When to Start Seeds
Some plants are routinely started by planting them directly in the garden – corn, wheat, beans, potatoes, peas, and radishes for example. Others are typically started early, before spring really commences, in small pots or flats under grow lights or in greenhouses. When the little potted plants are 6 to 8 weeks old, and when the outdoor weather has warmed up enough, the “starts” are then “hardened off” by exposing to outdoor weather gradually over several days, then planted in the garden. This gives them a bit of a jump on the season. Your harvest may come in a few weeks earlier than similar seeds planted directly in the garden. This could be important if seasons are wildly out of whack.
At this awakening phase, there are multiple resources to make this a simpler process than it would be otherwise: seed starting potting mix, mini greenhouses, grow lights, and warming mats. If you want to start seeds early, by all means use this technology, but recognize that you probably won’t have any of it after Zen-slap occurs. You’ll have to make your own potting mix from what you have in your garden, and those small grow-pots won’t be available. Your ability to use full spectrum grow-lights may be limited by power failures. You can find a way to adapt to each of these issues, so be working toward that goal as quickly as possible.
If you have never gardened, simply acquire the “starts” at your nearby garden supply store. They will likely be hybrid (crosses from different family lines), and the seeds from hybrids may be sterile or not “breed true”. This source may not be available at a reasonable cost in the future, so do not rely on it. Try to grow your own starts, too, so that you understand what is required to get plants from seed.
All seeds can be planted directly in the garden, including the ones we usually think of as early start plants. Generally, when I direct sow anything, I will put in more seeds than I need. This allows for poor germination rates, damage to tiny plants from weather or animals, and some extras just in case. Should your seeds germinate and come up thickly, when little plants have 4 leaves or so, you can dig, separate, and transplant them where you want them.
Keep in mind that when the Cold Times arrive with the full Zen-slap, we may not be able to plant outdoors and bring much of anything to harvest. This is where greenhouses come in. More on that shortly.
Volunteers
A volunteer is any plant that appears in your garden the following year from when you originally planted that thing. Typically, a volunteer is the result of a dropped or missed fruit that got turned under the soil, successfully overwintered, and then started growing again in the spring when conditions were right.
Most of my tomatoes are now volunteers. I will purposefully leave behind fruits, sometimes mashing them into the soil. Even with repeated working of the garden soil, turning it over with a tractor or tiller, adding in compost and lime, and walking over it. There will STILL be plenty of “free” volunteers in the spring. The same is true of my favorite super-hardy bean, Missouri Wonder Pole. This bean gives me enough volunteers that I haven’t had to replant with fresh seeds in several years.
There are three outstanding qualities of volunteer plants that should make you alert to their value in your own garden:
They are free. When you check seed catalog prices, that one quality alone makes them worthwhile.
They are hardy. The fact that they survived through the winter without any help at all proves that.
They are adapting to your conditions. Better yet, over several years of repeated volunteering, you have developed a variety of plant that is specifically adapted to your region, your garden, and your way of growing things.
The primary drawback of volunteers is that, over years, your plants will have a limited gene base. They effectively have been breeding among themselves and their immediate relatives. The long term result of that is what is called genetic depression, the loss of genetic variability. Genetic variability is the valuable quality of having lots of heritable capacity to adapt to changing growing conditions. That’s something we want in our plants. Genetic depression, on the other hand, represents a decrease in adaptability because the plants are drawing from a progressively more limited gene pool. It’s a type of in-breeding, where relatives mate with relatives until the offspring are too deformed and sickly to reproduce.
To counteract this drawback among your volunteers, you merely need to introduce fresh plants to your garden – seeds from, say, a couple different varieties of tomato. They will grow and cross with your tomato volunteers, add genetic variability, and give you your own home grown hybrid vigor in the next generation, as well.
Saving Seeds
Part of the reason for acquiring open pollinated starter seeds is so that you can save your own seeds year after year, and have a pretty good idea what you will produce. Most common garden plants produce seeds within the edible fruits. Squash, tomatoes, beans, peas, melons and cucumbers, for example, produce obvious and easily obtained seeds. These “annual” seed producers, which take one growing season to complete their lifecycle, will produce seed during the year in which you plant them.
Other common garden plants produce seeds the year after you first plant them, taking two years to complete their life cycle. These include cabbage, turnips, beets, and onions. Typically, you can either leave the original plant in your garden (which might be iffy should we have intense cold), or “lift” the plant in the fall, store in cool conditions, and then replant it in the spring. These will first grow leaves, then will send up one or more seed stalks on which it will flower and produce seeds.
Seed Saving Basics
Save seed from the healthiest plants with the most fruit.
Let the fruit from which you hope to save seed ripen as much as possible on the vine or plant.
If you are hoping to retain early ripening and early harvests from your plants, save seed from the first fruits that appear. Note: cucumbers will stop flowering as soon as one fruit on the plant starts getting yellow-ripe, so growing for seed may reduce your cuke harvest.
If you want long-season characteristics in your plants, save seed from the last fruits that ripen fully.
