Soil:
“…While store-bought mixes provide a good basis for
starting seedlings, they tend toward the nutrient-light and lack the
‘body’ to carry plants robustly past their initial phase.
By all means use them, but consider adding amendments. Read labels carefully
on potting soils. Many of them were not designed for starting seed….”
Read more.
Watering:
“…Sometimes, the soil layer in your flats may become
top-heavy with water, and dryer toward its base. Lift the flats and
spray them slightly from underneath. Bottom drying-out is an especially
common development with trays on heat mats. Whatever the time of year,
lifting the edge of a flat a couple of inches off the bench will alert
you to how much water is held in the soil (a watered flat is a great
deal heavier than a dry one). Sticking your fingertip in the soil is
a good test, too….” Read
more.
Light
(including, “Just how big is that windowsill?”): “…The
light tubes need to be as close as possible to the plants, short of
touching the leaves to the glass. Four to six tubes make growing up
plants easier to manage (the strongly illuminated area is larger). At
no juncture do you want the lights more than 3” – 4”
above the plants. It is easier to lower flats than raise lights, especially
when different plants get tall at different rates….”
Read more.
Disease
and Predation: “…Damping off is not
one disease but several similar ones. The first sign of it comes when
a few seedlings out of a large group collapse. Brassicas, toms and peppers
seem most susceptible. The green leaves are still intact, but the base
of the stems at the soil line are dark and have rotted. Remove the affected
seedlings and examine those around them. If a tray is affected, quarantine
it…” Read
more.
Timing:
“…As the perspective broadens, the plot thickens. Consider
pak choi/bok choi, for example. We can start it in January with supplemental
heating and lighting, in a greenhouse in February, in the ground in
March, and then continue seeding through the summer for a winter crop.
But we might want to stop seeding May through June because experience
teaches us that pak choi has a tendency to bolt in the long days and
heat of the hottest months of the year – though we do know of
one variety that will hold better than others. In other words, there
is no one right time to sow pak choi. A unique profile, peculiar to
each individual variety, holds true for every crop….”
Read more.
Spring
Seeding Calendar for S. Willamette Valley gardeners,
applicable to maritime northern temperate climates - with notes: “…By
all means, give this crop a go, but many experienced hands - who have
a focus on predictable productivity - find spring broccolis' performance
too erratic to justify the space. So very often the plants, confused
by changeable spring conditions, will mature a very small head long
before the plants have sized up. Home gardeners, of course, may be content
to embrace the likelihood of much-reduced yields, just to have broccoli
around. One tack: consider sowing
in April or May, somewhere a little cooler, say behind unpruned raspberries,
or in the tree -shade of an afternoon sun…”
Read more.
Seed
Vigor: “…But relative freshness affects
more than the germ rate. Indeed, the difference between fresh and older
seed, in seedling vigor, plant health, momentum, productivity, resistance
to disease and predation, and other factors, is simply astounding to
witness. You would hear more about this, but because the vast majority
of gardeners have spent decades 'growing up' seed from outside sources,
they have no experience growing seed they know is fresh, alongside seed
of unknown provenance….” Read
more.
Health-in-this-Place:
“…In their most sophisticated iterations, seeding strategies
reflect the deeper insights of holism. We graduate from asking “When
and what do we sow?” to, “Which seeding approach makes the
soundest ecological sense?” What, in fact, am I seeding, and why?..."
Read more.
Recent
articles by Nick Routledge.
February
8, 2008