Theory and Practice: pt 2

growing times and seedling starting

Despite what some see as being too rigid (and for the advanced and intuitive gardener this is likely true.) Jeavons offers a wonderful schedule of seed starting and transplanting wherein you simply plug in your frost dates in the appropriate blanks and count backwards or forwards x number of weeks for each crop and task. Orderly and foolproof, exactly what I need, given my proclivities for disorderly foolishness.

The fun begins 6 weeks before the last frost date (which I fudged slightly to better align with the phase of the moon, hey, couldn’t hurt) Job 1 happens March 19th. Not surprisingly it is starting seed of some of the cold weather crops in zone 3 (broccoli, beets, lettuce, etc.) So lets focus on zone 3 for a moment. Given the schedule outlined in terms of weeks, and when it is recommended to plant the next crop in succession, The first crop in zone 3 gets roughly 55 days in the ground. Seems a bit short but I managed to gather together everything I needed thanks to the wonder of heirloom seeds. I realize that the 55 days to maturity means from date of germination, so technically I could get longer maturing varieties, since I will be starting the seed long before it actually goes in the ground, but because of the aforementioned less than six month growing season, I am trying to “rush” the first succession in this zone to give plenty of time for the other two. Particularly the final succession of cold season produce to plant longer maturing varieties I chose for their reputation to do well into winter months or their reputation for “keeping.” More on that later. Based on my experience with this first year I may try longer maturing varieties in subsequent years.

Here’s what goes into flats on the 19th (I am omitting quantities, if you want those, buy the book, its worth it.)

Broccoli: Green Goliath (purchased from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange)
Cabbage toraziroh 45 day, blues Chinese (hyb) 52 days Both purchased from Fedco, toraziroh is a bok choy type and given its quick growth, I can stagger the plantings to stretch the harvest and still get them mature and out of the ground in time for the second succession. I tried to keep to non-hybrid seed, but the blues Chinese seemed like such a good fit, and it was hard to find a fast maturing head cabbage.
Beets dolce di Chioggia 52 days (SESE)
Lettuce tom thumb 46 days fedco, arugula 40 days (SESE) green leaf salad bowl 50 days (victory seed co)
Amaranth (love lies bleeding (fedco) this is technically not part of the 100 sq feed going into the bed, but since it contributes to the overall diversity of the local ecosystem I felt I should include it.

Next week’s job is easy ( I hope) prick out the lettuce seedlings into new flats. Not sure how necessary this is, but I’ll follow the directions anyway.