Remove seed from the fruit, rinse in a sieve to remove excess plant tissue OR leave seed in the plant tissue, add a little water, and let sit until it has gotten gummy and smelly, then rinse. Some seed savers believe that short period of “aging” helps trigger better germination rates later in tomatoes, cucumbers, and melons.
Dry seeds on a plate, moving them around a little daily so they don’t stick.
When dry, place in an envelope then put inside a mason jar. Label with plant type and variety, day collected, and any characteristics you’ll need to know next year (i.e., “ripens in 60 days”) because you won’t remember everything otherwise.
Store your seeds in a cool place that is relatively dry. Open the jars once or twice during the winter and blow a little air into the jar before recapping – that adds a little carbon dioxide to the jar, which the seeds need to breathe. It’s not necessary to freeze the seeds, but some people do.
Save seeds from all over your garden area and from at least a dozen plants. 100 different plants for corn, for each type to maintain genetic diversity.
Save enough seeds for at least two planting seasons, and keep ahead of your needs by saving some extras every year. Rotate so you are using the older seeds first.
Never plant all your seeds. In a bad year, you might lose everything – you may be able to replant, and you’ll still need seeds for the next year.
Test the average germination of your seeds in the following spring. Take 10 seeds, place on a plate with a wet cloth over it. Keep the cloth moist. Within several days, some of the seeds will start to sprout. If 9 out of the 10 seeds sprout, you’ve got 90% germination. If 8 out of 10 sprout, it’s 80% germination and so forth. That gives you can idea of how many seeds you’ll need to plant in order to get a harvest. For example, if only half sprout, a 50% germination, you’ll have to plant twice as much to get a “normal” crop. P
ut your started seeds in a little potting soil and get a jump on the garden, or plant in your greenhouse.
Share and trade seeds with your neighbors.
Tubers and Taters
Some tuberous plants, such as potatoes (Irish Potato) and sweet potatoes (yams), are propagated not by seed, but simply by replanting the tuber itself in the spring. Potatoes grow sprouts from “eyes”, the small indentions on the skin surface.
Healthy potatoes, even those in cool storage, will start to grow little stems from the eyes late in the winter – you can cut these out with a large grape-sized chunk of potato around it, let it air dry for a couple days, and then plant that. The rest of the potato is still edible, even when it is somewhat shriveled but not mushy.
For eating, cut off any parts that are green – the green shows the presence of “solanine”, and that is potentially harmful to eat. Don’t eat potato leaves for the same reason; they can be toxic.
There are short (65-75 days), medium (95-110 days), and long season (120-135 days) potatoes. Familiar examples are Yukon Gold for short; Pontiac Red for medium, and Burbank Russet for long. Potatoes do well in cooler weather, and the tops will come back after being frosted. Tubers form when the soil is between 60o-70oF, and the plants stop growing above 80oF. Potatoes don’t like continuously soggy soil and high humidity, either.
By the way, potatoes will sometimes “go to seed” in the garden, especially when grown near different varieties, first forming small flowers and then little seed fruit. These seed can be saved over winter and grown like tomatoes. They are a member of the same broad family as tomatoes, Solanaceae, which includes tobacco, eggplant, peppers, petunia, jimson weed, belladona, and mandrake. The potato seeds will produce plants later in the season – but they will likely be crosses from the varieties you originally planted, and different than you expect. But still edible.
Potatoes can be harvested before full size as “new potatoes”, which are just small potatoes, sometimes a mere 6 weeks after planting. Pull back a little soil from around the base of a plant and check for the ping-pong ball size tubers. You can take one or two from each plant, then pat the soil back into place. Potatoes are full size and ready for harvest when the green leaves start turning yellow and the stems bend over, or after they have flowered. Many varieties will “hold” in the ground, often until the following spring if the ground does not freeze, developing a thicker skin as time goes by. If the ground freezes, you’ll likely lose them.
Irish potatoes won’t set good tubers if the soil is very fertile. Too much nitrogen will give lush green tops and no tubers. They do need phosphorus and potassium, so be sure you get wood ash from your fireplace, especially hardwood ash, worked into the garden. It’s a good source of both nutrients.
Sweet potatoes will grow from small sprouts that appear over the surface of a tuber, too, and can be planted whole or cut and air dried like regular potatoes. I’ve never seen sweet potatoes go to seed; the tubers don’t get the toxic green either. They can take 90-120 days to reach good size, and will die if frosted. I’ve grown plants in a 3 gallon pot in a sunroom. They’ll also grow from cuttings, placed in water until they form roots. A summer greenhouse is probably a good option if the weather is very unpredictable or especially cold. Sweet potatoes prefer warm growing conditions and a long season. These may be harder to keep growing in unstable and continuously chilly weather. They grow well in any moderately fertile soil.
Put your potato and sweet potato starts in a plastic bag with a small apple – the ethylene gas released by the apple will trigger the potatoes to start sprouting.
Sprouts and Sprouting
One of the easiest and quickest ways to get mid-winter greenery is to grow seed sprouts. These seeds are still readily available and will keep for a couple years in a jar. Typical sprouts are mung beans, alfalfa, radish, broccoli, and assorted other small seeds.
