February
Summer's harvest from last year include these gorgeous peppers
(what did I plant last year?) and San Marzano
tomatoes. Both were prolific and delicious. When summer is over, I
don't want to touch another tomato, but by February, I'm gearing up
for a fresh BLT where I've raised the T and L and baked the bread.
Someone else has to take care of the B.
The short days of winter are getting perceptibly longer. We are half way to the Spring Equinox, which is half way to the Summer Solstice. These dates were vitally important in an agrarian cultures and as one gets more involved in gardening, it is easy to see the reasons that made these dates important to people dependent on agriculture. Knowing what to do and when to do to it in their garden was necessary to avoid starvation.
Valentines' Day marks my traditional weekend for starting my tomato crop for the coming year. I've become accustomed to the need to sow my tomatoes a bit earlier each year in recent times (global warming?), but whenever I do my main crop of tomatoes, I sow plenty of basil seed at the same time – they grow well together as much as they eat well together. I have been seduced into starting an earlier crop of short-season tomatoes, lately. Territorial Seed Company has a list of 'ultra-early' tomatoes with names like Glacier and Northern Delight and sport 'Days to Harvest' declarations of something like 56. These plants top out about 18 inches high and produce tomatoes about 2½” in diameter – what I call a 'saladette' tomato – that are very tomatoey and tangy – more tangy than I like, but for the first tomato of the year, who's going to bellyache about that? I've even started these little fellows around the first of January! Whenever you start tomatoes, and whatever tomatoes you use, the procedures are about the same. Just remember that most tomatoes, with these ultra-early tomatoes being the exception, don't like to be planted into cold soil so wait until your soil has warmed (to about 65° at minimum!) before setting most tomatoes into your garden.
The short days of winter are getting perceptibly longer. We are half way to the Spring Equinox, which is half way to the Summer Solstice. These dates were vitally important in an agrarian cultures and as one gets more involved in gardening, it is easy to see the reasons that made these dates important to people dependent on agriculture. Knowing what to do and when to do to it in their garden was necessary to avoid starvation.
Valentines' Day marks my traditional weekend for starting my tomato crop for the coming year. I've become accustomed to the need to sow my tomatoes a bit earlier each year in recent times (global warming?), but whenever I do my main crop of tomatoes, I sow plenty of basil seed at the same time – they grow well together as much as they eat well together. I have been seduced into starting an earlier crop of short-season tomatoes, lately. Territorial Seed Company has a list of 'ultra-early' tomatoes with names like Glacier and Northern Delight and sport 'Days to Harvest' declarations of something like 56. These plants top out about 18 inches high and produce tomatoes about 2½” in diameter – what I call a 'saladette' tomato – that are very tomatoey and tangy – more tangy than I like, but for the first tomato of the year, who's going to bellyache about that? I've even started these little fellows around the first of January! Whenever you start tomatoes, and whatever tomatoes you use, the procedures are about the same. Just remember that most tomatoes, with these ultra-early tomatoes being the exception, don't like to be planted into cold soil so wait until your soil has warmed (to about 65° at minimum!) before setting most tomatoes into your garden.
One method of starting tomatoes I
have done in the past used fluorescent tubes about 6 inches above the
pots for the beginnings of tomatoes. This is opposed to starting
them outside with a heating mat underneath to keep the roots warm
and, with a sunny spot, I have found this works well enough. Peppers
and eggplant, needing more heat, are started about 2 weeks later in
the first week of March. All seedlings cannot be allowed to dry out
and must be protected from predation, it doesn't take even a small
critter (like snails and slugs or tomato hornworms) many bites to
remove an entire plant when they are as small as this. More on the
seed starting indoors shortly.
About a week after Valentine has shot
his arrow, start the first summer squash (zucchini and the
crooknecks) seeds. I usually also start a couple plants of cucumbers
right about then too. I wait until the Ides of March before starting
winter squashes (the hard skin type that are best eaten after being
stored for time). These first plants may struggle if the ground
hasn't warmed, but that's OK, we'll balance that out by starting a
few more of each later.
