Vegetable Seed Starting

Hello All!

This year I have determined to be the year of the vegetable garden. After several years of so-so vegetable gardens I would like to make this year super fruitful.

Long story short, my mother gardened, my grandmother gardened, and now I am struggling to do so. Last year, we were swamped and just picked up a bunch of vegetable starts from a local nursery and had some success (squashes - a first for us) and some failures (not a single zucchini or summer squash, and some average tomatoes and cucumbers). This year however, I would rather start from scratch as the starts were darn costly.

That being said though, when starting from scratch I've never really been able to grow robust, healthy looking vegetables. We usually start our seeds in the special seed starting mixture found in hardware stores which we put in toilet paper tubes, water as needed, and put in a west facing window for the most sunlight. Grow like that until May and plant after Mother's Day (per the mother and grandmother) unless frost threatens.

I have no idea what I'm doing wrong and definitely don't have the resources for all the fancy gadgetry found in the gardening catalogs that have been flooding my mailbox for the past month or so.

That being said, any suggestions would be appreciated as to how I could grow healthier vegetables. So far, I am thinking to get one of those covered under-bed boxes (the clear kind) to act as a sort of greenhouse and throw a heating blanket under there for additional warmth. Not to much that can be done about the sunlight situation... Perhaps these poor little seed starts need to be fed???

My mother and grandmother were old world gardeners and just sort of did it so any advice would be GREATLY appreciated. Especially since I'd rather not have another "told you it was a waste of time" from the husband ;)

What vegetables are you growing. Last year was really tough because it was either cold and very wet way late in the year or drought. I don't know which you had.

Squash I'd direct seed. It's fussy to transplant and the seed germinates so quickly that I don't think you gain much time. Get you self a thermometer so you can test you soil temperature. A five dollar cooking one from Walmart works as well as any other. I'd wait until the soil was 60°F.

The same advice for beans.

Cucumbers can be direct sown or started inside maybe no more than 4 weeks before set out.

Tomatoes people generally start 6 to 8 weeks before transplant time. Tomatoes may be the easiest of the plants to start. They germinate in 4 to 7 days usually. They are tolerant of a wider soil temperature germinating than let's say peppers and if they get leggy from to little light you can bury them up to the leaves when you transplant them. In a window sill I think I'd go 8 weeks for tomatoes and 10 for peppers.

I'll answer more once I know what you are growing.

im thinking of the starting in toilet paper rolls method myself, i tried starting them in styrofoam cups last year with holes poked in the bottom, my goofy self would turn the cup upside down to get the plants and the soil mix to slide out, and i snapped a couple of plant stems that way **insert embarrassed face here**. and the peat pots steal the moisture away from the soil too badly, so maybe this will give me a better result--something that i can just slip the whole thing right into the ground.

Change your growing seeds to include grow lights, fertilizer, and a growing area with the right temperatures. A west facing window is not going to give enough light for growing plants and also possible germination for some seeds. Plants also need fertilizer after they get their first true leaves.

If you are growing seeds in the basement then it also may be too cool for the seeds and plants. Seeds generally have both a germination temperature and a growing temperature. If you order from places like Johnnies Seeds they usually have both temperature ranges listed on their packets. However you can find the info on like by googling the seed type.

Seeds Starters is a book that we used when we started first growing our own plants from seeds.

Here is a growing calendar for vegetables. It should give you an idea of what planting dates are for different types of veggies. http://www.savvygardener.com/Features/veg_garden_calendar.html

Here is a good article on growing from seeds. http://www.hort.purdue.edu/ext/ho-14.pdf

Another local place for you to check for growing information is the Illinois Extension Office. Illinois has a good one. Check their web site for an office near you. Generally they have classes.

Here is their section on vegetable growing. http://web.extension.illinois.edu/vegguide/

Here is the page to find the nearest office to you. http://web.extension.illinois.edu/state/findoffice.html

Why not try ___Winter Sowing___ there are good web sites that help.....all you need is clear plastic milk containers. Google: Winter Sowing and see if you think you'd like to try it.

x’x, did your forebears start seeds? I can’t remember if my grandmother, maternal, did or not. I do remember that she raised some outstanding gardens; I can see some of it. It would be interesting to know how she came by her sets, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, etc. Probably from saved seeds and neighbors–they didn’t run down to a far, far away nursery, if there even was one, a long, long time ago. We should observe more closely and note what is going on around us, no matter how trivial and quaint it seems in the moment. Things change.

