Every gardening site has a section on Starting Seeds. I'm tempted to point to one of them--here's a good primer--and say good night.It's confounding that in this day and age, in which there is a myriad of magazines discussing the qualities and tastes of comestibles from wines to commercial flours, we home-garden vegetable growers have no central source of plausibly reliable taste reports from which to compare the various varieties of each of the many vegetables we grow annually. A very few--tomatoes most notably--excite enough interest that there are extensive discussions available about varieties, but what's the best-tasting celeriac? Or, for that matter, broccoli?We have scoured the internet, including both the web and usenet, looking for information; we have also, of course, pored over numerous seedsmen's catalogues, for what that's worth. (It is amazing how there can be sixteen varieties of a vegetable, each and every one of which is absolutely, positively the best variety there is.) Because of such bias, we have, in our evaluations of the literature, given far and away the most weight to various scientific studies, conducted mainly by universities and State agencies, because they have nothing to sell and no axes to grind.
Vegetables grown in areas with short growing seasons or ones that take too long to mature need to be started indoors in order to get a good head start before moving outside, said a University of Illinois Extension horticulture educator.
"Planting time for vegetable seeds started indoors depends on when the seedling needs to be transplanted in the garden," said Maurice Ogutu. "This time may vary from four to 14 weeks."
For example, if the indoor start is done in relation to the last frost, the times are as follow:
10 weeks--broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and head lettuce;
Seven weeks--tomato, eggplant, and pepper; and
Four weeks--cucumber, muskmelon, squash, and watermelon.
"Starting vegetable seeds indoors ensures that high percent germination is achieved through provision of optimal conditions for seed germination," he said. "Some vegetable seeds are very expensive particularly hybrid varieties, so starting them indoors ensures that seed loss due to rodents or poor weather is minimal.
"Vegetables established from transplants tend to mature much earlier than direct-seeded ones."
"Get materials such as pots, trays, plastic flats, peat pots, and potting mix for starting the seeds ready or buy seed starter kits from local garden centers or catalogues," he said. "Containers or trays for starting seeds need to have drainage holes on the bottom.The only thing I'd add to that is to suggest that you use coir instead of peat moss. Sold at pet shops as bedding for hamsters and gerbils, or online at Rolanka, it's roughly the same price as peat, but there's a virtually unlimited supply of it."When starting vegetable seeds in a tray or pot, cover the holes on the trays with peat moss before filling with potting mix or soil. A good potting mix or soil for starting vegetable seeds needs to be light, loose, disease-free, insect-free, weed-seed-free, have good water-holding capacity, and well-drained."
Fill trays, flats, and pots with potting mix or starting media and level gently. Place the filled-up tray, flat, or pot on a pan of water overnight so that water can soak into the potting mix from the bottom. If trays are used, make shallow rows about one to two inches apart when starting different kinds or varieties of vegetables and label each row after seeding. Broadcast when starting one type of vegetable in a seed tray.
"Plant the seeds uniformly by pressing them gently into the starting media according to the planting depth recommended on the seed packet," he said. "Cover the container with plastic film or a piece of window glass to retain the moisture until the seeds germinate.
For the past 2 years I've started roughly 100 seedlings under cheap fluorescent shop lights in my utility closet. The boiler and hot water heater keep the temperature between 70 and 75, and I use a timer to keep the lights on for 15 hours a day.
Re-localization is not utopianism. It is an initiative — being tried on many fronts and in many ways — to re-design the built environment whenever and wherever possible into something that is more sustainable and more accountable than what we have now (which, btw, is failing very badly and threatening us with a dramatic centralization of authority when the level of suburban anxiety reaches a certain tipping point). This initiative consists of model projects and experiments, or local networks dealing with political issues (there is a policy struggle in Durham right now about whether people may raise laying hens inside the city limits), to regional and inter-regional communications networks who share information and occasionally share work.After reading far too many wonderful proposals about "What Should Be Done"--made by people who don't have the power, or intent, to act on them--my hope for this year is that we'll be hearing more from people who are Doing Things for themselves.
