Despite a mid-April blanketing of snow, which is not ridiculously unseasonable even if we all want the weather to turn into balmy sun-filled days, I garden.
I’ve sown seeds over the past few weeks, which have emerged from their well-engineered soil1 into tiny bits of greenness of a shade that can’t be imitated by anything other than a baby plant
It does seem like there’s a bit of magic in the dirt. History taught me to throw a huge excess of seeds into the pot because only a small percentage would germinate, never mind stand up on their spindly stems and flourish. In the past few years, pretty much every seed I’ve sown has grown.
It might be the soil, very appropriately called ‘Seed Starting Potting Mix’ from MiracleGrow – a product worthy of its name. It might be better seeds. Although some of my seed packets are old, they grow long after the best before date. Even seeds I’ve harvested myself, from willing tomato, basil and nasturtium plants, sprout.
It could be the grow light2. The plants clearly like it, making greenery faster and developing better root systems without getting so tall so fast they can’t stand up. The grow light isn’t really enough for the number of plants I nurture. The trays sit in a south facing window with the grow light towards the back (inside of the room) to even out the supply of natural and supernatural light. This arrangement keeps the seedlings from leaning too far towards outdoors, where they are clearly yearning to be3.
During my morning watering routine, I shuffled the plants, turning those growing toward the window around to bring them back to upright, moving the weakest looking ones directly under the grow light. I’ve read that it’s good to expose plants germinated indoors to some movement, to prepare them for the uncontrolled gamut of weather in the backyard. Some folks set up a fan to blow on their wee plants to make them stronger. The concept makes sense to me, but I don’t know if there is evidence to support it4. However, picking up and examining each pot and optimizing its growing position amuses me.
Something I’ve been doing that is a little weird with my seedlings is transplanting them a few weeks after they sprout. This comes from believing only a few seeds of dozens will make it, along with an inability to abandon any living thing. When I sow seeds, I sow too many for the pot. But I can’t just thin them, casting lovely little green things away into the compost. Something has to be done, because they won’t all flourish if they are too dense. So I split my seedlings, often when they are only one leaf beyond their cotyledon. How? Very carefully. I told an experienced gardener I did this, and their eyebrows arched in disbelief.
My tiny celery plants, looking all perky and ready to grow, transplanted four days ago.
The keys are:
- do it quick, so nothing dries out,
- gently loosen the soil around the seedlings so as not to disturb the roots,
- lightly toss the plant, roots and all, into generous holes in their new pot, prefilled with potting soil, and
- loosely cover the roots and bottom third of the stem with new dirt.
Tamping (gently banging the bottom of the pot on a solid surface (I’m usually working on the basement cement floor)) the freshly repotted plants gets them sorted upright and removes dirt from the tender leaves. Crazy, but it leaves me with every seedling from a crowded 3″ pot able to grow a few more leaves until it makes its way to the relatively infinite expanse of the garden plot.
My indoor collect of seedlings currently stands at:
- 12 celery
- 16 eggplant
- 12 Brussels sprouts
- 12 broccoli
- 12 pak choi
- 4 plus about 8 more buttercrunch lettuce
- 8 pots with 3 or 4 sweet pepper plants each
- 9 varieties of tomatoes, in 19 pots, each with 4 or 5 plants
- some dirt with basil seeds
- 4 pots, each with 3-6 plants, with honeydew-like melons
- lots of ground cherries, not split yet.
And there’s more growing on a backdrop of snow. I’ve mentioned the greenhouse in my recently acquired backyard. I was going to get rid of it but then the pandemic made me love yard I have. Five days ago, I planted several types of cold tolerant seeds5 and left them to do their best in the environment that is unseasonably warm when the sun is out, but almost as cold at night, ahem, as night. After several lukewarm, cloudy days, I see the turnips6 and radish sticking their green heads out of the soil, able to observe the bit of snow left outside their shelter.
Now, waiting, watching, tending. The garden grows. Not long to the first harvest.
1 The simple task of purchasing a ‘bag of dirt’ is not simple. Special mixes of organic material, top soil, peat and fertilizers, customized for each purpose one might have for dirt, require extended reading before one can heft the 60 l. bag from the pallet to take home and bury things in. That said, the stuff labelled seed-starter does.
2 I have a two foot long light with 1 T5 output bulb on a 10 inch stand.
3 I know, this is a simple biological response to seek their source of nourishment, but I like the anthropomorphism.
4 Could be an easy experiment to do: Taking half of each type of seedling and moving it around, while the other half rested in tranquility until they were planted outside. Then measuring which plants did better (grew taller or more leaves, didn’t die, flowered and fruited faster etc – lotsa things to measure) after transplanting. Of course, most gardeners ‘harden off’ their seedlings before they are planted in the garden. This process of carrying the plants in and out of the house also exposes them to movement.
5 Planted: spinach, radish, Swiss chard, beets, turnips, arugula, rapini.
6 In case of Armageddon, I recommend turnips for survival. They grow like crazy, in terrible conditions, and produce leafy stuff you can eat as greens, and a big bulbous thing that is quite tasty made into oven fries. Also, the whole plant can be made into an awesome curry.