How Does Our Garden Grow? Part I: Starting Seeds
Spring is on the way, so it's time to get moving with this season's vegetable garden. The kids are excited to get their hands in the dirt and start going. I have to remind them that this is going to be an exercise in patience, though, since we're still a long way off from summer.
A few weeks ago we visited the Petaluma Seed Bank, a local seed emporium and West Coast outpost of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, where we bought more than enough vegetable seeds than we probably need. As you can see by the photo, we picked out a variety of tomatoes to plant this season: "Paul Robeson", a purple variety from Russia (named after the singer and activist); "Royal Hillbilly"; and "Riesentraube", a German heirloom with a name that means "giant grapes".
The first step is to start some seedlings indoors so they can get going while we prep the planting areas outside. The tomatoes and sweet peppers are first up. We gathered up our supplies—potting soil and some containers for the seedlings. For containers, you can pretty much use anything that holds soil and offers decent drainage. We've had good luck in years past using paper egg cartons, so we made sure we saved a bunch just for this purpose. They're free (after you buy the eggs), compostable, and they drain well.
The kids of course wanted to help, so we set up a seed planting station in the kitchen, where we put out egg cartons pre-filled with potting soil, seed packets, and some little bowls in which to put the seeds as we worked with them. Poke a shallow hole in each space with your finger, drop in a couple seeds, and cover them up with a thin layer of dirt. Then gently water and wait for them to grow. It's important to make sure the soil stays moist but not soaking wet, so make sure you check regularly and water if necessary.
The seeds also need warmth to germinate. It's still pretty cold out now, so we've tried the trick of putting them in a warm place and placing the trays inside a loose-fitting plastic bag. Standard-issue grocery store plastic bags work quite well for this purpose. Make sure you leave the end open to encourage air circulation. I've read conflicting theories about whether or not the seeds need light to germinate. While several sources say you don't need it, it can't hurt, so we've got our egg cartons on the window sill in the kitchen.
If you need guidance, there are a ton of resources out there to help you along. Online sources are so numerous that they're kind of overwhelming, but I've found the forums run by Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds at www.idigmygarden.com to be really useful. On the printed end of things, the venerable Western Garden Book
We'll return with part two of our garden series when we see some seeds sprouting, which may take a week or two.
