Today marks the day, the last forecasted spring frost for Zone 6a in 2020. I'm super pumped yet also very skeptical and maybe even a tad bit nervous. Ok a lot nervous. I'm nervous about the seeds that I just planted but it's supposed to be safe and cool, so..? đ¤ˇââď¸
If you've been following my journey, you know this is my first time personally starting to plant from seed. All other times I have bought the little plants from the store and cared for them as they grew. This time, it's from the ground up, and there's so much more to it than meets the eye.
Here's a bit of a roundup of what I've done so far to try to get the most out of the growing season and gain as much practice as possible:
First seeds started indoors, about 12 weeks before last frost (end of February)
Continued to sew new seeds every other week or so, depending on growth
First seedlings transplanted in bigger pots to fix legginess (end of March)
First seeds outdoors were sewed about 2 weeks before last frost, around second week of April
Additional seeds were planted once more indoors last week of April (in case the crop outside flops big time!)
This is only what I've done so far, there's still plenty more to do!
To be honest, I'm not sure what's actually going to grow. A few weeks back I shared the worries I had about the quality of the soil in my post How To Prep Your Soil and since then I've been thinking about the frosts and if those seeds can somehow, some way manage to emerge from the cool darkness. There's really only one way to find out, which is why I've been diving right in and documenting as I go!
As mentioned, it's supposed to be the last frost date but I'm sure there's one or two more in mother nature's hand. Some of my morning glory starters in cardboard are getting a little out of hand and they immediately go back to each other when I try to separate them. So since we hit a high of 15 and full sun today, I decided to take a chance on them and transplant some out, even with that slight chance of frost still lurking.
I understand with flowers you usually want to steer clear of cold but I wanted to try anyway. There's one side of the house where it gets incredibly hot, so my hope is they will survive there. After a few hours from transplant, 2 of the 3 of them in full sun looked great! The other one was placed in a shadier/cooler location, and it didn't look as great. I'll have to check it out in the morning. đŹ
But wait, that's not all! I planted some more lettuces! đââď¸ This time I took an entirely new approach. I used plastic seed starters rather than cardboard, unlike the flowers in the picture above.
I planted more because, like I said, I'm worried about the ones outside won't come through. So I decided to take matters into my own hands and make a new batch indoors using reusable plastic seed starters. After just one season, not even that - a few weeks of the season, I now understand the purpose between each.
The cardboard starters are great when you know you'll be transplanting them outside fairly quickly, like 2 or 3 weeks from seed. It makes for a very easy transplant by not disturbing any of the roots. If you're like me though and started a bunch in cardboard starters and didn't realize the difference or what would happen, you may have to transplant your seedlings into bigger pots. This will happen if the timing isn't right, because the cardboard begins to decompose before they're ready to be planted in the ground. It won't damage the plants, it's just extra work that can be avoided with practice. You can check out my post about How To Fix Leggy Seedlings where I also explain this a bit further.
The plastic starters are perfect when you know you'll be keeping the seedlings indoors for a while. A couple reasons why you'll want to use plastic vs cardboard once you get the hang of things:
Easier for watering. Apparently directly spraying the seedlings can have a couple negative impacts. You can cause the leaves to burn if droplets of water hit the leaves as they bask in the sun and you can damage the roots and fragile stems. By using plastic seedling starters within another plastic tray, simply add water at the bottom of the tray for the soil to absorb through the little holes at the bottom of each starter cone. Light spraying at the base of the stem/soil prevents that top layer from drying, which is good to do from time to time.
Prevent mold. If we were using cardboard starters, we would run into mold around the outer part of the starters after a week or two. Think about it. Lots of moisture with soil and cardboard...it naturally wants to decompose. The mold won't cause any harm but mold is usually a sign of a lot of moisture, which can cause root rot, then the seedling could die.
With all these lessons learned, I'm pretty confident that at least one of my lettuce batches are bound to make it through! A greenhouse would definitely make life easier right about now, and it would be a sweet goal to grow lettuce year round...ah well!
Until the next time,
Happy gardening đ
- Liv
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