Hampton Gardener

It’s time. February is traditionally the coldest and snowiest month of the winter, but the seed racks at the garden centers are out, seed ordered by mail has arrived or will arrive shortly, and those of you who are perpetual procrastinators need to shake a leg.

With only about nine weeks till our first frost-free date, it’s time to get some of those seeds started and to come up with a plan. Remember, if you want the greatest garden, with the widest variety of vegetables and flowers, you need to grow them yourself. Or at least some of them. So, a brief refresher on getting the seed started.

Your first job is to count. No, not the seeds, but the days or weeks any given seed will take to germinate and mature to the point where it can be planted outdoors. Start the seed too early and you end up with a leggy mess. Start the seed too late and you get flowers at the wrong time or veggies that just don’t happen.

There’s tons of information on any given seed and what it needs in terms of time from germination to time of planting. You count backward to figure out when to start, while at the same time keeping in mind when is the earliest you can get your plant into the ground. If you get your lettuce out too late it bolts early, get your tomatoes out too early and they languish. Plant your wonderful marigolds outdoors in mid-April and they’ll turn purple from the cold and hate you.

Count! Figure the first frost-free date. In Southampton, it’s around April 24; add a week for East Hampton, and subtract a week for the Riverhead area.

What do you need to start your seed? The basics are light, heat, a container, moisture and a medium (no, not a clairvoyant).

Not every seed needs light to germinate and, in fact, some need darkness. It’s a good idea to know if your seed cares. Light-germinating seed is sown on the soil surface, while seed that needs darkness gets covered with soil. Some couldn’t care less—and the seed packet will tell you.

But what does the seed get planted in? The soil we use is called the medium, and for just about all your needs you can use a commercial seed germination mix. This mix should be peat based, but it can also contain some perlite, vermiculite and even sand. It should never contain “dirt” or garden soil, and it should never have any fertilizer in it.

Now you need a container to hold your medium, onto or into which you will put your seed. Here, there are lots of options, but before you consider these options, think about the size of the seed and how many times it may need transplanting. Some vegetables don’t like to be transplanted, and you’ll often read that vine crops like cucumbers, squash and melons, and lupines in the flower department, “resent” being transplanted.

For these types of plants, seeding is often done into compressed peat pots that are available in a range of sizes. The pot is filled with the medium and seeded. Then, when the plant is ready, it’s planted into the ground, pot and all. The peat pot quickly breaks down in the garden soil, and there’s no transplant shock or root disturbance. Even if you screw up, you can simply replant into a larger peat pot without having to take the plant out of the first pot.

Some gardeners make their own pots out of newspaper, while others will use plastic cells that neatly fit into plastic flats. The cells are available in a range of sizes and, even here, if you choose a size that ends up being too small, in several weeks you can “bump up” your plants to a larger-sized cell. Most of these cells are designed to fit into a standard plastic flat that’s 11 inches wide and 22 inches long. So you can find six-packs, nine-packs, four-packs—and they’ll all fit into a standard flat.

A word about flats, though. While they are a standard size, they come in three variations. One type has no drainage holes on the bottom, another has drainage slits, and the third has a mesh-like bottom. If you use the ones with no drainage holes, they’re great for soaking flats so water gets absorbed from the bottom up, with the wicking action of the medium. But these flats can lead to overwatering and rot. I like to put my cells into a mesh-type flat, and I water the flats by placing them into a solid flat, let the water get soaked up, then remove the mesh flat 10 to 15 minutes later.

The medium that goes into your flat, pot or other container should be pre-moistened to the point of being damp to moist but not wet. Once the seed is planted, you can use a spray bottle to further moisten the soil, but it should never be dripping wet.

The seeds will need warmth to germinate, from 65 to 72 degrees. This can come from a heating mat or from the light from a bright window, with a plastic dome over the flat. Never put a covered flat in sunlight, though, as it will quickly cook the seed. Once germination takes place, the dome is removed and the soil can be allowed to cool to 60 to 65 degrees. At this point, you can give the seedlings more and more light, but if in full sunlight never let the seedlings bake or dry out.

If seeds have been “open” sown in a flat, they will need to be thinned or transplanted into pots or cells. The rule of thumb is that once the first set of “true” leaves is present, transplanting can take place. For this transplanting, you can use a regular potting soil, but not the kind with fertilizer in it. Fertilizer is best given to these young plants at watering time. A fish emulsion or seaweed or kelp fertilizer is a great starter for the first few weeks. When transplanting, move to a pot or cell that will be large enough to hold the root system until planting time, or be prepared for multiple re-pottings.

The last step is called hardening off. A week to 10 days before the appropriate planting time for your plant or vegetable, take it outdoors, where it will get bright light and be sheltered from the wind. Bring the plants in at night, or protect them from wind and frost with a material like Remay. Once hardened off, planting is best done on a cloudy or misty day.

Keep growing!