Seed Starting

It will soon be “that” time of year. Seed catalogues and seed orders are arriving in the mail, seed displays are being set up in stores and as the days turn longer, gardeners get the itch to start planting some seeds. If you’re like me (Christina), I spend the winter pouring over glossy seed catalogue pages, placing online orders, and picking up packets of seeds wherever I find them and start getting eager to get growing. A lot of first time or new gardeners make the mistake of starting seeds too early and/or not having enough light and end up with disappointing, leggy seedlings that don’t take well to the transition outdoors. Here, in our climate (zone 5B hardiness zone according to the back of our Vesey’s seed catalogue) the familiarly recommended “6-8 weeks before the last frost” time of year is not until the beginning of April. It’s easy to make the opposite mistake and start seeds too late for slow growing things that take forever to mature.

I’ve been experimenting and reading and researching and improving my seed starting process for 10 years now. There are far too many details, to include them all in a blog post, but here are some details of the process I follow for starting my seedlings here in New Ross, NS.

Timing

Once you plant the first seeds, there are no days off until after they’re planted out in the garden so don’t start them too early! The first seeds I start every year are lavender and lemon grass, then rosemary, leeks and onions. I start those in February. They are really slow growing and need the time. Then in mid March I start peppers and early April I start tomatoes. The final seeds I start each year (May) are melons/luffa, basil and some flowers. Most seed packets indicate how many days it takes to germinate and how many days prior to the last frost you should start inside. I use June 1 to count the weeks backwards to when I will start seeds. Some plant (lettuce, onions, poppies, calendula, cabbage etc) are a lot more cold hardy and can test the limits of the last frost if you plant them outside early. The heat-loving crops (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, luffa, cucumbers etc) will not handle cold temperatures well and only suffer if you plant them outside too early.

The lights/Shelf

My indoor seed starting set-up is pretty simple. In our main floor office, I have a heavy-duty shelf with 8 florescent shop light fixtures (each with 2 bulbs). I use a fan to blow on the seedlings to ensure they grow strong stems and can hold up to the wind when they go outdoors.  

On each shelf, I can fit four “flats” of seedlings. The light fixtures hang from chains and s-hooks so I can lift them up as the plants grow. I have a couple heat mats which speeds up germination, but those aren’t necessary, and I typically only use them for a couple weeks until the seeds have germinated. I adjust the lights so that they’re no more than 15 cm above the top of the plants. There are expensive fluorescent bulbs for plants, but I just use a mixture of the warm and cool ones so I end up with full spectrum light.

The containers

Over the years, I’ve invested in some heavy plastic trays and reuse the various sizes of plastic cells that fit inside of them for as many years as I can. I have a half dozen clear plastic humidity domes that fit on the trays. They’re only needed for a couple weeks until all of the seeds germinate. Each year I disinfect and scrub the plastic containers and use them again. I usually avoid peat pots (other than for some special cases like starting a few squashes, luffa or cucamelons that I like to start inside for just a couple to few weeks) as I find they deteriorate and get mouldy.

The soil

I buy a large bale of Pro-Mix seed starting mix from a local farm supply store. It’s quite a bit cheaper than buying multiple smaller bags. There are lots of people who mix their own, and people avoiding peat altogether, but this works for me and I’ll stick with it. The best tip I have for working with the seed starting soil is to pre-moisten it. Usually, it gets quite dry and if you put your seeds in dry soil and then water, it take a lot of water to get it moist again and sometimes moves the seeds around in the cell. I put the soil in a bucket or tote and saturate it with tap water before filling the containers.      

The seeds

I buy, swap and save seeds. I store them in plastic shoeboxes in a cooler closet in our porch and try to label each packet with the year that I’ve bought them so I can keep track of how old they are. Some seeds have longer shelf life than others, but most seeds are viable for a few years if you store them properly. I prefer to support small scale local seed savers (Incredible Seed Company, Yonder Hill Farm, Annapolis Seed, Cochrane Family Farm to name a few) and have always had great success with those seeds.

Fertilizer

Seed starting soil typically has a small amount of fertilizer in it. The seed starting soil is sufficient if you’re only growing seedlings for a few weeks before planting them outside, but they will start to turn yellow and get stunted if they don’t receive some nutrients. When, what and how to feed your seedlings is a controversial topic amongst gardeners with all kinds of varying advise. I sparingly use a liquid fertilizer.