Most of these big-leaved, vining
plants like squash and cucumbers get a whitish powdery look long
before they are done producing. This is called 'powdery mildew.' It
is a fungus that gets on almost all of these plants and causes them
to live a shorter life than they would without it. This is a common
as cell phones around here, so close to the ocean. Until I find
varieties that are resistant to it, I simply grow another plant to
fill in when the first one succumbs. I don't spray for it because it
seems a waste of time to me; if you spray, you must spray constantly
and I just don't see it as being efficacious. I accept that the
plants will get mildew and will die because of it and I make plans
accordingly: Zucchini #1, funeral on July 8th. Zucchini
#2, funeral on August 29th. Clear your calendar for
composting service. Frankly any more zucchini than that is more than
any person ought to have.
Come February, I start thinking
“baseball,” which will be right around the corner. (“Wait until
next year”, is the universal call among gardeners and baseball
players everywhere!) Dodger Spring training starts next month and
I'll begin to reacquaint myself as to who is with us and who has been
traded and is now agin us. Win or lose, I’ll be out in my garden
soon, radio in hand. Something about that baseball optimism that
dovetails nicely with my gardening optimism. You
don’t have to “think baseball,” but I do and it lifts
my spirit in this slight lull before the summer garden gets up to
bat. It's one of my favorite traditions.
With any amount of luck, February is our rainiest month which means we won’t need to be watering all that much. I have more or less permanently built up beds with paths between them, so walking through a wet garden isn’t that big of a deal. If your garden isn’t laid out like that, take care not to walk through the parts of the garden you intend plant when the soil is thoroughly soaked. Your footprints will compact the soil and cause needless grief later when the soil has dried out. Especially in clay soil.
February is the last month we will want to prune dormant fruit trees. One cannot plan that they won’t have broken dormancy any later than this. See flowers? Or leaves? That’s “broken dormancy” in a nutshell, the sap is running inside the tree and pruning after once you see leaves or flowers will drain more of the tree's vitality – mind you pruning late won’t kill your tree, some folks do this kind of pruning regularly – it’s my preference to do my pruning with the least harm to the tree and for me, that means before the sap begins to run and that means December or January in my Zone 24 climate. I have learned over the last few years that my nectarine and peach trees break dormancy first and I need to consider pruning them in late November/early December. But I've proven that procrastination has its benefits! I find I can use the flowering branches for bouquets without causing a shortage of nectarines! I'm thinning that tree incessantly, even with a hard pruning to prevent too much fruit from weighing down and breaking the branches. Lateness in pruning hasn't stopped any tree I know from producing nor has it ever killed a tree. “There is slack in the universe,“ a teacher of mine used to say.
Don’t forget to deal with slugs and snails. In these wet, cooler months, these destructive little mollusks multiply with alarming proficiency and can present huge problems. You cannot get rid of them forever. They are migratory, so even if you could rid yourself of every single one in your garden on Tuesday, you'd have a whole new supply by Friday from next door. And more on Saturday. It can be a discouraging thought! However, the only real way to deal with these transients is with persistent effort. You deal with today's snails today and leave tomorrow's snails to tomorrow. Sounds like something I heard before, maybe in yoga class?
Some gardeners keep a five gallon bucket on hand with soapy water in it (one of those plastic buckets you see in a hardware store's paint department – cheap and rust free) and drop the critters in for a quick death. Others put a board down with one end slightly raised. Slugs and snails will congregate there over night and can be simply crushed with one swift footfall in the morning. Good for the soul. And soil. A fairly new product, 'Escar-go' is on the market and is non-toxic to mammals (you, your children and dogs and cats etc), and actually benefits the soil. Slugs and snails eat it and die. Probably not as humane as crushing them, but more acceptable in polite society.
