Starting Seedlings

Posted on Thursday, February 27, 2020 · Leave a Comment 

Winter is long, and for a gardening guy like me, winter can be oppressive. I keep sane, in part, by starting seeds indoors. I am just now getting ready to start a few plants that need a long head start before they go outside.

 

 

Starting plants now means I will have to baby them along for 3 months or so, providing light and water. It’s a chore I like, so it doesn’t feel so much like a chore. For tomatoes and most other veggies, I plant seeds indoors around April 10, and put them outside around June 10. Starting too early stresses most things.

 

 

A frame plant stand for starting seedlings

You can’t keep plants happy on a windowsill for 6 to 16 weeks. You will need special indoor lighting and a plant stand of some sort if you do many plants. Fluorescent lights are the standard for home growers. I have purchased four-foot fixtures that hold 2 tubes each. I hang them in an A-frame plant stand I built myself that will accommodate 10 flats of plants and 5 light fixtures.

 

 

I do not use special “Gro-Lights” with the same wave length light as the sun, as they are much more expensive than ordinary. I use a mixture of cool white and warm light tubes, or just cool whites, and that has always worked fine.

 

 

Many companies sell plant stands. Some light up just one flat of plants, others two, some several. A flat is a plastic tray that holds 8 or more little six-packs of plants. You need to decide if you want something that fits on a table or countertop, or if you want to get into it big time. Get directions to build your own plant stand on my website ( www.gardening-guy.com) and search for plant stand.

 

 

So what do I start in March? Onions, hot peppers, perhaps a few flowers such as lisianthus that need a long time to germinate and get to a good size for planting. I find that starting onions by seed offers me the opportunity to grow varieties that I will not find available as ”sets”. I also have found that by growing my own plants, I get better onions. Hot peppers also take a long time to get to get big, so I like to start them mid-March.

 

 

Grow Ease system uses hard, reusable plastic

This year I am making a big push NOT to buy anything plastic that is not reusable by me. That means no flimsy six-packs for seeds. I got some heavy duty, reuseable plastic flats from Gardeners Supply last year, and like those a lot. They are also self-watering, which takes off the pressure to track the moisture of every plant every day. They are called the ”GroEase” system, with either 24 large cells or 15 extra-large cells per flat.

 

 

The other way to avoid plastic is to plant in soil blocks. I have a little hand tool that will compact and squeeze out 2-inch cubes of a special planting mix I make. These cubes sit in a plastic flat, but I have plenty of those, and reuse them every year. The tool is sold my Johnny’s Selected Seeds and Fedco Seeds.

 

 

Soil blocks for starting seedlings are eco-friendly

Here’s my recipe for the soil blocks: In a wheelbarrow or large plastic storage bin mix 10 quarts dry peat moss, 3 quarts sand and ¼ cup agricultural limestone (powdered, not pelletized is preferred, but either is OK). Mix in ¼ cup of each of these: dried blood, rock phosphate, green sand and granite dust or Azomite (optional). Instead of all those, you could substitute 1 cup organic fertilizer. Then add and mix in: 10 quarts peat humus, 10 quarts fine compost (your own or purchased) and 10 quarts top soil (your own is preferred, but purchased is OK).

 

 

Place 4 quarts dry mix in a plastic basin or flat-bottomed container, and add about 1 quart water. Mix until gooey but firm, not watery. Push your soil block tool into the mix, compressing the soil against the bottom of the bin. Then hold the tool over a plastic flat and squeeze the handle, which will push out 4 tidy blocks with a divot for a seed in the middle of each. The 4 cubes just fit across a plastic flat, and 8 rows will fit per flat.

 

 

One big advantage the soil blocks have is that they contain all the nutrition a plant needs from seed to planting. Sterile soil mix sold for seedlings runs out of minerals in just a couple of weeks, and one must add fertilizer to the watering mix to keep plants healthy. Many greenhouses water with a dilute fertilizer mix every day. I find soil-block raised plants take off and grow as soon as they get in the ground, as their roots do not get tangled up the way they might in a 6-pack.

 

 

How much light do seedlings need per day? Set your lights on a timer and give them light for 14 hours. But keep the lights near your seedlings – 6 inches above the tops of your plants is good. I hang my lights by lightweight jack chain and raise the lights as my plants get tall.

 

 

Don’t let your seedlings wilt due to water insufficiency. Check them daily, and water when they are nearly dry. But you don’t want them soggy all the time, either.