For some crops sets are beneficial, but for others direct sow is the better start to a productive garden. I prefer to direct-seed anything reasonable. Length of growing season is not a factor in my HZ, but the inexorable arrival of mid-summer heat and dryness is. A vigorous spring out of the ground puts any plant ahead of changing seasons and hungry insects, in plant and insect’s race to bear.

For good germination, seed quality–many bad ones are sold each spring, yearly–soil temp, condition, and type are highly important. Don’t plant too early–a controllable factor that dooms many seeds before they can ever see the light of day–no matter your enthusiasm and how warm and pretty it is today. Info on the effect of soil temp on germination can be found; some seed catalogues display it. (FEDCO’s does; I’m not pushing them. If they don’t hurry up with my order, I’ll be bad-mouthing them. But they do publish an interesting catalog, in my opinion.)

A plant with cold feet can’t get up and go inside. While she’s in a semi-dormant state, shaking and shivering in the winds of a recently-arrived cold front–that warm, pretty day long gone to the south–the bad guys dish her a more-than-fair share of abuse. Early mornings, you bend over, remove the jug, and wonder if she’s going to survive, much less produce a bumper crop. You’ve dealt her a losing hand.

With seeds I over-plant, then thin–if needed. I don’t thin until I have an established stand in all areas. If germination is spotty, after a rain while the soil is still cohesive but not muddy, I use hand posthole diggers to move plants from too thick areas to too thin areas, making sure I dig the receiving hole before lifting out, with the diggers, the plant which is to be moved. If diggers aren’t in your shed, a large trowel or shovel will work.

To me, correct soil texture and an undisturbed root system–take a big bite and make the receiving hole the same size as the bite–are two keys to successful transplanting. Using posthole diggers, I have successfully transplanted many supposedly hard to do plants without them missing a beat, except to flex and stretch in their new and roomy neighborhood.

If you use the diggers, assume the safe position, toes well back!

Have fun and give her a fair chance to have fun. Don’t make her suffer the cold.


This message was edited Jan 25, 2014 9:34 AM

I wish the original poster would show back up an answer questions. I think we have given quite a bunch of general help, but until we know what particular plants they intend to grow it's really hard to give more detailed information.

Doug,

Do you use a soil thermometer much? I don’t, but probably should. I’ve heard or read that soil temp will be pretty much halfway between the nighttime low and the daytime high. Do you agree?

I use it a lot in the spring. Actually I don't use a soil thermometer but a kitchen thermometer. They run between $5 and $10 and I can use it for things besides just soil. I don't believe it runs between the daytime high and night time low. At least not over the period of a few days and not during times of relatively quick changes such as in the spring.

Here is why the soil temperature doesn't track with the daily average temperature. Soil temperature depends on how wet it is and what kind it is. Sand will warm up two weeks quicker that clay will. Dark colored soil will warm up faster than light colored soil. Soil with vegetation on it or mulch warms up slower.

Wet soil has is much slower to warm up because water in either solid or liquid form has a great ability to hold heat energy. The term is specific heat. It also ties the surface soil to deeper soil so that a great mass of soil has to be warmed up.

If you have a lot of sun it will obviously heat soil up, but that heat only penetrates so much and it takes a while to heat down a long ways. Think about permafrost.

All told my soil lags the average temperature by a couple of weeks on each end of the year. Good in the fall, ad in the spring.


Where I've used a thermometer a lot is if I'm having germination problems in a make shift growing stand. Two years ago I was having lots of problems with inconsistent pepper germination. What I found out was there was a big difference top to bottom in my cups and from cup to cup. once I solved that, things got better.

Sorry all! Trying to juggle work, plus looking for a new job, and everything else that must be done! AND, I thought I would get some sort of message when there were replies to my post, but nothing ever came...

Thanks for all the advice!