No matter what you do, you will probably always have problems with snails and slugs in our climate unless you are fortunate to have a possum on hand. These homely, if not downright ugly, members of the rat family (look at the tail) consume slugs (mostly) and will resort to snails if hungry enough. I am fortunate that The Learning Garden is blessed with a possum or two that have negated any need to bait or board for snails and slugs. I also avoid growing the Oriental cabbages and greens (sheer delight for snails and slugs) and savoy cabbage; slugs, more so than snails, love to live in between the crinkles in these plants and it can take gallons of water and lots of time to remove all that extra protein from dinner before you serve it (I have found doing this after you serve it to have undesirable repercussions!)
Broccoli is being harvested, along with cauliflower, cabbage (clean those slugs!), peas, scallions, carrots, radishes, beets, new potatoes, chard, kale, and lettuces by the bushel. The garden looks stellar at this time of year, it is bursting with produce of deep green, blue green, punctuated with red and yellow (chard and beet) flags. Heads of broccoli and cabbage show off their refulgent harvest, while the tops of carrots and beets peek out from their cool soil homes. Peas hang delightfully from those bright green plants, with colorful poppies in outrageous bloom and the honey scent of sweet pea flowers in their lovely pastel colors wafting on cool breezes across the garden. Freesias are towards the end of their bloom cycle (there's another heady scent!) and the first of my climbing roses (which are not pruned as hard as shrub roses) are beginning to show off in the Southern California garden.
Don't stop planting lettuce; I will continue to start seeds of lettuce right up through May. I have it easy being so close to the Pacific Ocean – here, cool season plantings can stretch through all months except late July through late September. Warm season crops aren't nearly so flexible because our night temperatures don't get all that high – the soil is cool and hardly gets warmed up enough for the summer crops until July.
The real summer garden begins to take shape next month...
With any amount of luck, February is our rainiest month which means we won’t need to be watering all that much. I have more or less permanently built up beds with paths between them, so walking through a wet garden isn’t that big of a deal. If your garden isn’t laid out like that, take care not to walk through the parts of the garden you intend plant when the soil is thoroughly soaked. Your footprints will compact the soil and cause needless grief later when the soil has dried out. Especially in clay soil.
February is the last month we will want to prune dormant fruit trees. One cannot plan that they won’t have broken dormancy any later than this. See flowers? Or leaves? That’s “broken dormancy” in a nutshell, the sap is running inside the tree and pruning after once you see leaves or flowers will drain more of the tree's vitality – mind you pruning late won’t kill your tree, some folks do this kind of pruning regularly – it’s my preference to do my pruning with the least harm to the tree and for me, that means before the sap begins to run and that means December or January in my Zone 24 climate. I have learned over the last few years that my nectarine and peach trees break dormancy first and I need to consider pruning them in late November/early December. But I've proven that procrastination has its benefits! I find I can use the flowering branches for bouquets without causing a shortage of nectarines! I'm thinning that tree incessantly, even with a hard pruning to prevent too much fruit from weighing down and breaking the branches. Lateness in pruning hasn't stopped any tree I know from producing nor has it ever killed a tree. “There is slack in the universe,“ a teacher of mine used to say.
Don’t forget to deal with slugs and snails. In these wet, cooler months, these destructive little mollusks multiply with alarming proficiency and can present huge problems. You cannot get rid of them forever. They are migratory, so even if you could rid yourself of every single one in your garden on Tuesday, you'd have a whole new supply by Friday from next door. And more on Saturday. It can be a discouraging thought! However, the only real way to deal with these transients is with persistent effort. You deal with today's snails today and leave tomorrow's snails to tomorrow. Sounds like something I heard before, maybe in yoga class?
