Seed and Bean

Over these last couple of weeks I’ve been reminded that surviving an Edmonton winter is nothing compared to surviving an Edmonton spring!  A week of warm weather that prompts the pulling off of sweaters and putting on of shorts is abruptly terminated by a week of temperatures barely hovering above the necessity of a parka, and I, along with my tomato, tomatillo, pepper, basil, cucumber, and zucchini plants, are all struggling to adapt.

Zucchini blossoms

Tomatillo blossom

Tomato blossoms

Lemon basil cold damage

I admit, the plants are having a tougher time hardening-off than I am.  Because we have yet to create sweaters for basil plants, some have leaves that are slightly blackened in spots (a sign that temperatures have been too cold for them).  Two out of the four lemon cucumbers I started informed me, in no uncertain terms, that they were unhappy by quickly wilting and then, just as quickly, by dying (wimps!).  The peppers won’t let me know for a while whether they’ve been affected – if they have, they’ll delay blossoming until they feel they’ve met their heat quotient and, if I’m lucky, push out a few fruits before the temperatures drop again.  My heart goes out to the tomatoes and the tomatillos though – they’ve been so eagerly growing, pushing out flowers, clearly anticipating their new life out in the garden (in the newly renovated beds we recently constructed).  But they’re weathering the disappointment the best of all of them except maybe the zucchini; they’ve started to open up some exuberant, relentlessly cheerful blossoms, optimistically hoping for, I guess, a winged pollinator to stop by – but it’s too cold for even a house fly. 

So the hardening-off process will have to start all over again – when the nightime temperatures don’t fall below 10 deg. C.  Usually I start hardening-off my plants by putting them outside in a shaded spot for about four hours when the day time temperature is about 15 deg. C.  I gradually extend the time the plants spend outside and, by the second week, when I start leaving them outside overnight, I move them into a sunnier spot during the day.

If only I could toughen myself up in a similar way…please let spring arrive soon!

I’m going to be writing a short series on the importance of, and how to build, healthy soil.  Most newbie gardeners don’t see it as a sexy part of gardening – it’s not colorful or pretty but dirty and, sometimes, icky.  Because I can geek out over the lovely, rich, dark stuff and become as passionate about it as if it were chocolate, I’m hoping I can change a few minds.

One of the best, if not THE best, pieces of gardening advice I ever received was that before I spent a dollar on a plant, I should spend a dollar on the soil that plant goes into.  Now, that came from Austin’s organic gardening guru, John Dromgoole, a man with a highly successful garden centre that sold a plethora of organic soil amendments but it still makes good sense.  Soil – my first soil science prof in college always became outraged when any of us newbie landscapers called it ‘dirt’ – is, for most plants, its nutrient system, its physical support system, its home; how healthy that soil is determines how healthy that plant is, how well it can fight off diseases, how drought-tolerant it will be, how quickly it can recover from insect damage, and how delicious its produce will taste.

That point was illustrated for me when I started my lemon basil, peppers, and tomatoes this year.  I made a quick run to the big box store for my seed starting mix – my local garden centres not being open for business yet – and was only able to get potting mix.  (For the record, there is a difference between seed starting mix and potting soil.  Generally, the seed starting mix is fluffier with less, or no, large chunks of wood, and has added fertilizer for seedling growth.)  The label on the potting soil bag said it was an “organic mix” of peat moss, compost and perlite, not an ominous sounding combination, although coir is becoming the new hot substitute for peat moss because it’s a far more renewable product but still, I didn’t think I’d have many problems.

But all compost is not created equal and the percentage of perlite in the mix, used for loftiness, was negligible, resulting in a wood-splinter-heavy and dense medium that I wasn’t sure my little seeds would have the strength to break through.  More than half of the lemon basil and half of the peppers never did but that could be because the seed is getting old.  There’s no excuse for the tomatoes though, since I used fresh seed, and they were extremely slow getting on.

So, disappointed and worried with the results so far, having spent all my dollars on seed and not wanting to jeopardize that investment, I dashed off to the (Edmonton) local gardening guru’s garden centre (now open), and queried them about seed starting mix.  Never use it, they said, have you tried these pellet thingamajigs?  I explained that I like to make my own newspaper pots for starting my seeds in and asked them what they use in the greenhouse to start seeds.  I was shown a lovely fluffy mixture that they market as potting soil, a blend of sphagnum moss, perlite, dolomitic lime, trace micronutrients, soil-wetting agents, and slow-release fertilizer (enough for 3 months). 

I promptly bought 40 litres, planted more basil, peppers, and tomatoes, and nervously watched the results.

No discernible difference between the tomatoes started on March 17 and those started on March 25.

The seedlings had no problems pushing through the medium, resulting in a much faster emergence, probably by about a week!  They’re green and healthy looking, although I have been feeding them a half-strength naturally sourced liquid fertilizer, because I’m not sure what type of or in what proportion, the nutrients are present in the potting mix. 

