Growing Vegetables

The most important aspect of growing seedlings indoors is timing. You don’t want to start plants to early or they will be too long and stringy to flourish once in the ground. Your outdoor planting date needs to be the average day of the last frost in your area. Set your indoor planting time six to eight weeks before the outdoor planting date. Starting seeds indoors will give them the best possible environment  for their early growth period.

Planting Medium

The foundation to any plant is the soil it grows in. This is very important when it comes to seedlings. Young seedlings are vulnerable to “damping off” which is the underground or crown rot of seedlings. Seedlings may be infected when moisture penetrates the seed coating or when the radical extends. It results in an uneven poor strand of seedlings. Seedlings may break through the surface then wither and die or fall over from post-emergence damping off.  The above ground symptoms are stunting, low vigor and wilting. The roots of the plant will have some shade of black or brown.

To prevent disease you need to use a sterilized well drained planting medium  that is on the low end of the pH scale, and by purchasing disease free plants and seeds. The seeds must not be covered by more than four times the thickness of the seed. Use containers with drainage holes and only water through the bottom only.  Only use sterilized water in the germination room.  Do not leave the pots standing in water this will cut off oxygen.  Don’t work with the plants while the soil is wet.

When covering the seeds use a material that is unlikely to harbor fungi other than your planting media. You can use milled sphagnum moss, chick grit, course sand or fine aquarium gravel.

Make sure that you label each set of seedlings, many young sprouts are very hard to tell apart later.

Caring for Seedlings

Young seedlings have pretty definite requirements. They need temperatures on the cool side. Most vegetables will do well with a nighttime low of 55° F and a daytime high of 70° F. Temperatures that are to cool will cause disease while warmer temperatures will cause plants to be spindly. The seedlings need at least six hours of bright light a day. If you can’t get natural sunlight for your seedlings you can use grow lights at about seven to eight inches away.