Some gardeners keep a five gallon bucket on hand with soapy water in it (one of those plastic buckets you see in a hardware store's paint department – cheap and rust free) and drop the critters in for a quick death. Others put a board down with one end slightly raised. Slugs and snails will congregate there over night and can be simply crushed with one swift footfall in the morning. Good for the soul. And soil. A fairly new product, 'Escar-go' is on the market and is non-toxic to mammals (you, your children and dogs and cats etc), and actually benefits the soil. Slugs and snails eat it and die. Probably not as humane as crushing them, but more acceptable in polite society.
No matter what you do, you will probably always have problems with snails and slugs in our climate unless you are fortunate to have a possum on hand. These homely, if not downright ugly, members of the rat family (look at the tail) consume slugs (mostly) and will resort to snails if hungry enough. I am fortunate that The Learning Garden is blessed with a possum or two that have negated any need to bait or board for snails and slugs. I also avoid growing the Oriental cabbages and greens (sheer delight for snails and slugs) and savoy cabbage; slugs, more so than snails, love to live in between the crinkles in these plants and it can take gallons of water and lots of time to remove all that extra protein from dinner before you serve it (I have found doing this after you serve it to have undesirable repercussions!)
Broccoli is being harvested, along with cauliflower, cabbage (clean those slugs!), peas, scallions, carrots, radishes, beets, new potatoes, chard, kale, and lettuces by the bushel. The garden looks stellar at this time of year, it is bursting with produce of deep green, blue green, punctuated with red and yellow (chard and beet) flags. Heads of broccoli and cabbage show off their refulgent harvest, while the tops of carrots and beets peek out from their cool soil homes. Peas hang delightfully from those bright green plants, with colorful poppies in outrageous bloom and the honey scent of sweet pea flowers in their lovely pastel colors wafting on cool breezes across the garden. Freesias are towards the end of their bloom cycle (there's another heady scent!) and the first of my climbing roses (which are not pruned as hard as shrub roses) are beginning to show off in the Southern California garden.
Don't stop planting lettuce; I will continue to start seeds of lettuce right up through May. I have it easy being so close to the Pacific Ocean – here, cool season plantings can stretch through all months except late July through late September. Warm season crops aren't nearly so flexible because our night temperatures don't get all that high – the soil is cool and hardly gets warmed up enough for the summer crops until July.
The real summer garden begins to take shape next month...
Tomatoes
and cucumbers. However you say it, cucumbers and tomatoes are the
number one plants gardeners think of when they think “Summer
Garden.” There are more varieties of tomatoes than there are
potholes in the greater Los Angeles area. These days I could say,
there are more varieties of tomatoes than potshops in the greate Los
Angeles area, too. Just check out the offerings of the members of
Seed Savers Exchange: They list page after page of tomatoes.
Tomatoes come early, mid-season or late. Tomatoes are cherry,
saladette, plum and beefsteak as well as black, cream, green, red,
striped, yellow and many shades in between. Tomatoes come as plain
ol' tomatoes or heirloom, and (had enough choices?) determinate and
indeterminate. It's a complete overwhelm of choice. Determinate
tomatoes are similar in growth to bush beans, giving you short plants
that bear all at once (more or less), while indeterminate are like
pole beans that bear over a long stretch and get quite large to boot.
Here
are a few common varieties I've grown for you to consider:
Cherry
Tomatoes (all cherry tomatoes
are indeterminate)
Sweet
100 – a
great productive and sweet little red tomato that is as dependable as
a beach day in July.
Orange
Sunshine – lots and lots of very sweet little
tomatoes! As of this writing, only available as a hybrid, which I
usually try to avoid, but I hear some folks are working on breeding
it out to an open pollinated variety.
Yellow
Pear – a lot of folks like these, but I think they
are mushy. Very productive though.
Golden
Nugget – a ton of cream colored little guys that are sweet
with low acid – always a bonus in my book.
Ultra-early
Tomatoes (less than 65 days from transplant to fruit, under good
conditions and all are determinate)
Glacier
– sounds like an odd name for a tomato, but it's one of
several bred to grow under non-tomato conditions – cool and wet.