This uncertainty about what’s in a bag of potting mix has me frustrated!  And if I, a professional gardener, am frustrated, I can’t imagine how a less experienced gardener feels, so here’s some advice based on what I’ve learned to date…

• Don’t purchase potting mix or any kind of soil or compost mix from a big box store unless you’ve used it in the past and been happy with the results.  I purchased my potting mix from a big boxer because I thought it was my only option but, had I waited until my local garden centre opened, I wouldn’t have wasted my money – live and learn.
• Read labels.  Personally, I think soil, compost, potting mix, etc. should all have a list of ingredients – and even the source of those ingredients but, since we can’t even get source labelling on our food, I know I’m dreaming to think we can get it on something we don’t immediately put in our mouths.  The label should, at least, tell you what you can expect to see in the bag but even that’s not a guarantee.  For example, it has consistently been my experience that the cheaper the compost, the more wood chunks are in it – you don’t want a lot of wood in your compost since it throws off the carbon/nitrogen balance.  If there’s no label, as is the case for bulk soil and amendments, or you think the label doesn’t provide enough information…
• Ask questions.  Ask if they can open a bag and show you what you’d be buying.  Tell the staff what you’re using the mix for and ask if it’s appropriate.  And if they can’t tell you what is in the stuff you’ll be growing your food in, walk away.

What we grow our plants in is important.  A good potting mix allows seeds to germinate easily, doesn’t dry out too quickly, or compress when watered and remain soggy.  Potting mix isn’t, technically, soil, since it is composed of soilless ingredients.  But it’s the first growing medium that many of our cultivated plants first encounter -  get it right and you’ll have less problems down the road.

When I first started growing my own transplants, I did it without supplemental lighting.  That first spring, I moved flats of seedlings around our apartment to catch the intense rays of sunlight that beat through our high, wide southwest-facing windows.  Even without knowing that the windows were tinted with something that blocked supposedly detrimental rays, you know that this is a ridiculous way to grow plants!  Despite my time-consuming efforts to keep the seedlings in a ray of sunshine, the intensity and length of light always kept the little things reaching for more and, while they were, eventually, transplanted into the container garden on the balconey, they never did come to much because of their initial rough start in life.

The next spring wasn’t much better.  Although I did use supplemental lighting, it was one of those little incandescent-like bulbs marketed as a grow light.  I screwed it into a decorative lamp with a shade, clustered my flats around it, and was once again rewarded with spindly, anemic seedlings reaching for light that was too far above their heads.

By the third spring, I’d learned my lesson.  Unwilling to shell out +$500 for a seed starting shelving unit with ‘growlights’, I did my research and found out that most people had success with a simple and fairly inexpensive shoplight fitted with one warm flourescent bulb and one cool flourescent bulb.  So, choosing the brightest, warmest room in the house (we’d purchased a home by that point), which was my office, I had my husband construct some durable floating shelves to which he secured two shoplights.  Each shoplight got a cool bulb and a warm bulb, and each shoplight was plugged into a timer set to stay on for 17 hours a day.  Once the seeds germinated, the plastic used to keep the soil from drying out was whisked off, and the trays were nestled under the lights. 

Finally, success!

No more spindly, anemic seedlings reaching for the light.  The warm and cool bulbs mimicked closely enough the color range of real sunlight to result in bright green leaves.  Keeping the bulbs only a couple of inches above the plants meant they could bask in light, not stretch to seek it out.  By the time the transplants were ready to go into the garden, they were bushy, stocky, robust specimens that grew and produced abundantly, and I’ve never done it any differently since then.

The seed-starting shelves with only one shoplight.

This year, though, after selling all my seed starting equipment before we moved back to Canada, I needed to re-stock.  As you can read here, I decided on a free-standing shelving unit because we rent and I wanted to limit the amount of holes we’d have to patch when we move.  But I chose the shelving for a couple of other reasons: the shelves are adjustable so I can set them fairly high and have plenty of space to adjust the shoplight heights in order to keep them only a couple of inches from the seedlings at all times; and the shelves are metal mesh, allowing me to slip an S-hook through and attach the lights using a chain, adjusting the height of the lights by slipping the chain link up or down on the S-hook.  (It is important to me to be able to easily remove the shoplights from the shelving because, during the off-season, the shelving will be used for other things besides growing plant starts.)

I have attached two 4 foot long shoplights to the shelf – hopefully, that will be enough to cover all the plants – and have outfitted each light with a warm bulb and a cool bulb.  However, due to the fact that I only bought one light fixture the first time and when I went back to buy a second fixture, they were sold out and I had to go to another place to buy the second fixture, my shoplights hold different sized bulbs – T12 in one, a supposedly cheaper but less efficient bulb than the T8 I have in the other light fixture.  (For an excellent explanation of bulb choice, I suggest going to The Far North blog and reading her post about lighting.)

2 shoplights hang side by side to provide good light coverage.

S-hooks support the shoplights.

The shoplights are plugged into a single timer that stays on for a little over 16 hours.  Supplemental lights need to stay on longer than the sun would shine because they don’t emit the same quality of light as sunshine – think of it as the same thing as eating a complete diet of vitamin tablets versus eating whole foods.

So that’s the lighting set-up – about $40 in materials, a nominal sum for electricity, and no more light-deprived seedlings.