Growing Food: Planting Seeds

It's getting warmer. The mornings are no longer frigid. The days are getting longer.

And that means it's time to start planting. Whee!

Where we are (Zone 6), the last frost date is technically early in May, although I know the older people here always assumed a frost was possible until the end of May. 

In any case, the last frost date for wherever you are is obviously very important if you're going to grow anything outside. No point in planting something delicate like basil if it's going to sprout and get killed two weeks later by a frost.

But there are several non-delicate things that can be started outdoors pretty early. For us, that was the lettuce, radishes, and carrots we planted this past Saturday.

Because we live in a relatively dry place with quite light soil, we prepare our garden beds differently than many people do. Certainly differently than we did when we lived in New York. It took us a few years to figure out how to grow things here. But we've pretty much got it now, and it comes down to this: Water, and lots of it.

We plant all of our seeds and plants in cells or trenches with built-up sides so these areas can be flooded. If we can't flood the area to the point where there is standing water, the plants just don't get enough water. 

Also, we have to be careful to give shade to plants that are prone to bolting, because our sun is just too strong. Most of the spring vegetables fall in this category, so we planted the lettuce and radishes on the north side of A.'s stone wall so they would be shaded part of the day.

It looked like this.

See the berm of soil on all sides? That will hold in the water.

Obviously, the cells can't be flooded until the plants sprout and grow a bit, so until then, I water them with a rain attachment on our hose. But when they're big enough, I just drop the hose in there and run it until that whole thing is flooded with at least an inch of water. If it doesn't rain (and lately, it just hasn't been raining), I have to do that every other day.

In a couple of weeks. I'll show you what it looks like when I plant out young plants, rather than seeds. Get excited!