Seed-starting time

It’s time to gear up again for starting seeds indoors.

Early life under lights

This year I’m returning to the purveyors of organically-produced seeds that I had the best luck with last year. Two of my favorites are Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Maine and The Natural Gardening Company in California. 

    There are several areas where I aspire to improve my seed-starting performance. First, it makes a difference when I plant the seeds. If it’s too early, they spend too long in the relatively weak indoor light, become spindly and flop over before it’s time to move them outdoors. 

Cosmos getting floppy

If I start them too late, they may not be ready before hot weather sets in. This year the web site of The Farmer’s Almanac is going to send me email reminders of when to plant each vegetable, determined by my zip code.

    Second, I’ve been reading about a way to germinate seeds that takes less space. You can sprout them on damp paper towels sealed in reclosable plastic bags set in a warm place in the house, such as on top of the refrigerator. 

Germinating seeds

When the seeds sprout, you grasp each tiny seedling with tweezers and plant it in growing medium. In my case, that will be Organic Mechanics peat-free seed-starting mix or homemade potting mix made from coconut fiber and compost. With this method, I won’t waste pots on seeds that fail to germinate. Germination is such a cool process. I’d love to watch it unfolding day by day.

    I suspect that one reason my seedlings don’t turn out as sturdy-looking as the ones at the garden center is that I handle them too gingerly. I usually plant three seeds in each cell of a recycled six-pack. I hang back from editing that down to one seedling per cell. 

These basil seedlings need room to grow

Cutting out two with scissors would give the biggest and strongest seedling more space for its roots and more light for its leaves. Then once it’s produced a few sets of leaves, I should pinch it to encourage it to branch, instead of elongating its one stem. I’ve read that a gentle breeze from a fan makes seedlings more robust.

    To get my young plants used to outdoor conditions, I move them to the back porch each morning and back indoors at night for a few days. That way they’re ready for full sunlight when it’s time to plant them out.

Hardening off on the porch

    The next stage is where I often have most attrition. This year I’ll try to protect the seedlings better when I move them to the garden. One problem is wildlife. I suspect squirrels of dining on the young plants. I’ve got some plastic cloches—clear covers--I can put over seedlings for the first week, and I should be able to rig up some protection for others with translucent fabric row cover.

Row cover

    I can’t wait to see sprouts emerging from the soil again. It’s a happy, hopeful time of the gardening year.

Nature or "all-natural" products?

There’s a thriving market for organic lawn care in my town. These contractors offer periodic fertilizing and even pest control with certified organic products. 

Organic lawn service

Intrigued, I met with Jim Agabedis of Minuteman Landscaping in June 2013 to see about switching to lawn care on sustainable principles.

    Jim had a lot of sensible advice to offer. Some was about switching to better-informed practices, such as letting clippings compost in place on the lawn, changing mower blades frequently so they cut rather than tear the grass, weeding by hand instead of spreading weed killer, and aerating sections of lawn where telltale plantain indicates compaction. 

Could the lawn benefit from organic methods?

Another part of his advice was about “product.” That’s where I started to feel ambivalent.
 

    Jim had a compelling story of how he decided to switch from conventional to organic lawn care. He started his business while he was still in college and built it up to 360 accounts. Then an acquaintance shared a one-page article on lawn care without chemicals, and he had an epiphany. 

     Most of his clients didn’t make the transition to organic, but he fought his way back. He said it’s worth it to avoid practices and products that could make people or pets sick. 

Not the approach Jim was aiming for

The lawns his company cares for testify to the effectiveness of his method.

     I didn’t end up hiring Jim’s company. I was looking for weekly lawn mowing informed by organic principles. He was offering something more ambitious: a commitment to a beautiful organic lawn. For me, it’s not worth the money, and it's not the direction I'm heading.
 
    I could see that Jim’s approach was better than conventional lawn care, but I balked at the idea of a lawn, or any other garden area, depending on application of lots of purchased products for health or survival. Jim proposed to apply benign products such as compost pellets and compost tea. 

Spreading compost on a lawn

That’s the organic approach I’d pursue if I had enough time, motivation, and compost to get serious about lawn care. 

     Ideally, though, the compost I’d apply to our lawn would be made up of decomposed materials from our own yard. That way I’d be imitating the natural soil cycle, where organic materials such as leaves and branches decompose on the ground and build soil. 

Organic material cycles back into soil

    I have a problem with replacing chemicals from the garden center or big box store—weed killers, pesticides, synthetic fertilizer—with pricey organic products purporting to fill the same roles. It’s better than the old way, but it’s still a paradigm we should be moving away from.

     Now I see the garden as a community of plants and animals. I aim to enrich and protect it by letting natural processes do their work freely, 

Mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia) blooming this week

rather than just by replacing synthetic products with store-bought “natural” ones.


This is SEG’s 100th post! Thanks for reading. It’s great to know that we share the same gardening pleasures and concerns.

Safe seeds for safe plants

On a visit last week to my favorite garden center, I got some bad news. The center’s grower confirmed that they do apply neonicotinoid insecticides to their plants, both annual flowers about to go out for sale, and vegetable seedlings getting started in the greenhouse. Since I know their perennials originate elsewhere, I have to assume that those too may be treated at their nurseries of origin.