Potting up

I tend to start my seeds in an open container (no individual cells) and then as they germinate and grow, I “pot them up” into small cells and then larger cells and then individual pots if need be. I try to keep ahead of them becoming root bound in whatever size container they’re in. I do this to save space under my lights indoors and avoid empty cells from seeds that didn’t germinate. 

Hardening Off

The final step before planting the seedlings outdoors in the garden is hardening them off. When it gets close to time to plant out the seedlings, I spend a couple weeks hardening off my plants. That involves moving them outdoors after the sun comes up, in a sheltered location (no direct sun/strong wind right away) for a couple hours at first, and gradually increasing the amount of time and their exposure to sun and wind. I move some of mine to the unheated greenhouse in May. Even after being in the unheated greenhouse, they still need hardening off before going into the garden. If you rush this process and put your seedlings out for too long, when it’s too hot or too windy or too cold, they’ll burn or break or wither.

 

Starting your own seeds can be a lengthy but fun and rewarding process. 

Buying Dry Firewood

Since firewood is one of the main products for sale here on the farm, I wanted to share some information on buying and drying firewood. I get calls all the time for firewood but I don't sell all year around because I can't sell dry firewood in the late fall and winter months. A few recent calls made me think of a few tips and tricks for anyone buying firewood from any local producers. 

• Confirm the measurement matches what you get. A cord of wood is 128 stacked cubic feet and usually, a load is measured in cords. I sell a minimum of 1 cord but most producers have a minimum of 2.  
• Not all producers can do this but ask for a moisture reading if they have a meter. If not, you can pick one up fairly cheap at Canadian tire. Most wood is around 30-40% moisture content when delivered but it should be 10-15% moisture content when burned. 
• Stack and cover your wood when you get it, and ideally in a place where there is good air circulation. If it's outside, in an area with a nice breeze will dry it out perfectly!
• Ask for a receipt and confirm they have a GST/HST number if you want to apply for any provincial heating rebates.
• Confirm the minimum order and what the delivery cost is. An example is my trailer can only hold one cord, so I charge per delivery. This means if you get 1 or 2 cords, I'm a good producer for you but if you want 4 or 5 cords I will recommend someone else since it might be more expensive to order from me. 

Check out the Department of Natural Resources site for more great information on ordering firewood! https://novascotia.ca/natr/woodlot/firewood.asp 

Growing Luffa in NS

 Growing Luffa in NS

After two failed attempts in previous years, I finally grew about one dozen mature luffa in 2021. My previous failed attempts were direct-seeded into the garden and were just starting to blossom and produce fruit when the first frost hit or started inside too early and then struggled to take hold in the garden after transplanting and then never really did much.

On 2021, I started my seeds inside a few weeks before the last frost (roughly 4 weeks which is early May for me) and then planted them into black plastic in the garden well after the last frost day (a week or more into June when it was nice and warm). When I planted them, I mixed in a plastic pail of well-rotted cow manure. The black plastic was to keep down the weeds under the spreading vines and also attracts heat to warm the soil. The growing conditions in 2021 were good compared to the previous 2 years with frequent rains which meant I did not have to water them. The vines seemed to grow and grow and grow (warning: they take a lot of space in the garden) and I couldn’t see anything happening, and then all of a sudden, in early August, there were decent size luffa forming.

Beginning in early September, I started pruning off the ends of the vines and new blossoms so that the plants could focus on maturing the luffa that had already grown to a good size instead of the ones that were just starting to form and would never mature.

When the forecast was calling for frost, I picked them all (with a nice long stem) and put them in the unheated greenhouse. At that stage they were still “green” but they had turned from dark green to a very light green and were obviously drying inside as they were light as a feather. After a couple more weeks, as they were starting to turn brown and it was getting to freezing temperatures at night, I brought them into the house to continue drying on a shelf with a metal rack for airflow. They continued to dry and turn brown, and I could hear the seeds rattle inside if I shook them.  

Once they were totally dry and brown, I peeled off the skin and removed the seeds. I soaked them in a bucket of water with a little dish soap, rinsing them a few times and then dried them. Because I let the vines sprawl on the ground, instead of growing them on a trellis (the recommended method) some of them were “C” shaped instead of long and straight. Some had a few dark spots so I cut them into sections to avoid those bits. I left some round and cut some into flat pieces to better resemble a sponge for doing dishes or a washcloth in the shower.

I’ve saved seeds from the ones that matured first. They had nice, plump, black seeds inside and I will be growing those this year. One improvement I will make this year is to grow them up a trellis so they take less space in the garden and hang to grow straight luffas.