SEEDS AND SEEDING ALSO BEDDING PLANTS
What you plant in your garden is what you get, if you are lucky. I have had a few humor-ous happenings from seed packages. All companies make mistakes. The one that really was funny was the cayenne pepper seed that turned out to be hot thia peppers. I knew that when the peppers started to turn various color that something was wrong. They were hot. We also got some pumpkin seed that was supposed to jack o lantern sized pumpkins and they turned out to be giant pumpkins some of them near 200 pounds.
Getting the wrong seed does not happen very often but enjoy it when it does.
I generally buy my seeds at these stores:
Gurneys
Henry Fields
Burgess
Fred Meyers
Wal-Mart
Local farm stores
Amazon.com
Baker’s Rare Seeds
As you can see I am not particular where I get the seeds. When it is large volume seed such as several pounds of corn seed then it is purchased locally. Some of the seeds that I use are purchased on line. You can get your seeds most anywhere. Most of the seeds I have pur-chased have had good germination rates.
I store emergency seeds in a sealed container in a refrigerator. These are supposed to be good for several years.
Should you buy hybrid seed or non-hybrid seed, sometimes called heirloom seeds? Many times the hybrid seed out performs the open pollinated varieties. Just remember that you can’t save hybrid seed and expect to get good result from the saved seed. If you are saving seed from open pollinated varieties I recommend that you maintain adequate separation from any hybrid varieties and other varieties of the same plant, i.e. peppers.
Raised bed gardening is particularly suited to bedding plants. These are those plants that are pre-started such as tomatoes. Most vegetable varieties can be started and transplanted. There are two ways to get bedding plants. You can buy the plants at nearly any garden cen-ter in the spring. The other way is to start your own in containers in the house. My prefer-ence is to start the plants myself especially peppers and tomatoes.
If you are going to start your own bedding plants then you need to do it six to eight weeks before you plan to plant them in your beds.
It is a lot of fun going to the garden stores and looking for plants in the spring. Unless you are a lot more resistant to plants than I am, you will almost always come home with something. My problem is that usually I buy too many.
Planting small seeds in your raised beds can be challenging. Direct seeding of small seed in raised bed require that you follow seed spacing guide lines. I can’t tell you what spacing for all plants but this is the general rule that I follow. Space the seeds one half the recom-mended distance for ordinary row gardening. The spacing should be in all directions from the seed. Place you seeds individually where you want the plant and no more than two seeds at each location. You may need to thin them as they grow.
Careful planting of small seeds means less work later on. This is one reason that I screen the last layer in my raised beds that will contain things that have small seeds like carrots.
WEEDS AND MULCH
Mulching is very important for raised bed gardens. This is your primary barrier to weeds. The bed must be weeded until the plants are large enough to put down a thick layer of mulch. I use old hay, straw, grass clipping and sometimes cardboard and paper as a mulch.
When the plants are large enough I place a layer of mulch around the plants covering the whole bed. This layer must be thick enough to shut out most of the light that shines on the soil. As you plants get larger they will provide additional shade and deter weed growth. You will need to pull any weeds that come through your mulch.
This is where intensive raised beds really begin to pay off. Your weeding time will be about one tenth of that required in a conventional garden. The raised beds bring the weeds up to your level for easy care. I am about 70 years old and raised beds eliminate a lot of bending. Building raised bed also provides me with good exercise.
SUMMARY
This guide is aimed at those that want to grow a large amount of produce in a small space. This does not mean that flowers and other plants grown for their beauty cannot be grown in raised beds. You can make your bed a work of art and still have all of the ad-vantages of raised bed. I admit that I have a few flowers planted in some of my garden beds. Every year we plant marigold and asters in our beds. The excuse is that they help keep the bugs out. The real reason probably is that I like the color in the garden.
We provide vegetables and produce for thirteen people from our garden each year. The garden provided salads and vegetable for about 5 months fresh. We preserved 100 quarts of corn, 40 or so quarts of tomatoes, salsa, 30 some quarts of beets and we still have carrots in the ground to be pulled and used the end of January.
WHAT ARE BEDDING PLANTS?
These are plants that you transplant into a garden in early spring to get a quicker and more reliable harvest. These plants are usually grown indoors either in a green house, under lights or in a sunny window.
The object is to start the plants 6 to 8 weeks before the last frost date. This allows the plant to have a head start on the season. Bedding plants allow for the starting and ensuring an adequate growing season for many long season plants. Many types of produce could not be grown to maturity without starting the plants indoors.
This section will lead you through starting bedding plants the easiest way possible and spending the least money. It is not meant to be an all inclusive source on starting plants. If there is an area that you don’t understand do you own research? This guide will get you started growing your own plants for a small or large home garden.