In the past I have grown the following:

String Beans - the climbing type (although some little sucker ate them down to the ground last year)
Tomatoes
Cucumbers
Pickles
Swiss Chard
Kale
Turnips
Kohlrabi
Parsnips
Carrots
Beets
Summer Squash
Zucchini
Radishes
Lettuce
Peas
Spaghetti Squash
Butternut Squash
Jalapeno Peppers
Bell Peppers, and I can't remember if there is any more.

My grandmother always used the old school save the seeds on a paper towel and then plant in a north facing window method for starting seeds. She has a SUPER green thumb and can make anything grow...

The only windows in our house are on the East and West sides, so that makes getting enough sun somewhat difficult. And, we have a heavy clay soil that we have been amending for years with compost, well rotted horse manure, leaves, etc., but it's stubborn.

I think I will take your advice about the soil thermometer - though I wonder if one of those point and shoot things (my husband has one as he's in the HVAC business) would work as well?

AnnFran - winter sowing sounds VERY interesting - I will definitely have to do more research about that one as I really would rather not spend the money on a whole special setup AND try to find the storage space for it.

Dear x....
I recently canvassed a large number of websites devoted to growing veggies in order to consolidate their advice for the ones I grew. The best one I found was from Cornell U:
      http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/homegardening/index.html
(Click on the Vegetable Growing Guides link, and then on the specific vegetable type.) Although it suggests specific varieties for New York state, the advice on soil, sun, planting methods, etc. ought to work in the midwest as well (I lived there before moving to CT).


The SeedStarters book is good too. If you start seeds indoors, please consider using artificial lighting. Although I grow parsley and chives indoors next to a window, a fluorescent light fixture just inches above the seedlings is much better.

If you have a Habitat Restore Store close by they generally have florescent fixtures that contractors or someone else has dropped off. The last couple of stores that I went to had bulbs also. Both of these can be either used or new depending on who it came from.

We use a temp probe in the spring also. We also throw black plastic across the beds (that we plan on planting early spring items in) to warm the bed up earlier.

The point and shoot thermometer I don't think wil work because it's only going to get the surface temperature you need the temperture about an inch down for seeds and 4 or 5 inches down for transplants.

Besides getting a break with weather much of gardening is about getting the timing right. I'm

Things you need to traditionally start indoors.
Tomatoes
Peppers.

Tomatoes are traditionally started 6 to 8 weeks before you want to transplant them. If you are using one of the east or west windows and no adtitional light I'd start them 10 weeks because they are going to grow slow both because of the lack of light and because there is a good chance that they are cooler by the window. Pulling a curtain over them on the window side makes that even so. Peppers are started before that and are fussier than tomatoes about things. They really do better if they have some bottom heat with a soil temperature around 8)°F to 85°F. I wouldn't be afraid to start a few peppers now. The most that can happen it that they grow better than you expect and you have to keep potting them up. you can always start more in 3 weeks to a month.

Things that can be started inside, but I wouldn't given your limited facilities.

Squash of all kinds summer, zucchini, spaghetti and acorn, even though you didn't mention them are all the same species. Butternut is a different species and tens to be less insect prone than the others. Lots of people had squash borer problems last year.
Cucumbers, pickles are just another cucumber.
Kale

The rest get started in the ground. This chart shows both germination percentage and days to germination for a bunch of vegetable. http://tomclothier.hort.net/page11.html Notice that in most cases a little increase in temperature greatly reduces the germination time. Many case I've had seeds plant too early and seed planted later emerge very close to each other in time.

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Actually the tomatoes can be started outside as seeds. Plant the seeds in the location that you plant on growing the plants in and plant the seeds when the maples trees bloom in early spring.

Most of the help we all need, is, how to grow vegetables. I read somewhere that the 2 most important things to grow vegetables is the weather, & the soil. I always suspected that weather had a lot to do with growing vegetables, because my grandparents always watched the weather before planting, & tending their gardens. We had such a dry summer last year, my garden didn't even make any tomatoes. So, I planted the winter garden. It has been raining a lot in the winter. My plants are doing good. Kale, brussel sprouts,carrots,onion. My husband, who doesn'g garden keeps saying,"Your plants are going to freeze". I said "my plants are not going to freeze. They love the cold." And they do. He is amazed. He said"I thought all plants can freeze".