We’ve started sprouting the seedlings for our fall garden planting (with all the heat and drought here, the fall is the primary growing season… not to mention that the fall weather is mild, and the season is comparatively long). We have in mind to plant tomatoes (Heatwave Hybrd II — which is a short season, full size tomato that can withstand temperatures up to 95 degrees), onions (Yellow Granex — which is the same variety Vidalia onions are grown from), garlic, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts.
We planted the seeds ten days ago, and learning from our previous efforts we improved our methods. First and foremost, we abandoned the commercial seedling-growing kits with all the trays and starter soils and such — you don’t need ’em. You just need a shallow tray with some enriched soil (the same stuff we’ve been planting all our vegetables in when they make it to the garden or pots). We planted four times as many seeds as we needed plants as some seeds never sprout, and some seedlings never develop into proper plants. The seeds need to be kept moist, but not drowned, and for that we employ a spray bottle set between mist and jet, and saturated the surface daily. Keep them near a sunny window and wait.
Once they break ground, fully develop their first two leaves and grow to a decent height of an inch or so, you then transplant them to individual small pots — or in our case, we take brown paper bags from the grocery store and cut them into strips, then using a plastic (Mardi Gras style) cup as a form, we wrap them around and fasten them with tape… and viola, off pops the perfect biodegradable planter that not only recycles a free (!) existing resource, but can in turn be recycled when you’re done. You can also use newspaper, but I’m wary of the ink, myself… and some people slit the sides of the paper planter and plant them along with the seedling… we prefer to tear them away keep them out of the ground.
The broccoli and Brussels sprouts took precisely a week to sprout and get big enough to transplant. This was a huge improvement over the previous attempt in the spring in the commercial trays. There was a night and day difference in the root development, too… a definite change for the better.
When transplanting them, we cull the seedlings down to twice as many as we need for the final planting and plant them deep, so that just the leaves are above ground. Now we wait. Each plant is different, but anywhere between 4 and 8 weeks, we should get most of them into the ground. Once we’re ready to plant them proper, we’ll see if we can find good homes for the extra seedlings amongst our friends.
We’re considering this our “learning curve” year for gardening. I’m shocked we’ve done as well as we have, and no matter how smart you think you are, you’re always going to learn better by screwing it up at first and figuring out how to fix it.