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A Quick Guide to Starting Your Seeds Indoors

Late winter can be a tough time for gardeners. When the calendar turns to March, the days are getting longer, the snow is melting, and the itch to get outside and garden gets stronger every day. Those sunny days when temperatures soar into the 40s and 50s can seem especially cruel when followed by a sharp drop in temperatures and extended cold snaps. For many gardeners the cure for their itch to garden and for their impatience for spring to arrive is to seed vegetables and flowers indoors under artificial lighting for later transplanting into the garden.

The benefits of starting your own seeds indoors are many. Starting my seeds indoors allows me to grow varieties that I would not find as seedlings at a gardening center or large retailer. This is critical when taking into consideration needs such as disease resistance and tolerance of soil type, but also a matter of preference – I do love the different heirloom varieties! Growing from seed also allows us to select varieties that are suitable to our shorter growing season. Plus you’ll control the timing, so your plants will more likely be the optimal size when the time comes to plant them outdoors.A person seeding a tray with seeds

Successfully growing quality transplants requires a good understanding of a number of parameters, so though you’re probably eager to start, take a moment to read this quick guide for a successful seedling indoors. I’ll cover when to start seeds, potting mixes, indoor growing setups, containers, watering and more. Read more A Quick Guide to Starting Your Seeds Indoors

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Raspberry pruning time!

You’re probably aware of the importance of pruning fruit trees in the late winter/early spring, but did you know how important it is to prune your raspberry patch?

It’s best to start with a some clear priorities when pruning:

  1. Remove dead, dying and diseased canes, as well as any insect pests that may be overwintering.
  2. Reduce competition between your plants for sun, nutrients and water, resulting in a more vigorous plant and a more fruitful harvest.
  3. Allow for better airflow throughout the raspberry row, drying the plant leaves and  any fruit, thereby reducing fungus and mold growth.

Gardeners in northern NY generally plant two main types of raspberries. Summer-bearing raspberries fruit in July and early August, and fall-bearing raspberries fruit in September and October. Knowing whether you have summer or fall varieties of raspberry plants will dictate how they are pruned.

Summer-bearing raspberries produce fruit on canes that grew the previous summer, called floricanes. Floricanes will die immediately after fruiting, so once canes die back (i.e. appear dried and brown) they should be removed, leaving only new cane growth. These new canes will produce fruit next summer. If you missed this pruning step last year, pruning out  dead canes should be your first priority. Other steps to take during winter pruning will be to thin canes to 6 to 8 inches apart, removing the smallest and weakest canes first, and to also remove any canes spreading out to where you don’t want them to grow. Make sure that you don’t miss pruning out any diseased and winter-killed canes, or crown galls that you find. Remaining canes should be topped at 48 to 60 inches in height.

Some varieties of summer-bearing raspberries (like Prelude which I have in my garden) may produce a second smaller crop on that year’s new canes in the fall.  Make sure to prune off the dried flower stalks when doing your late winter pruning.  Read more Raspberry pruning time!

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Time To Order Your Seeds!

Winter is a quiet time for most gardeners. Time to review the past year’s garden successes (and failures), and to begin planning for next year’s garden… and of course to order new seeds. Many gardeners eagerly anticipate getting the first garden seed catalogs, and by now many have arrived in my mailbox. 

Seed catalogs are much more than just pretty pictures of great fruits and vegetables or a source of garden tools and supplies. Within their pages can be found a whole host of information on each plant variety. The descriptions cover many useful topics, from disease resistance, to how to match particular vegetables to the soils of your garden, to the size of the fruit and the plant’s growth habit, and much, much more. A couple of examples from my own garden will explain what I mean.  

I love winter squash, particularly butternut squash, but for years my success with it was hit-and-miss. What I observed from years of gardening is that if powdery mildew got into my squash and pumpkins early, I would go on to have a very poor crop, whereas if the powdery mildew showed up later in the summer, I ended up with a much better crop. Looking through a Johnny’s Selected Seeds catalog, I noticed they were offering a hybrid butternut squash called Metro PMR (F1) Butternut Squash – PMR standing for Powdery Mildew Resistant. Since switching to this seed three years ago, I’ve had consistently good crops. This past growing season my pumpkins and acorn squash were hit hard by powdery mildew, but my PMR butternut squash plants growing right next to the pumpkins continued to flourish and produced a nice crop.

Carrots are also a mainstay in my garden. Gardeners with clay-ey soils like mine will have a hard time growing most carrots, but reviewing seed catalog information helped me match varieties to the particular soil type in my garden – in this case Chantenays and Nantes, which do well in heavy soils.  

If you don’t like to grow carrots because of the small seed size and the need to thin them during the summer, seed producers have made a simple innovation that you should try. Pelleted carrot seed, is covered with a clay like substance that dissolves when planted. The little round seed pellets are easier to handle and space accurately, even by children, eliminating the need to thin the carrots later. Read more Time To Order Your Seeds!