On 20 Mar 2004 11:55:08 -0800, (David
Goldsmith) wrote:

I vegetable garden organically in Oly, Wash. and am getting ready to
start this year's crop. I have good soil and good compost to enrich
it with.

Opinions: should I seed directly or start and transplant?

Start tomatoes, peppers, eggplants if you cannot buy the varieties you
want to grow in the nurseries/greenhouses. I used to go up to Elma
every year until 1964 with my folks to visit my dad's sister. Every
time we got there it was cold, cloudy, raining.. usually mid/late
August. They'd say it was beautiful the day before and wonderful the
day after we were there! I don't believe it! It's always damp and
cold there isn't it? ;-)

I don't know that it is, but I figure that warmth loving plants like
tomatoes and peppers, and particularly Eggplants would benefit with
soil warming mulches. They've been claiming that red plastic mulch
increases yields everywhere I read this year. Plant heat loving
plants in the warmest areas, cucumbers, if you are trying melons or
squash, they need really warm soil .. you could start them in advance
but you need to get them in the ground as soon as they get their first
true leaves or you'll just make them slower than direct seeded plants.

Certainly, root crops don't much want transplanting. You can start
cole crops like cabbage or other above ground plants, pretty much
anything you'll figure you will have trouble identifying or keeping
the weeds away from. I've been touting making rings of newspaper from
pinky size to toilet paper roll diameter or so. Cut the strips as wide
as your starting container is tall and fill up with your seed starting
mix, don't worry about what falls between the rings so long as it
doesn't collapse the ring before you can fill them, plant the small
seed like lettuce that you can go pop it out in the soil as soon as
they get a true leave or so. You can use a popscicle stick or corn
dog stick if you have them..or cut the popscicle stick in two if you
need something narrower.. anything you want to use that does the job,
a small bowl ice tea spoon etc. to lift the first few seedlings. So
long as you don't let the seedlings stay in the tubes too long, it
works marvelously. They don't need bottoms so long as you pop them
out before they grow too long...of course putting larger seeds into
the larger tubes. You could make bottoms in the tubes for things like
squash or melons as they are particularly touchy about transplanting
and have larger roots .. just cut the strips wider and fold the bottom
in as you would close coin wrappers.

You can use paper egg cartons, but .. and this is a big BUT.. make
sure you set them in a container that's water tight and keep a bit of
water in the bottom or they will do what peat pots will do when they
dry out, they'll wick moisture away from the soil and the plants
roots. Styrofoam cartons really don't have much capacity for soil,
but I suppose you can start tiny seed in them so long as you shift
them out or into another pot as soon as they come up and look like
they'll stand the picking up of the entire soil chunk with a teaspoon
and pop it into a larger container or outside. Luckily, tomatoes
supposedly benefit from transplanting as you can put the leggy ones
deeper into the soil, and the form more roots.

Does it depend on the plant, i.e., some plants should be seeded
directly, others started and transplanted?

ayup.. plant carrots, parsnips, turnips, rutabaga, radish, and other
root crops directly in the soil. Potatoes, best started from small
whole seed potatoes like the size of a hens egg or a bit smaller, You
can start from cut potatoes, let them sit out a bit to dry and put
them in holes at least 6" deep as you can and fill in just a bit of
the soil over them as they grow, filling a bit more and a bit more,
and when they get up to the surface, hill up the plants by scraping
soil up around the stems of the potatoes as they grow enough to pull
more soil up until after they've bloomed I think. The main key
is...they will not set any potatoes deeper than where you plant the
seed potato. They form potato tubers off the buried stems of the
potato plant, and you want to keep a good amount of soil over them so
they do not turn green. I wouldn't necessarily suggest mulching in
your part of the world with grass clipping, it's too wet, and I would
suggest choosing the lightest soil in your garden that's in an area
where you can restrict the amount of water it gets, as after a certain
time you need to withdraw water for the plants to die back and to keep
the tubers formed from rotting or regrowing. Again, I know.. you
didn't ask, but they're one of those things ..while not necessarily
seeds.. you generally don't start outside the garden, however there
were some seeds for potatoes some years back that one could buy. So
there are no hard and fast rules there.


And any opinions regarding
using egg cartons for the starts?

you saw above by now.

Finally and separately, any advice
on nursing transplanted cedar sprouts?

Transplanted where? into other pots or the ground? I'd think trees
grow there all by themselves.. if they're in the ground, keep the area
around them weeded, and slap some of those cheap wire tomato cages
plopped over them to keep people or pets from tromping on them. If
deer like to eat them, use them upside down with the pointy parts
pointed up to poke 'em ;-)

I know.. I know.. so many words for so little info. It's a weakness!

Janice