Seed starting

What can you start from seed in February?

Maryland Grows8 Comments

I hope all of you are busy planning your vegetable gardens and getting those seeds ordered! If you haven’t purchased seeds yet, now is the time. A lot of seed companies are experiencing larger than usual interest and several have had to temporarily stop accepting orders. Many varieties of seeds are running out. So jump on it!

If you already have your seeds and your plan of action, you may be champing at the bit to get started. Those of us who start seeds indoors feel the urge to play in the dirt (or the soilless seed-starting mix) even in winter, but it’s often not a good idea. When I began gardening, I started many plants far too early, and was sorry later when I had enormous seedlings that couldn’t be put in the ground until the weather cooperated. So as a former offender, I will state clearly: DO NOT START YOUR TOMATO PLANTS IN FEBRUARY. In fact, do not start your tomato plants until late March or early April, and you will be much happier, and so will your plants.

But what CAN I start, you ask, with a pitiful, yearning look in your eyes. I know. I really do. Here’s a  list. It may not include anything you’re actually planning to grow, but I’ll give you another suggestion at the end. Here we go.

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Time to think about fall planting!

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Wait… what?

It seems like you’ve just put that spring vegetable garden in… though actually, come to think of it, there are tomatoes reddening and squash burgeoning and summer is in full swing. But still, fall seems a long time away. Can’t we wait to think about it until it gets chilly again?

Well, if all you want to grow in the fall are lettuce and radishes, and maybe some spinach, sure. Given our tendency to long, warm autumns, you may be enjoying your summer vegetables well into October, or even November, if we don’t get a hard frost, so who needs to plant anything else? But those long autumns also mean we have an ideal situation for keeping our production going into winter. And if you planted broccoli or cabbage or cilantro this spring, or any other plant that prefers cool weather, and were disappointed when it went to flower early or began to taste bitter, let me tell you: fall is better. Temperatures that start a little warmer for tender seedlings and grow gradually cooler, resulting in frost-kissed sweetness and beautiful greens or root vegetables–terrific! You just need to do a little work to get there.

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Have Your Garden and Travel Too!

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I’m going on a trip next week! It’s a big trip; I’m very excited. Lots of new experiences, wonderful things to see, delicious things to eat, relaxation and exploration. I feel very lucky.

And let me just add: it was not my idea to travel in April, and I’m never doing it again. It’s spring! It’s gardening time! There are so many tasks that won’t get done, so many flowers I’ll miss seeing bloom. Being away now throws my schedule off for months. But so it goes: for this year, I have to adapt.

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None of us who are able to take vacations want to miss out, but we also want our gardens to keep growing while we can’t care for them. Given that we can’t take the plants along with us, how to cope? Let me toss out some ideas, and you can add your thoughts in comments. Continue reading →

What to do in the veggie garden in March

Maryland Grows3 Comments

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It’s almost spring! Almost. Not quite.

March is the month when we can’t wait to get started on the garden. Inevitably, we jump into some tasks too early, and put off others until it’s too late. UME has a factsheet to help us figure out what to do when; this is my take on the changeable not-quite-there-yet month of March. Let’s start with:

Things Not To Do

  • Work your soil. Unless we have a dry March and have had a dry February, turning over soil is just going to compound structural problems. Try this instead: get some compost, spread it an inch or so deep over your beds. When it’s time to plant seeds or put in transplants, you will automatically incorporate the compost while making holes.
  • Step on your soil. Try to keep off the planting beds as much as possible. Wet soil compacts easily. You’ll have bricks later.
  • Plant seeds in wet, cold soil. Peas and potatoes on St. Patrick’s Day; that’s the tradition, right? What if there’s snow on the ground? Or we’ve just had a soaking rain and it’s 40 degrees out? Seeds and tubers are more likely to rot in those conditions than sprout. Get them in the ground during a warmer, drier stretch (which might be before or after the middle of the month; I’d go with after, especially for potatoes). Try pre-sprouting them indoors. Consider using raised beds (more on that below).
  • Start your tomatoes (until later in the month). When I was a newbie seed-starter, I got those tomato seeds going in February – and then I had TREES by the end of April, when it was still too cold to put the plants in the ground. I am now a last-week-of-March tomato starter. Some people wait till April.
  • Put out your seedlings of hardy crops until weather conditions are promising. Cold, they can take, especially with a row cover; hard freezes are going to set them back. Torrential rain and constant wind: also challenging. March is a delightful month.

Things to Do:

  • Fix holes in fences. Or put up fences, though you should have done that last fall when the weather was nicer and you had fewer other things to do.
  • Build some raised beds. Raised beds drain better, warm up faster in spring, minimize soil compaction, and are great for root crops and anything that doesn’t like growing in cold, wet clay.
  • Weed! Winter weeds are thriving out there.
  • Order your seeds if you haven’t done it yet! Organize your seeds in planting order. Make a plan for succession planting.
  • Now that you know what’s going where, set up your trellises.
  • Start seeds for cool-weather crops and for peppers. (It’s no longer February, so let’s have no regrets, but you probably should have started longer-growing brassicas like broccoli already, plus onions, leeks, shallots, artichokes if you are so bold, and the peppers that are not Capsicum annuum. If not, get them in now.)
  • If you have storage space, collect the supplies you’ll need for the spring: mulch, fertilizer, row cover, compost, etc. Minimize the garden center trips during the busy period of April and May.
  • Do some research about the plants you’re growing so you can anticipate problems. Or figure out how to solve the problems you had last year.
  • Meditate on the beautiful garden you’re going to grow.

General advice for March gardening: have some patience, and keep checking the long-term weather forecast. March can be your friend, but it’s not the reliable kind of friend you’d ask to feed your cats or water your seedlings; it’s the friend who shows up at your house uninvited and persuades you to go on a bar crawl or climb a mountain or undertake adventures that may be fun or inspiring but you’re likely to regret the next day. Or not: with March, you never know.

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By Erica Smith, Montgomery County Master Gardener

Are cheaper vegetable and flower seeds just as good as more expensive seeds?

Maryland Grows5 Comments

“Though I do not believe a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.”

From Faith in a Seed by Henry D. Thoreau.

Many of us are starting to think about seeds to plant in 2018. “What seeds do I have on hand, and what seeds do I need to buy?” “Can I put my faith in cheap seeds and save money without sacrificing quality?”

Seed packet prices can range from less than $1 to $5 based on the plant species, how expensive it was to produce, level of customer service, packet size, time of year purchased, and many other factors.

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