 

 

So if you are lamenting our long winter, start some seedlings, and talk to them daily. That might help, too.

 

 

Henry is available to talk to your gardening club or library group. Just e-mail him at henry.homeyer@comcast.net He is the author of 4 gardening books.

 

Filed under Article · Tagged with reusable seed planting trays, seed planting stand, soil blocks

Starting Seeds Indoors

Wind in the Willows, one of my favorite children’s books, has a great quote that came to me recently. The water rat says to his friend, the mole, “Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING–absolutely nothing–half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing,’ he went on dreamily: `messing–about–in–boats; messing—-“. At that point he crashes into the bank and comes back to reality.

What, you might fairly ask, does that have to with gardening? Well, at this time of year I would substitute the word “seeds” for “boats”. Messing about with seeds is wonderful – for the soul, for the mind, and later –for your garden. It’s time now to start planting seeds indoors for summer vegetables.

I generally plant tomato seeds indoors around April 10, sometimes a bit sooner, for planting outdoors 8 weeks later. I have already planted onions, celeriac, a few special peppers and lots of lisianthus (an annual cutflower). Those all need more than 8 weeks. Later, 4-5 weeks before planting time in June, I will start my squash and cucumber seeds in 3-inch pots. By starting them indoors and putting out good-sized plants (they grow fast) I am able to prevent them from being eaten up by striped cucumber beetles. Those beetles can devour a freshly germinated seedling outdoors in a single night – but won’t do much to plants with 6-inch vines.

There are a couple of keys to success growing tomatoes and other seedlings indoors. Most important is having adequate light. You really cannot grow healthy seedlings by depending on sunlight on a windowsill. You need lights – either the new-fangled LED lights for plants, or T-8 fluorescent fixtures that are 4-feet long and provide good light for seedlings. You do not need those special (read expensive) “Gro-Light” bulbs with special wave lengths (equivalent to the sun) for starting seedlings.

Plant Stand

Last year in my column I wrote directions for building a simple A-frame plant stand, so will not repeat them this year. You may find it at my web site, www.Gardening-Guy.com. Just go to the search engine box and type in plant stand. Or, if you prefer, design your own or buy a light stand from your local garden center or from Gardeners Supply (www.gardeners.com). But you do need lights to succeed.

It is also critical that seeds and the potting mix you use do not dry out, especially when the seeds are just starting to open up and send out little roots and shoots. They are particularly vulnerable then. So check your seeds every day and water as needed.

You may also get clear plastic covers to fit over your growing flats. These allow light to pass, but hold in water. Water will evaporate, then condense on these covers and rain down gently on your seedlings. You could accomplish the same effect with plastic wrap but then, as they germinated, the plants would butt heads with the wrap. The plastic covers provide an inch or two of growing space, allowing some to grow while others are still waking up.

Commercially prepared seed starting mix is largely composed of peat moss. Peat moss has no “food value” to plants. It provides a light, airy space that roots find easy to penetrate, and it holds water. Most have some fertilizer added, but this soon disappears either by washing away or being used up by the plants. So, as your plants get bigger, plan on giving them some liquid fertilizer – or they will languish.

Seaweed or fish fertilizers are readily available, and are better than chemical fertilizers – they provide a full menu of minerals, including the micronutrients important for plants. Fish fertilizers may offend some delicate noses when growing plants indoors, however.

An alternative to growing seedlings in straight potting mix is to mix it 50-50 with compost. It probably makes sense to buy compost for this even if you make your own. Why? Because commercial compost should be weed-free and your own compost probably is not. Unless you know what each seedling looks like when it first germinates, you may end up babying weeds along – or pulling out your seedlings. This can be a real problem if growing flowers that you have not grown before.

Lastly, think about planting seeds by the position of the stars and moon. I know, I know, it sounds pretty “out there”. But last year I used the Stella Natura (www.stellanatura.com) planting calendar which uses biodynamic principles to determine when to plant or transplant, and I saw real differences when I experimented with planting in the designated blackout times. Seeds are still one of life’s mysteries – all that life packaged in such a small container. Who knows what really affects them? Not me, that’s for sure.

Henry may be reached at henry.homeyer@comcast.net. His web sites are www.Gardening-guy.com and www.henryhomeyer.com. 

Copyright © 2014 Henry Homeyer

Gardenmaus a wordpress theme by the Little Thumb Group