WHEN TO START YOUR SEEDS.
You need to determine when to start your seeds based upon your last frost date. The best way to determine your last frost date is by experience. Our last frost date is a little later than our neighbors on the hill behind us. Our last frost date is usually about May 15th while some of our neighbors have a last frost date of about May 1st to 5th.
If you don’t know your last frost date it can be obtained from the local County Extension Service in the United States. Other countries have different agencies for this information. Just do your research as this is important. Please remember that this may not be completely accurate for your property. We are also dealing with weather and climate here so there is no exact date. It is an approximate date.
While you are determining your last spring frost date you should also determine your lo-cation’s first frost date in the fall. This is important information to use in selecting the right plants. The time between the last frost date and the first frost date is the growing season for most plants.
That being said you need to start your plants 6 to 8 weeks before you plan to transplant them to your garden. Different plants will be started at different times to allow adequate growth time before transplanting. Some plants like spinach, cabbage and Swiss chard can stand light frost.
You need to start working on how you will grow your bedding plants about two weeks before the seeding date. There are a lot of things to do before you plant your seeds
PREPARING FOR YOUR SEEDLINGS
The first thing to consider is where you are going to grow your seedlings. Your seedlings need a warm well lighted place to grow. I try to find a south window that get lots of natural sunlight. In addition to sunlight I usually use additional light. This can be either daylight nat-ural spectrum florescent light with a temperature rating of 6500 degree K or greater or the plant growing bulbs can be used. This year because of space limitations my only window is north facing. The seed trays are placed on a rack with lights installed. Because of the lack of natural light the lights will need to remain on 24 hours a day.
This guide is written from the stand point of saving money not spending it. For this rea-son the seedling rack is build out of scrap materials. It is 18 inches wide by 6 foot tall and four feet long. The materials came from an old crate that a neighbor gave me. The crate was disassembled for the 2 X 4’s for the frame. The shelves are from an old sheet of press board that was left over from a project last year. I am not going to give you step by step instruc-tions on how to build these racks.
CONTAINERS FOR STARTING YOUR PLANTS.
You will need trays to start your plants. I like trays that are about 3 inches deep 12 to 16 inches wide and 16 to 18 inches long. This allows for a wide source of planting trays. Trays in this size range are easy to handle and provide adequate depth for the seedling to start be-fore the first transplant. These same trays can be use for the second transplanting before the final transplant.
Update: I have started to use large plastic cups to start my seeds. The red cups seem to work the best and clear the worst.
I did not have time to build the trays this year so I cheated. I went to the store to buy plant starting trays. Those that were available were plastic trays with peat pots in them and plastic trays with a growth medium in them. Peat pots were also available. Some of the su-permarket starting kits had shallow trays with plastic covers for the seeds to retain moisture and heat. You can get really fancy with seed starting equipment. There are heat tapes avail-able to place under your plants and other things to help get a quick start for your seeds.
After looking at the seed starting equipment that was available I decided that none of them met my needs. The cost of these set ups ranged from about $6.00 to more than $10.00 and this was just too costly for the number of plants that I wanted to start. I went to the baking pans and found disposable roaster pans that were about 3 inches deep and 13 inches by 16 inches in size. These looked good to me and they only cost about $2.50 per tray. Each tray came with a raised plastic cover, wow just what I needed to start my seeds. Then I went to the local wholesale warehouse and bought a large bag of potting soil for $10.00. This me-dium seems to be just about right for starting plants.
The trays were filled with potting soil, watered and allowed to set for a few days. This al-lows the moisture to spread throughout the planting medium. Your trays are now ready for seeds.
A good alternate way to start your bedding plants is to use medium size paper or plastic cups. Fill them with potting soil and plant a couple of seeds in each one. You can thin them later. The cup should have a couple of small holes in the bottom for drainage. I recommend setting the cups in a tray to retain water for the plants and to provide drainage without a mess. The cups should be covered with clear plastic until the seeds start.
SEEDS AND WHERE TO GET THEM
Finding garden seed is the easy part. Deciding what to grow is the hard part. I usually just grow what we eat and then try something unusual.
We have seed available at all the grocery stores in our area. The supermarkets like Wal-Mart, Fred Meyers, Target and Winco Groceries, all carry a fairly good assortment of seeds.
Most brands of seeds are okay as long as you purchase those labeled for the current growing year. I use a variety of brands. My favorites are Burpee, Henry Fields, Ed Hume and any heirloom seed producer.
As far as I am concerned there are only two types of seeds.
Heirloom
Hybrid
Heirloom seeds are those that have been around for generations and are open pollinat-ed. I classify all open pollinated seeds as heirloom. What is open pollinated anyway? These are plants that the seed can be collected from and you can expect them to produce the same plant next year.