Produces a saladette sized tomato that is punchy tart but tastes more
like a tomato that most the hybrids in the store.
Northern
Delight – as above and I've had good production with it.
Look also for Beaverpole Lodge tomatoes, bred to grow
in Canada! A great way to get the jump on tomato season.
Saladette
(some are determinate but most
are indeterminate – marked with a D or an I)
Jaune Flammee (I)–
a lovely bi-colored tomato (give it something to climb on!) that is
red outside and gold inside – good tasting and beautiful!
Green Zebra (I) –
yup, it's ripe when it's green. I think they are little too acidic,
but plenty of my friends like 'em.
Moonglow (I)
- Solid orange meat, few seeds and wonderful flavor. A
favorite of any one who grows it.
Black from Tula (I) –
not really 'black,' but a very deep red. Delicious, though not a
heavy producer – the skin is so thin I think it's best to take your
plate and fork to the garden and eat it right at the plant!
Stupice (D)
– a small early plant that is worth growing because they
also taste good and come in quick!
Plum (AKA
paste tomatoes, my favorite! And all are indeterminate)
Black
Plum – almost a mahogany tomato – tasty and meaty, an
indeterminate tomato that produces quite nicely
Cream
Sausage
-
A unique colored variety with creamy white to light
yellow sausage-shaped fruit, very productive bushy plants do not
require staking; a really different tomato sauce!
San Marzano –
the most productive of the paste tomatoes and the biggest plant in
this class of tomato – a very good, standard production tomato for
paste tomatoes.
Striped Roman – a
beautiful tomato on the vine and on your plate! Rich red flesh with
streaks of gold in it. I've not made a paste with this one yet, they
didn't last that long! But look for me to say more about them in the
future!
Beefsteak
(Indeterminate)
Brandywine –
the taste that everyone is looking for in a big tomato, winner of
many different taste tests. We can't really grow them very well in
West Los Angeles because they need 85
F through the night as well as the day. Pasadena and other points
inland can grow them, though.
German
Johnson – a large pink tomato that is really juicy
and yummy.
Mortgage
Lifter – there's a great story about the name of
this tomato I'll tell you at a cocktail party one of these days. For
now, I'll say it tastes great and is not less filling, a lovely juicy
tomato that rates.
Persimmon
– this is the largest tomato I've ever grown in West Los
Angeles. One sliced tomato could fill two dinner plates with meaty
orange/yellow slices. However, the six foot plus plants only gave me
one tomato each! Way too much space even though they were the
sweetest and tastiest tomato I've had the pleasure of growing.
You'll
notice I didn't include any of the Best Boy or Early Girl or other
common hybrids. It is true they are productive and will give you a
good crop of bright red fruits, but I think they are too acidic and
have tough skin, so I don't grow them at all. Also, with
multi-national corporations buying out seed companies (read
'Monsanto' here), many of those hybrids are now owned by companies
that sell genetically modified plants. These old hybrids are NOT
GMO, but the profit made from home gardeners buying seeds from
Monsanto goes towards their GMO research. No thanks. Besides, there
are so many delicious tomatoes in this world, to stick to those few
seems silly to me. I grow my standards (San Marzano, Jaune Flammee,
Black Plum and Garden Peach) but I always experiment with some new
tomatoes every year! Plant lots of basil and marigolds at the same
time you plant your tomatoes as they make good companion plants and
help deter insects.
So right about now is when you want
to begin to start seeds for your summer garden, if you have a
protected place to sow the seeds. You don't need a greenhouse or a
cold frame, though both of these can help. It is possible to start
seeds in an apartment without any decent balcony space. I did it for
a good many years as I bounced from tiny apartment to tiny apartment.
Come February, I religiously put seeds of my regular tomato crop and
lots of basil under the lights.
