Ready....Set....Seed!

Here in the foothills of Virginia, as we begin to get into the middle of March we begin to see the first signs that Winter is slowly coming to a close and soon Spring will be upon us. If we aren’t careful, we can find ourselves unprepared for the transition. In case you missed our latest workshop on seed starting, we thought we would share with you some techniques for properly, responsibly, and inexpensively starting seeds early and making sure you’re ready to get going when the times is right. Also, how do we ensure we are maximizing soil health and providing the best foundation that we can for our home gardens?

Right now, many of us are beginning to prepare for this year’s garden and as a part of that process, we will at some point acquire seeds for whatever we want to grow. From here we are presented with a couple of different choices. Our first option is; do we cultivate and prepare our garden soil, making it easy to work and beautiful to look at? Then when the time is right, we can plant our seeds easily directly into our new garden. Our second choice is to start our seedlings early, transplanting them later into the garden, risking transplant shock and using numerous plastic seed starting pots. We are often confronted with tough choices just like this. Fortunately, there are responsible and cheap ways to address all of these issues and today we want to tell you what we think the answer may be.

The first piece of the puzzle is to start seeds and transplant or to put seeds directly in the ground. Our answer, start seeds and transplant! Soil is actually a poor medium for starting seeds as it is heavy and dense and seedling roots are very fine and fragile. Germinating in a proper seed starting mixture can greatly increase your success rate and will ultimately lead to healthier young plants and greater yields. We also extend the growing season when we start plants early, either inside or in a hot house, and this can lead to much greater yields if we can eliminate transplant shock (which we will discuss momentarily). To create a good, organic seed starting mix we need to gather 3 items that are all easily found at almost any garden center; perlite , vermiculite, and peat moss. Mixing these items at a ratio of 40% perlite and 30% vermiculite and peat moss we can create an ideal substrate that will give our seeds the best chance of growing up to be big and strong while saving you about 60% off of a pre-mixed seed starter.

Once we have our mixture, we are ready to start germinating so the next thing to consider are pot types. The good news is, by using a homemade newspaper pot, we can avoid transplant shock, save money, and use a safe alternative to plastic starter pots. Newspaper pots are easy and fun to make, usually they are totally free, and they can be planted directly into the ground. This will allow your seedlings to transition into mature soil in their own time, minimizing or eliminating transplant shock. The newspaper will break down into the soil as well so once you plant it, you can forget it. There are a ton of videos and instructions online for these pots but you can click HERE for our favorite.

One last important question to ponder is how and where we plant our new seedlings. Traditionally, we till our garden beds, heavily working the soil and making it the ideal environment for us to work. Unfortunately, what works best for us doesn’t work best for the soil. Permaculture and indigenous knowledge teaches us that exposing and tilling the soil does not lead to long term soil health and agricultural success. This level of disturbance allows water to evaporate from the soil and leaves the soil ecology barren making healthy growth nearly impossible. Any time we are growing things, we should be thinking to ourselves how to best grow the soil first. This should always be our first question as it is the most important factor in the success of everything that we do. Consider using a technique known as sheet mulching this season. This method not only provides us with an instantaneous planting substrate that looks great, but is helps boost the overall health of the soil and the microbes that live there. All you need for this is cardboard or newspaper, compost and mulch.  Again, there are tons of resources and ways to do sheet mulching but click HERE for a great link with a lot of good information. The good news with sheet mulching is that you can’t really go wrong as long as you are using those 3 ingredients above.

As the Spring approaches and your solidifying your garden plans, make sure to remember that the health of your garden and the bounty of your harvest is a direct result of the care you put into the work and the land around you. Ensuring the health of your space will lead to bigger and better results and a more fulfilling experience. You’ll also find that the healthier the land around you is, the less energy you’ll have to put in and the healthier you and your family will be as well.