When I first started working on vegetable farms in New England, the last week in January and first week in February was the period we fired up the seed starting system to get those onion seeds going. Onions are one of these crops that are very daylight sensitive, so the theory is that you need the plants to be as large as possible by the Solstice to have big onions.

For years after that, I struggled on my own farm with getting onions started while trying to avoid the hassle and crazy fuel expense of running a greenhouse in one of the coldest months of the year. Places in my house that flats of onions have at some point lived include: under the kitchen table, in a series of piled up coolers layered with lights, in my office on racking, in my bathroom, on the kitchen floor, and so on.

Gradually over the years I pushed my onion seeding date back week by week to keep more of my house space for myself, and you know what?

The onions were fine.

In fact, they totally kept getting bigger and better as I became a more experienced grower, even though I was now starting the seeds a full 6 weeks later than my early mentors insisted we start them.

I still felt a lot of anxiety, mostly generated by looking at social media posts of farms many states to the south or west of us, where farmers can get crops transplanted into the ground at a point of the year where we haven’t event fired up our greenhouses here in sunny CNY (not!).

I finally got over my onion FOMO one summer when we were touring a seed breeding showcase in upstate NY, and they had onion after onion in the softball to volleyball range. When we interrogated one of the growers, they confessed that they had lost power in their greenhouse and all their onion starts died, so they restarted seed at the end of March and early April, and STILL had obscenely large onions. Driving home, we detoured to the back roads through all the gorgeous, direct seeded onions on the muck and were like, “Of course we don’t have to start onions in February!”

It’s not that you won’t in general get better plants by hitting their ideal timing range, but rather that plants have some innate flexibility in when they get started, and you should feel empowered to make your seedling timing fit with your growing systems.

In short, don’t stress too much now in CNY February about “being behind on seeding!”

We are cold up here compared to the rest of country, but we make up for some of that by our nice long summer days. Have you ever looked at vegetables from Alaska? (It’s worth a google.) Like us, they start seeds later but the plants can catch up (and get insanely big) due to their extra long summer daylight hours.

Here’s where the crop planning comes in to help you calculate when to start those seeds!

Earlier in this blog and then at our January beginning farmer discussion, we talked about setting up planting schedules.

Let’s say for my imaginary farm in the uplands of Madison County, I’m pretty sure I can start working soil on the weekend of April 21st or 22nd. (Maybe for you folks in the tropical lowlands of the county, you can start getting into the outside beds early in April, or (gasp) March?)

And then on my imaginary farm, I feel that all the danger of frost will have passed by Memorial Day weekend, May 27th and 28th. (This may be conservative, as we often clear frost by mid-May—but it’s all about what level of risk you are comfortable with!)

Here’s a map of recent last frost dates: https://www.nrcc.cornell.edu/services/blog/2011/05/10_last_frost/index.html

And what this might translate into planting when: https://cceschuyler.org/gardening/food-gardening/first-planting-dates

(Just an aside—what days are you all getting into your field and seeing the last frost? We’ve been so wet some Aprils that we can’t get our tractor into the fields till that first week of May, and then the last frost is the second week of May, so it feels like spring is all squished down into 2 weeks?!)

Now that we’ve narrowed down the window of what we might want to plant when, we can work backwards to the date that we need to start those seeds.

Most seed company websites or packages give some guidance here—like “Plant in trays 6 to 8 weeks before transplanting,” or “Start 4 to 5 weeks before last frost.”

These are a good starting place for figuring out what to plant when, but there are SO MANY variables to seed starting. For instance, we start our farm seeds in a heated, well-lit greenhouse with super fertile potting soil and germination chambers. Tomato planting guidelines say 6 to 8 weeks to start those seeds, but we know that if we start our tomatoes 8 weeks out, they will become leggy, unruly, and un-plantable messes by the time that last frost rolls around. We start our tomato seedlings 5 weeks before transplanting.

Likewise with the onions—even Johnny’s https://www.johnnyseeds.com/growers-library/seed-planting-schedule-calculator.html, High Mowing’s https://www.highmowingseeds.com/pub/media/wysiwyg/pdf/2018_Planting_Chart.pdf, and Harris’s https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1537/5553/files/vegculturalguide.pdf planting charts suggest that we should start seeds sooner than we actually do, but we found by tracking our data over years that fewer weeks in the greenhouse is more than enough when your heat, temperature, and soil are right.

Alternately, if you start your seeds in a cool basement set of racking or in an unheated tunnel or porch space, or in another less than perfect condition, you may need to build in that extra week or two to make up for the slower start caused by cooler temperatures.

For my seedlings for that April 21st planting—mostly quick growing early crops that I like to start 4 weeks before transplanting: broccoli, cauliflower, kale, lettuce, etc—we would start those seeds on March 20th or so. If you find your seedlings take a bit longer, 6 weeks out would be around that first week of March.

(Of course, if you miss that first round of seed starting, you can always just start later and plant later—many crops are quite forgiving of timing. For instance, we start and transplant many of these cool hardy crops every two weeks up into August! The whole point of this post is to not have seedling FOMO.)

For those tender tomatoes, 5 weeks out from Memorial Day weekend is April 21st (I know, that seems so late to start when you have itchy gardening fingers). If you want to push the planting date a little bit, you could start at the beginning of April. However, you don’t want to start outside grown tomato seed now in February, unless you plan to grow them in 5 gallon buckets or other super large cells!!

The key to shoot for in your timing is that in order to grow healthy, happy, and productive plants, you need to minimize any stress that checks their growth. That means avoiding over and under watering, extreme heat and cold, and letting them get root bound or leggy.

It might feel like you are getting a jump on the season to start your seedlings early, but if they get stressed out waiting weeks for the weather to warm up enough to transplant them (or more recently, stop raining so you can get in the fields), you will lose the advantage of that early start! If you do feel like you have to jump the gun and start early, be prepared to minimize seedling stress by giving them cells that are large enough for them to not get root-bound or stressed.

 

I hope this gives you permission to not feel like you are behind on starting your onions (we are going to plant ours a month from now), and not get too excited to start your tomatoes in February or early March and have them get all leggy and weird by May! But rather, plan to start seeds on the schedule that fits for your situation, and keep records to track what works this year and what doesn’t, so that every future growing season, you can dial in your seedling production a little bit better.

Have more questions on seed starting and timing?

Come join us on February 28th for our Beginner Farmer Discussion session on Greenhouse and Seed Starting Tips and Tricks! It’s aimed at farmers in their first ten years but open to everyone who wants to talk transplant production—the more the merrier!