Tag: starting seeds

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Wonderful Seeds

Like most people, I don’t bother looking at those wonderful seeds when I order or plant them. I look at the goal: the produce they will become.

Perhaps we should take a closer look at these amazing things. And it is amazing that something only a sixteenth of an inch in diameter can become a four pound cabbage.

Wonderful seeds like Savoy cabbage
As a gardener, I start with seeds like these for Savoy cabbage as they give me more varieties than commercial transplants.

Wonderful Seeds

When I wrote “The Pumpkin Project”, I did several investigations about seeds. Different varieties of pumpkins can have very different sizes of seeds.

Different vegetables and flowers have very different seeds too. Some, like portulaca (moss rose) have seeds almost too tiny to see. Cabbages and their kin have tiny round seeds. Lettuces are flat.

Each of these seeds has the potential to become a plant many times the size of the seed. Squashed inside that seed is an embryo plant and endosperm or food for that plant.

wonderful seeds become seedlings
My seed starting preference is potting soil in Styrofoam cups, two seeds to a pot. These Savoy cabbage seedlings are just big enough to be separated into one per pot.

Seeds for Food

We eat lots of seeds. Perhaps you think of nuts. However, flour is ground up wheat seeds. Corn meal is ground up corn seeds. Beans and peas are seeds.

Wildlife eat seeds too. Turkeys and deer eat acorns. Squirrels eat those and other nuts. Birds feast on grass and other seeds.

Each of those consumed seeds could have become a plant. In a way we are lucky they don’t all have a chance to grow.

Cabbage transplants
My Savoy cabbage is started in January so I can transplant it to the garden in March, before my frost date. Cabbage takes a lot of cold. The mulch helps keep the soil from freezing and later from getting too warm for the plants.

Prolific Plants

What if a single dandelion invaded a lawn one spring. By the end of that spring, if all of the seeds it produced grew in that lawn, there would be no lawn. That expanse would be a field of dandelions.

Don’t believe me? Get a dandelion seed head and count all the seeds in it. How many of these does a single plant produce in one spring?

Resulting Savoy cabbage head
I grow Savoy cabbage because I love the crinkly leaves. This variety has smaller heads, just right for only two people.

In the Garden

I might have a fairly large garden. It produces, I hope, enough produce for us to eat for the entire year, fresh or stored. If everything goes well, there will be extra to sell to cover my seed costs.

Even so, I rarely use all the seeds in a packet. Each of those wonderful seeds wants to grow and I feel bad about not giving them a chance. Some of them will get lucky when they get shared with other gardeners.

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Growing Savoy Cabbage

Cabbage is not a big favorite for meals at my house. Brussels sprouts, broccoli and spinach are much preferred. So the Savoy cabbage remained a pretty picture in the seed catalog.

Regular cabbage is a fairly smooth ball of ribbed, green leaves. It likes colder weather and will take frost. Hot weather makes it turn bitter. I put in a few plants in the spring, but mostly put them in for a fall crop.

Temptation

The regular cabbage came as transplants appearing the first of April or thereabouts. There were four plants in a pack.

Savoy cabbage was not available as transplants. In fact, most people in my area have never heard of it.

Every year I thumbed past the cabbage seed offers and stopped to admire the crinkled leaves in this picture. This year I ordered a packet just because.

Seed Starting Headaches

Usually I only start seeds for tomatoes and peppers and similar summer crops. These go into pots about the middle of March.

Cabbage likes cold weather. It needs to be in the ground in March. That means starting the seeds in January.

January seedlings, like all seedlings, need light. A warm sunny porch will not be available. I bought a grow light.

Two trays of cabbage and leek seedlings meant one tray under in the morning for the day. The other tray went under in the evening for the night shift.

Savoy cabbage transplant
Perhaps thick mulch isn’t great in the spring as it keeps the ground cool, but it does help when the temperatures drop to twenty. It keep the weeds at bay. Cabbage worms can hide in it. Later on it will keep the ground cool so the Savoy cabbage can survive Ozark sun a little longer.

Garden Headaches

The Savoy cabbage made it into the garden in early March. Of course winter moved right back in. The blankets came out for killing frost nights.

Now the cabbage moths have arrived. I’ve been busy doing other big projects and neglected to get these little transplants under mesh. Now I’m playing catch up once again.

At least, now that spring is officially here, winter visits are shorter and not as bad. The mesh is over the plants. Maybe I will get a few heads of Savoy cabbage from my dozen plants.

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Leftover Seedlings

Much of my garden is planted. The seedlings I raised are settled in. And now I look at the leftover seedlings looking so good, begging for a chance.

Brave Tomato Seedlings

There are the tomato seedlings. I presently have a dozen purchased plants and two dozen growing in designated spaces. That totals three dozen plants for two people, two older people who don’t eat that much.

And there are the leftover seedlings. Over a dozen of them sit in their little cups doing their best to make me feel guilty. Surely there is room for us they seem to say.

Leftover tomato seedlings
All of my tomato seedlings are indeterminent types so much of the long stem can be buried. These will develop adventicious roots to create sturdier plants and provide additional water and nutients. They just need a chance and a spot in a garden.

Determined Peppers

My garden has a double line of bell peppers along with eight more in two containers. Luckily that is all the bell pepper seedlings I had, all forty-four of them.

However I also have my long sweet peppers. These are confined to containers, four to a container. That adds another thirty-two plants.

My leftover seedlings look so good. I’m considering buying a couple more containers to plant a few more.

leftover pepper seedling
These pepper seedlings are getting too big. Their roots are starting to get pot bound. This will stunt the plants. I’m searching for places to put some of them. Maybe someone will want to take them home and plant them.

And All the Rest

How many parsley and Chinese celery plants do I need? How much room is there left in my garden? Then there are the pot marigolds or calendulas.

There are numerous seeds to put in as well. Already the okra, lima beans, several squashes and sunflowers have germinated. Maybe I can tuck a few leftover seedlings between their rows.

Size Matters

As I look around my garden wondering where I can tuck in yet another seedling, I have to remind myself about these small plants. They do not stay small.

That little tomato seedling a foot tall will become a six-foot tall mass of vine. Those little squash seedlings putting out their first leaves will have vines forty feet long plus. Inch tall basil plants will turn into three foot bushes.

Those leftover seedlings plus my planned vegetables will turn my garden into its usual jungle. But that great tasting produce makes it worthwhile.