By the way, it is a law of nature,
Lord knows I don't make this stuff up I merely report it, but if you
need one plant of something, start seeds for six! If you start one
seed, it will fail – might be loneliness, I don't know, but it
absolutely will not survive. However, if you grow six, they will all
live. Give the other five away, you'll make other people happy and
there is no better way to make yourself happy. Works with other
things too, not just plants.
If you have a little space – when I
started I didn't have much! – you can start seeds on a table
indoors. All you need is an inexpensive 'shop light' fixture –
usually you can find them for right around $20 – add a couple of
cheap 'cold' fluorescent bulbs – you CAN pay more, even more than
$20 for 'full-spectrum' bulbs, but you don't need them for growing
seedlings. If you were growing plants under the lights to full
maturity, springing for the extra oomph of bulbs that have more of
the light spectrum is useful, but for the quick trip your seedlings
will have before they go out doors, getting more expensive lights is
a waste of money. The cheap bulbs are called 'cold' light because
they have a preponderance of cold – blue spectrum – light. They
will need to be close to your seedlings, but that won't be a problem.
I used bricks to prop the lights up
to the height I needed for my seedlings – you might find other,
more attractive solutions. My choice was based on what I had lying
around for free and bricks it was. To raise the lights required
adding a brick to each end – it wasn't “pin point” control, but
it worked.
Florescent lights do not distribute
light equally along their length. The center has the most light and
the ends the least. They also begin to loose effectiveness as soon
as you start to use them. I think three years is all you can get
from a florescent bulb even though it will still be putting out
light. Your seedlings will get leggier when the bulb fails to put
out sufficient light and it's a sign that it's time to move on. When
I installed a fresh tube, I would record the date with a Sharpie on
the light so I had an idea when to replace it. Our eyes cannot
clearly tell the diminished output, but the plants suffer.
The surface where this is placed
needs to be waterproof. In addition to watering my plants, I
frequently misted mine (sometimes I got them twice a day; which was
my goal, but I made that goal infrequently). One of the hardships we
place on indoor plants is the lack of humidity in our homes. Misting
helps mitigate that. In addition, some of your watering will
inevitably spill over making a waterproof surface essential – or,
if not waterPROOF, at least water-impervious. You don't want to warp
an antique dresser or something.
Set the lights as close to the plants
as you can and raise them only just before the plants begin to touch
them. I had my lights on a timer that turned them on at 6:00 AM and
off at midnight. Why so many hours of 'sunlight?' Because the bulbs
are so much less bright than sunshine, they need to be on a long time
to fulfill the plants' needs.
In addition, I provided my plants
with a small fan. It was one of those oscillating fans which would
blow on the plants as it swept back and forth the length of the
trays. This accomplishes several things. It makes for stronger
plants; swaying in the breeze builds a stronger stem and helps create
a stockier plant. The circulating air also kept fungi at bay –
especially the fungus called 'damping off.' This is a killer of baby
seedlings that has broken a lot of gardener's hearts. You say
goodnight to your babies that are lovely little sweeties in the
evening and come back to say 'good morning' in the dawn only to find
your little darlings all 'cut' off at the soil surface.
They are not really 'cut.' They have
been attacked by the damping off fungus (which is actually any of
about seven different fungi) and the stem, just where it emerges from
the soil, has been turned to mush, hence the seedling keels over as
though it was cut off and lies there with no chance of resuscitation.
Sad to say, your plant children are goners. In your mind, hear Taps
being played.
All for the want of that little fan
that would have helped mitigate the fungus. You don't NEED the
oscillating type – if that proves to be expensive or difficult to
find in the size you want, the kind that doesn't oscillate will work
as well. You will need to turn it on and turn it off a couple of
times in a day to approximate the oscillating. You want the stems to
'work against' the wind to build strength. And the on/off, though a
little more time consuming, does work.
Another part of seed starting is to
use a potting mix that favors the seedling. I have found a simple
combination of peat and vermiculite (very fine perlite works too).
