gardening
Seeds or starter plants?
Story by Pat Rubin
Different ways to get your garden started
This is the time of year when winter isn’t quite finished and spring hasn’t fully arrived. Gardeners hope the last frost is history. We’re all itching to get out and plant vegetables. Best advice, though, is to wait until the weather is dependably mild before visiting the local nursery to stock up on plants. Still, it can’t hurt to look. When you wander through the aisles of vegetable plants, don’t forget to browse the seed racks. Although I buy starter plants for many of the vegetables that have to be started early, there are several others I begin from seed. Many vegetables are easy to start from seed, and the selection is often better than that for starter plants. Those crops include radishes, cucumbers, squash, pumpkins, gourds, beans and sunflowers. Most seeds for salad greens can simply be sprinkled onto roughed-up soil and watered. If you want to try a few flowers among the vegetables, try zinnias or cosmos from seed. These seeds sprout in just a few days, as long as the weather is mild. To plant seeds, pull away the soil to a depth of no more than an inch, add seeds, cover and water gently. A general rule is not to plant seeds any deeper than they are wide. Make sure the ground stays moist, not waterlogged, until seeds sprout, and then tend the plants as you would any in the vegetable garden. Vigilance is key: More young seedlings die from neglect and lack of water than from insect damage. Other vegetables take a bit more skill and time to bring to transplant size, and I leave those to the experts who have far more space and equipment than I do. Vegetables to buy as starter plants include tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cauliflower and broccoli. These aren’t difficult to start; they just take a little more time. Tomatoes, for example, can be started inside in February with warmingmats beneath the pots and lights above (to keep seedlings from getting leggy reaching for the light).
Tomato seedling
Pat Rubin cbmagazine@californiabountiful.com
44
March/April 2021
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