Almost any small seeds can be sprouted and eaten when it is still mostly root with a pair of leaves, but not those which have toxic leaves like tomatoes and potatoes. Two or three tablespoons of sprouting seeds will produce about 2 to 3 cups of sprouts within a week. These are absolute nutrition powerhouses, too, with excellent vitamin and mineral profiles.
Rinse the sprouting seeds and then soak in fresh water for about 6 hours. Then rinse again and set in a container in a dark cupboard. The container can be a fancy sprouter set, or a ½ gallon mason jar with a screen or light towel secured over the mouth of the jar to keep out gnats. Lay the jar on its side. Rinse with clean warm water two or three times daily, pouring all the water out – enough will be retained to keep the seeds growing. When the sprouts show a couple leaves, place the jar in indirect, not full, sun to help them green up a little. Ready to eat fresh or use in stir fry or salads. If you really like sprouts, start a new batch every 3 days or so. You’ll have plenty.
The seeds you buy now for sprouts obviously can grow. Plant some of the varieties you like and see what you get. Mung beans grow like any other type of bush bean, about 18 inches tall. Plant seed 1-2” apart in rows, treat as any other bean, and in 90-120 days pods with 10 or more seeds each will be dry and ready for harvest. They don’t all ripen at the same time, so you may need to pull the whole plant and hang to let everything dry well.
Store the shelled seeds in a glass jar with a little diatomaceous earth to prevent insect proliferation. Rinse the DE off when you are ready to sprout. One planted seed can give you a hundred, so these are very prolific and valuable plants – BUT they don’t tolerate cold or high heat or extreme wetness well, and require a long growing season. They might do better under greenhouse conditions.
Greens
Greens constitute a broad class of vegetables with leafy bases, and edible stems. Lettuce, spinach, collards, and kale are familiar examples which also grow best in cooler conditions. Greens add valuable nutrients, but are low in calories – a reason that fried greens were traditionally served with pork or other oils…to increase the fat and calories.
Most greens are relatively fast producers. For example, lettuce seeds can be planted thickly and the excess pulled to add to meals within a week or two. Chinese vegetables, such as bok choi grow fast and have multiple uses as both a cooked green, and eaten fresh.
Greens are among the most easy to grow, as well. Many do exceptionally well in greenhouses under cool conditions.
Better Harvests With Fertilizer and Compost
Good soil can be improved by the judicious use of added soil nutrients. Right now, you can have your soil tested, either by hiring someone to do it for you (check your town’s University Extension office for recommendations) or buy a test kit online or at a plant nursery in your area. The test kit will show you in a general way what nutrients and minerals your garden area might be short. Do keep in mind, though, that after we are Zen’d, you probably will have to fertilize by the garden equivalent of Braille – watch your plants and let them “tell” you what they need.
Commercially, there are four primary amendments to soil: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (the NPK components) and agricultural lime (calcium). NPK can be sourced in commercial chemical fertilizers, or from natural components. Nitrogen, for example, is present in manures and “blood meal,” a by-product of the livestock industry, and from tilling under live or cut clover or bean plants. Virtually all agricultural leftovers including spoiled hay, leaves, seaweed, fish heads, ground bones, can be incorporated into your soil by first composting and aging, and then spreading on your garden. Good compost has all the nutrients garden plants need.
Making compost is rather like making bread or yogurt. It’s a process that takes a little effort and relies on microbial action to bring it to fruition. You will need dry straw or shredded newspaper or dried leaves; grass clippings, manure, or fresh green garden waste; and some good garden soil. Don’t use meat or fats in your compost pile. Pick an area at least 3 feet by 3 feet – bigger is better – not too close to your home; the pile will have an odor, especially after tur
ning. Here’s how to make compost:
Clear a spot and put a thin layer of garden soil over it.
Put down your straw/paper/leaf layer. This layer should be about 3 times as thick as the next manure layer.
Cover with a layer of grass/manure/garden waste.
Continue in that same pattern until you have a pile at least three feet high.
Sprinkle the pile to moisten but not to make it soggy. If you are likely to get a lot of rain, cover the pile with a tarp and weight it down.
Every couple weeks, turn the pile – use a garden fork, move the inside to the outside, and the outside to the inside. A healthy pile will be warm to steamy! There should be lots of earthworms there, too.
The compost is ready when it is dark and crumbly; some parts of the pile will be done sooner – leave the not-quite-ready parts as the starter for your next pile.
The Henry Doubleday company in the UK studied the use of comfrey plant leaves as a primary fertilizing method years ago – comfrey is discussed in more detail as a healing herb later in this book. The plant is very prolific in leaf growth, some growing to three feet long, and can be harvested with several cuttings in a season. Researchers found that an acre in comfrey could produce several tons of livestock fodder per acre that was high in protein (28%), and that the same leaves could be chopped and worked into soil to make an effective fertilizer. The plant is tolerant of cold, too, so has a lot of good potential during Cold Times.
Cold Times — How to Prepare for the Mini Ice Age Page 14