One part of peat for each part of vermiculite gives a person a very
lovely seed starting mix that will hold a lot of water and get the
seeds sprouted. It is not wise to leave them in this water-retentive
mix much beyond their first true leaf stage if you can help it. If
you are not doing a lot of plants from seed, you can also use a
regular good potting soil and get out any big chunks of anything by
sifting it through a riddle. Really fine seeds like snapdragons may
require you to screen the potting soil down to a very fine size, but
most seeds can survive pretty good in only a coarsely sifted potting
soil.
By starting your own seeds at home,
you will have a staggering number of choices for all your garden
plants! The ones offered by the nursery pale in comparison to what
you can have – and you will have access to all the new varieties
before your neighbors will because the seeds are often introduced
before the plants. Nurserymen don't like to plant millions of a new
variety of anything that hasn't proven successful all over, where
seedsmen will want to have their seeds trialed all over the country.
It's fun to be able to show off what you grew THIS year to your
neighbor who won't have access to the same plant in a nursery for at
least one year, if not more! Purple and yellow cauliflowers come to
mind. As does my Genovese basil which I was growing for almost ten
years before everyone realized that this was one of the best basils
for pesto.
Starting your own plants at home is
also a better ecological choice. 2009 was a tomato disaster in the
eastern United States. The problem stemmed from all tomatoes for
sale in all eastern seaboard nurseries were started in the south
eastern US and somewhere down there, at least some of the plants
became infected with a fungus called “Late Blight.” From the
initial infected plants placed in the nurseries alongside other
plants, quickly most plants were infected. This caused the highest
mortality among the tomato population seen in recent years. Those
folks that grew their own plants avoided complete devastation. One
friend started all his own plants from seed and could see a good
harvest coming along. He had a few empty spaces in his garden and,
on a whim, bought a couple more plants from a chain store nursery to
fill in. Those purchased plants died fairly soon after being
transplanted – and some of his healthy home-grown plants got
infested before he realized what was happening. A good gardener and
a quick thinker, he destroyed all the infected plants and was able to
prevent the spread to the few remaining uninfected plants. He still
got some tomatoes, but many of his neighbors had complete failure.
Growing your own saves that from becoming an issue. Maybe with a
little extra effort you could provide seedlings for your
neighborhood?
Growing plants from seed is not hard.
Most books and seed packets will tell you the depth at which to put
the seed making it sound like they have access to the Holy Grail of
seed planting. Most of that is something akin to hogwash. There are
many different depths at which to plant a seed depending on a lot of
factors so ignore those depths. Let me tell you, in containers,
the rule is always, better too shallow than too deep. If
you plant too shallow, you can always add more potting soil around
your little guys, or plant them deeper when you transplant, but if
you plant too deep, you'll never see them again. Sowing seeds in the
ground is a little more complicated, I’ll get to that!
With your
shallowly planted seeds, it is imperative that you keep that top
layer of soil moist. It need not be wet, but consistently moist.
This is very different from how you will water your regular garden,
which should be much less frequently and much more thorough.
Soil is put in
the six packs and pressed down, not so hard as pushing it out the
bottom, but don't be faint on it either. I want it in the cell up to
about an eighth of an inch from the top and just barely springy. For
smaller seeds, like tomatoes, basil, peppers, eggplants and even up
to okra (planted in late March), I will put up to five seeds per cell
of the six-pack, putting one seed in each corner of each cell and one
in the center. If the seed is not fresh, I might even put in more.
Using a light pinch of soil I cover the seeds only after I've made
out a plant tag for the six pack. The tag should read with the date
across the top (i.e. 02/04), then turn the tag counter-clockwise and
write the type of plant (i.e. Tomato) and underneath, the variety
(Glacier – an ultra-early tomato and why I can start it on 02/04).
