the light from the top rack, and BOOM! - a grow table. But now the question is, what to grow?

Wee baby lettuce sprouts

I felt a little weird checking out of the home depot line with everything I needed to start a small scale pot growing operation loaded into my cart, but I guess because it's Vermont, no one really thought anything of it. The new setup took only a half hour to put together, and I started with lettuce, basil, cilantro and rosemary growing in window box size containers. I set the light on a timer so that it was on 18 hours a day.

  Plants need a lot of things to grow, and it's important to know which of the variables we can control. As far as container planting goes, we can control light, warmth, and depth of soil, as well as added nutrients. I feel that our biggest challenge as growers - especially indoor growing, where mother nature isn't helping out - is understanding and manipulating these variables to our advantage.

Within days I had lettuce sprouts.  A few more and I could see little baby basil poking their heads through the soil. The hardest part about growing these inside was keeping the damn cat from digging in the soil. Of the above listed 'controls', the only one I had a hard time managing was the warmth - our apartment is in a drafty old farmhouse, and keeping it at 55* still cost us $300 in the winter. Lettuce likes cooler weather, but many herbs are regular summer temp plants.

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For a while, that's where my experiment ended. When my lettuce was an inch and a half high, we had a fire in our apartment. The heat was off two days, then the temporary propane heaters had the apartment at well over 100* for a day after that. Every houseplant, seedling, batch of herbs - dead. Several cubic feet of soil in the trash, poisoned by toxic smoke. It was only by the grace of the Compost Gods that the worms survived and then it was only barely.  Things will have to wait until part two to get growing again...

Springing out of Winter!

So it's been a while since we've posted, and a lot of that had to do with a fire in our apartment that put us out of commission for a while. Add that to work picking up, and you've got a few months of winter that fly by like a unicorn racing for the ark.

As the slower season approaches, the family and I are looking forward to maintaining this better. And watch out - it's garden season, and my trowels are out!


Best, Mo