by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Rather than starting with seed in the garden, start your seed indoors and you will get a 3-4 week head start on the growing season. You will have more success in planting seedlings (young plants) than with seed directly in the garden. Also, you will have mature vegetables, ready to eat, weeks earlier.
Growing seed indoors is not difficult. However, there are a few tips you should know.
Pick the right plants
The first step is to pick the proper plants to grow. Practically any seed can be grown indoors, but you must select plants that are suited for your area. As an example, don't try to grow watermelon in a short summer area. If you can not grow it naturally outdoors, you probably will not be successful even if you start with seed grown indoors. So select plants that are suited for your area to be grown outdoors.
Sowing seeds
You should start your seeds 4-6 weeks before you intend to place them in the garden. This should be 4-6 weeks prior to the last frost date in your area. You could use peat pots designed for starting seed indoors, but I would recommend to make your own seed pots from toilet roll tubes or from newspaper by using the Paper Potter.
Both the toilet tube rolls and paper pots, in the same way as peat pots, may be planted directly in the garden without removing the plant from its container. Thus you will not shock the plant by disturbing the roots.
The reason I do not actually recommend the use of the peat pots is because we should try not to use any peat products, be those such pots or peat potting soil.
Plant 3 seeds in each pot at the recommended planting depth. Water and cover with a sheet of clear plastic (kitchen food wrap). Place in a warm area (normal indoor temperature 18-23C/65-75F). You can also use glass jars turned upside down over pot or plastic bottles with bottoms cut off as cloches to produce the climate for germination.
As soon as the seedlings emerge, remove the plastic covering and place in an area that gets at least 8 hours of sunlight. If this is not possible, you must use grow lights. An inexpensive grow light may be made using neon shop lights, replacing the neon tubes (bulbs) with special tubes designed for indoor plants. These are available at most hardware stores and garden shops. Such lights will set you back around $20 including the special grow bulbs.
However, I try to always get away without using grow lights and this seems to work with the majority of things, as long as the windowsill they live on for their growing time actually gets enough light.
When the seedlings are about 2 inches tall, cut out all seedlings except the strongest looking one from each peat pot. When the seedlings are 4 inches tall, fertilize with a weak mixture of liquid fertilizer.
Watering
Be very careful watering your seedlings. Over-watering is probably the most common cause of seedlings dying off. Check the pot for moisture, by lifting it, and not just rely on the color or feel of the soil on top.
More plants are being killed off by over-watering than by under-watering.
Planting your seedlings
About a week before you intend to plant your seedlings in the garden, take the seedlings outdoors and leave in the garden area. Avoid direct sunlight for the first two days.
While some people advise to acclimatize the plants slowly I do not necessarily do that. However, if you want to go that route and have the time then leave the seedlings outdoors for 2-3 hours the first day. The second day, leave out 4-6 hours. The third through seventh day leave out during all daylight hours, allowing direct sunlight. On the eighth day plant the seedlings in the garden.
Plant in a suitable sized hole so the top surface of the pot is just slightly above the level of the ground. Water well.
Now, sit back and watch them grow in the certain knowledge that you have a several weeks head start on the growing season.
In the way described you can also keep starting on plants for your garden, even later on, and can have a garden with vegetables right through the year, even winter, using cloches.
For cloches many things can be used and we shall look at that also at some stage.
© 2010