If you write
your tags this way all the time you will find it easier to look at
what you've grown consistently without your head tossing back and
forth to make up for tags written clockwise, followed by
counter-clockwise. And if you ever work in a nursery, you won't be
fired the first day for being backwards.
Little seedlings do not need
fertilizer, in fact fertilizer can damage them. Not until after they
have their first true leaves do you need concern with any fertilizer.
At that point, I would use a solution of fish emulsion at about half
the strength the directions say. Don't over do it.
Once your plants have sprouted and
are beginning to put on their second set of true leaves, you must
begin to harden them off.
Place them outside in a protected location – in fairly deep shade
of a tree, for example, and move them slowly closer to full sun a bit
at a time, getting them into full sun in about a week. If you don't
have a tree like that, the other choice is to put them out in full
sun for two hours on the first day, four hours on the second, six
hours on the third and so on until they are out in the sun for the
whole day. Or, you can put them under some shade cloth and begin to
move the cloth back a little of each day until they are completely
exposed. Any one of these three methods will work – which one you
will use will depend on your circumstances. If none of those will
work, you are on your own; use your creativity and you will be able
to figure out what you need to do that will work for you.
Let's take a
second to discuss this 'true leaves' thing. The first leaves that
come out of a seed were already in there, waiting for the right
conditions to shed the hard seed coat and start growing. Water acts
on the seed coat to soften it and the first set of leaves (two
leaves, for most of our food plants – some, like onions, have only
one) come out. They often look different, sometimes very different,
than the regular leaves, so we call them the 'seed leaves' – or, in
botanist speak, the 'cotyledons.' Plants with two seed leaves are,
botanically-speaking, dicotyledons, or for us common folk, just
'dicots.' Grasses (which include bamboos, onions, lilies, and irises)
have one leaf and are called 'monocots' for monocotyledons. Those of
us growing from seed, need to learn what the cotyledons look like or
we'll be weeding out our baby plants. Tomatoes, spinach, and all the
cabbage family have quite distinctive cotyledons with not a whit of
resemblance to the regular plant leaves. All the leaves after those
first baby leaves will look more or less like what you'd expect, only
smaller than a full-sized plant.
The summer
garden, which most of us still think of as THE garden because our
desire for the heat loving veggies, is coming fast! Hurry up, check
your seed inventory. Now's the time to put your seeds into six packs
or other containers! Summer will be here before you know it!
|
Start
These In Containers
|
Start
These In The Ground
|
Move
to the Ground from Containers
|
|
Ultra-early
tomatoes
|
Beets
(still)
|
Any
left over transplants still hanging
|
|
Regular
tomatoes (about the 14th)
|
Radishes
(still)
|
around
– although you won't get the best yield, if you have the plants
and
|
|
Basil
(same time as tomatoes)
|
Carrots
(short season)
|
the
space to put them in the ground, do it!
|
|
Cucumbers
(later in the month)
|
Turnips
|
|
|
Summer
squash (later in the month)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Refer to text
for more exact dates.
Hot
Chocolate That Kills
I know you probably don't have
chocolate growing in your garden, but it's that time of year – you
might need some fortifying. This Hot Chocolate, pronounced to be
“Adult hot chocolate,” by one young taster, is not be trifled
with. The caffeine of the coffee and the chocolate make this a
picker-upper and the cayenne pepper makes a person say 'yowser,
baby!' It's all good in my book.
1 cup very strong coffee
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¾ cup sugar (or less)
3 oz. Bittersweet chocolate
⅛ teaspoon cardamom
⅛ teaspoon cayenne pepper
⅛ teaspoon nutmeg
pinch salt
3 cups whole milk
Bring coffee to a boil in a sauce pan,
add vanilla, sugar, salt, and other spices. Simmer for a minute and
add the chocolate in chunks. Whisk until it thickens from the melted
chocolate; add milk and simmer for another minute to warm throughout.
Whisk it to froth and serve at once to your Valentine. It's a
winner.
david
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