Hybrid plants are those that are crossed to produce specific traits. Many of these do not breed true for the succeeding generations of the plants. If you are going to save seed don’t expect to save seeds from hybrid plants. The seed will probably grow but you probably will get some surprises when it comes to the fruit produced for seeds saved from hybrid plants.
GMO seeds, what are they? Genetically Modified Organisms are those that have had the DNA code modified by injecting DNA from another organism in to the DNA strands. The most common reason is to provide either greater yield or resistance to some kind of pest. I don’t like getting sprayed with bug spray and I don’t like insecticides in my food. My advice is to stay away from GMO seeds. Besides you can’t save the seed and reuse it. These are patented seeds. If these seeds cross pollinate with your seed and you save the seed for future plant-ing, then you are guilty of patent infringement and the seed company can sue you for dam-ages. They have done this many times even when the pollen from their seed was wind borne for long distances.
You need to choose your own seed and plants. Go have some fun and buy your seeds. If you want to buy your seeds on line then do so.
PLANTING YOUR SEEDS AND GROWING YOUR TRANSPLANTS
Planting your seeds is the fun part. I can’t wait to see how they will germinate and show their first leaves. The starting trays have been filled with potting soil or whatever mix of soil that you want to use to start your seeds. One thing to avoid is using soil that might contain weed seed. This is the reason that I buy potting soil. It is usually pretty sterile.
If you don’t want to buy potting soil I would suggest that you put it in the oven at about 300 degrees for a few minutes to sterilize it. How long it needs to be heated depends upon the depth of your container. If you do this, be careful of fire and of getting burned by the hot containers. A good potting soil contains a lot of organics and some of them may burn easily.
The next step is to plant your seeds. Make a shallow cut in the potting soil and careful place your seeds in the cut. Be careful to allow enough space between the seeds. I never seem to get this right. Mine are always too close together. The most important thing to do at this step is to be sure to label what seeds you plant where. Oh, I know that you can remem-ber but my experience is that you won’t at least I don’t. I use the bulk pop sickle sticks that you can get at any craft store for markers. They are easy to write on and easy to push into the soil. Many times the sticks are broken in the middle to allow the cover for the tray to go over.
Here we have tomato plants that are about a week old. You can see I got them too close together again. The cabbage plants on the left hand side are for my grand kids’ school con-test to see who can grow the largest cabbage. These tomato plants will need to be trans-planted into larger containers in the next day or two.
TRANSPLANTING YOUR SEEDLINGS
There are a lot of ways to transplant seedlings. What I usually do is take pop sickle stick and split it in half the long direction. This is my transplanting tool. The seedlings are careful-ly separated in the starting tray and the individual plants removed and transplanted into a new larger container. The trays that I moved cabbage and broccoli to are old plant contain-ers that were saved from last year. The picture below is of the plants just after transplanting. These probably won’t get a second transplant into larger pots as our outdoor temperature should be okay for them when these plants get too large for the little pony packs.
CONDITIONS NECESSARY TO GROW HEALTHY BEDDING PLANTS
There are a number of things to consider, ensuring that your plants start easily and stay healthy.
• The soil used should be sterile.
• The soil should be porous and be able to hold moisture easily.
• The temperature for germination should be 60 to 70 degrees F.
• Your plants, after germination, need all the light that they can get. Mine in the pictures are not getting enough light.
• You should transplant the seedling soon after germination and before the plants form a second leaf pair.
• Extreme care needs to be used during transplanting.
• Don’t be afraid to try something new.
SUMMARY
Growing bedding plants is not hard. Once that you try it you won’t ever be satisfied with going to the garden center and buying your plants. There will be years when it is necessary due to time available, space and other thing that get in the way of starting your own plants. Don’t despair next year is another year and there is always the fall garden to get started.
The essential things for starting bedding plants are:
• Planning
• A place to start them
• Planting medium
• Light
• Water
• Good seed
• Time to care for the plants
• Desire to do it yourself
• Temperature
• Necessary materials.
Starting bedding plants is a very easy thing to do and can save quite a bit of money. Last year I spent over $250.00 on bedding plants. This year with the setup shown in this paper, my cost should be less than $150.00 for twice as many plants. Starting bedding plants also allows me to start growing things a couple of months sooner and I love that. I also love giv-ing excess plants to my neighbors.
An alternate method of starting plants is to put your potting soil in medium to large sized plastic beverage cups. Then put a couple of seeds in each one. Thin the seedlings to one plant per cup. This eliminates the need to do transplants but in the beginning it takes a lot more room.
RESOURCES FOR BEDDING PLANTS:
Your local county extension office.