Starting Vegetable Seeds in Your House
"Starting Vegetable Seeds in Your House"
The only way to have very early vegetables is to take time with both hands by the reins and start seeds indoors while the ground is still cold.
In the Northern States it is especially important to make an early start, when starting seeds in your house, if vegetables like tomatoes, eggplants, cauliflower, early cabbages, celery and peppers are desired.
Of course there is some advantage in having a hotbed, but its operation involves too much skill and requires too much attention to make it suitable for use in the backyard garden.
Starting seeds in your house using your kitchen space is a much simpler matter, and the results are likely to be satisfactory if the started plants can be set in a cold frame later.
Garden shops use what they call flats, which are merely shallow boxes the right size to be handled easily, and about two inches high. Anyone can make good substitutes for flats by obtaining a few old boxes at the grocery store and cutting them down to the right size.
The boxes should be filled with good garden loam, with which a very little sand has been mixed. Or sterile planting media such as vermiculite.
If soil is available, then it is advisable for you to put the boxes of soil into the oven of the kitchen stove until it has become thoroughly heated. This will kill the weed seeds and save you so much trouble later on. However It is not recommended that you bake the soil too long.
When starting vegetable seeds in your house, you will find some seeds are very fine and only need to be pressed into the soil, and a little sand then, can be sprinkled over the seeds. Furrows for the larger seeds can be made with the point of a pencil, and should be about an inch and a half apart.
Many beginners have difficulty in watering their seed boxes after the seed has been planted. One plan is to set the box in a pan of water and let the water soak through from the bottom.
A much better plan, when starting seeds in your house, is to get a piece of tissue paper, just the size of the box, and lay it on the soil. If water is then applied lightly to the paper, it will gradually soak through and the seeds will not be washed away.
There will be no need to remove the paper, from youe seeds that have been started in your house. The paper will have become so thoroughly water soaked by the time the little plants appear, that they will easily push their way through.
It is best to keep a clear cover over the box so light can shine through until the seedlings started in your house, emerge from the soil, the box can then be set in a warm place like the back of your stove.
The clear cover may be removed once the seedlings have burst through the soil and the box can then, be placed in a sunny window.
As soon as possible the little plants should be thinned out so that they will not touch. Once your plants have made their first true leaves, or in some cases even earlier, they should be transplanted to other flats, or better still, to paper pots which can be set close together in any box.
The principal advantage of using paper pots for your vegetable seeds in your house is so the plants can be set into the ground, when large enough, without disturbing the roots. The paper pots do not need to be removed, for they will eventually rot away, and while they remain in the soil, the sides will also form a barrier to keep away any cutworms that could endanger any started plants.
If you have a cold frame which can be used through April,then tomato plants and pepper plants may be started as early as the first of March indoors. All the other seedlings can be started after the fifteenth of March.
If you keep your started vegetable seedlings in the house too long, the plants are apt to become spindly. They will make better growth in a cold frame which can be opened on warm days.
For the beginning backyard gardener who has only a very small garden, will probably buy started plants, and perhaps this is the best plan for the beginning backyard gardener.