Impatiens from the garden center come sprayed with insecticide

      This strengthened my resolve not to buy plants at garden centers this spring. The reason I don’t want plants or seeds that are treated with “neonics” is that these products persist in plant tissues and poison insects that eat from them, including bees. In an odd twist, some big sellers, BJ’s Wholesale Club, Home Depot, and Lowe’s, are ahead of local garden centers on this issue.

     Bowing to pressure from environmentalists, the big outlets have promised to phase out neonics. Plants at BJ’s are already neonic-free. Home Depot will be clean by 2018 and Lowe’s by spring 2019. Not that I particularly want to shop for plants at these big chain stores.  I’d much rather give my business to my local family-run garden center. They sell a wide range of beautiful plants. I just don’t feel comfortable exposing visiting insects to neonic toxicity.

When my flowers attract pollinators, I don't want to poison them

    For this reason I’m working hard on growing annuals at home from seed. When possible, I bought organically-produced seed. Where organic wasn’t available, I accepted seed that was listed as untreated. I divided the seed packets into groups according to when they needed to be planted: eight, six, or four weeks before our last frost date in mid-April.  The basil and zinnias are already looking promising in their six-packs under lights. 

Zinnias growing under lights in the kitchen

Plants with smaller seeds, such as flowering tobacco (Nicotiana alata) and black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) have sprouted, but they’ll need more time to grow into garden-sized plants. 

Black-eyed Susans and cosmos are pollinator magnets

     Fortunately some black-eyed Susan seeds from last year’s garden hitched a ride in the compost I used to make potting mix. Young plants sprouted around a begonia I potted to save through the winter. Now the volunteer seedlings are getting a head start on spring in pots of their own.

     This week I planted the last round—marigolds, some more zinnias, and cockscomb (Celosia species).

This week's seeds getting help from a warm, moist environment

 
I sowed some sweet alyssum I found recently, although they’ll need several weeks to catch up. I squeezed in perennial purple coneflower seeds (Echinacea purpurea) that I scored at a native plant exhibit at the Boston Flower & Garden Show.

Coneflowers will be a good addition to the insectary garden

     It’s an open question whether I’ll be able to nurse these young seedlings through to husky young plants by late April or early May. I know from past experience that the homegrown plants will be spindly in comparison to what I’d buy from the garden center. I hope to fill any gaps with seedlings grown organically at a local school. If retailers get the message, in another year or two we’ll be able to buy plants without worrying that they’re carrying neonic toxicity.

Seeds of change

Now is the time for what Steve calls the “hot stove league.” In baseball, that’s sharing happy visions of your team’s coming season. In gardening, it’s paging through seed catalogs full of beautiful pictures of vegetables and flowers. The photographers and graphic designers for these alluring publications can make even a humble cabbage or carrot look like a must-buy.

    This year I’m planning a new direction for seed buying. I’m going organic. I’d never thought it was important to start with organically produced seeds. I was not going to apply pesticides to my seedlings, so why did it matter? 

     Now I’m aware that commercial seeds may be treated with neonicotinoid pesticides that could be stored in plant tissues and kill pollinators all summer long. That’s motivated me to put aside my favorite catalog purveyors in favor of seed houses that use organic methods.

For the pollinators' sake I'll plant organic seeds

    For my insectary garden, I’m going to start cosmos, celosia, monkey flower, sunflowers, and black-eyed susans from seed. For cutting, I’ll add zinnias. For growing in containers, I usually buy coleus, torenia, browallia, impatiens, and other long-blooming annuals that catch my fancy. I’m less familiar with starting these at home, but if I begin early and give the seedlings reliable attention, I’m hopeful that I can do it.

Monkey plant (Mimulus guttatus) offers bees early browsing

   
     This year I’ll also have time for succession planting. That’s planting new rounds of favorite vegetables every couple of weeks, avoiding the usual boom and bust pattern of my vegetable garden. By frequently planting very short rows of lettuce, sugar snap peas, and green beans, I hope to enjoy these vegetables over longer periods and avoid wasting produce that’s too plentiful for our household of two to eat. 

Can I spread out my basil crop by planting a little at a time?

     After all, what’s sustainable about ordering seeds that are shipped from afar, starting them under lights, and watering them with purified drinking water, only to leave them un-harvested and then throw them on the compost pile? I’m sorry to say that’s been my pattern in past years.

    To get a jump on the growing season, I’ll plant seeds indoors using Organic Mechanics peat-free seed-starting mix or my own non-peat potting blend, both containing coir (coconut fiber). I mix four parts potting mix with one part warm water and fill the cells of seedling six-packs I’ve saved from last year’s purchases. 

Waste not, want not--reusing six-packs from last year

I poke a hole in the mix with a pencil and plant three seeds in each cell. The labeled packs fit into trays filled with capillary matting—that’s spongy synthetic material that holds water to keep the potting mix moist from below.

     I wrap the trays in clear plastic (old dry-cleaning bags) and set them under grow lights.

African violets under the grow lights

     Until they germinate, the most desirable seeds may get bottom heat from a thermostatically controlled mat that fits in the bottom of the tray. 

Capillary matting lies on top of the heating mat

This gives them their start. Most of the seeds do germinate, especially if they’re new, not saved from previous years. Then it’s up to me to help the little plants grow bigger until planting time.

Home-grown cucumbers are worth the effort