The Tomato Saga

To say that I have trouble growing healthy tomato seedlings would be a grave understatement.  Once, many years ago (I think it was 2009?), I grew some healthy, happy, beautiful, vigorous tomato plants, which I planted in containers in my backyard and fought the squirrels for all summer.  "This is a breeze!" I said to myself.  "Why does anyone buy nursery plants when they can grow their own for a fraction of the cost?"  And ever since I have been plagued by sickly, off-color, miserable little runty tomato seedlings.  The first year I went ahead and planted them, hoping for the best.  (Ahh...innocence.)  Their performance that year was sufficiently awful that it drove me to vow I would never plant sickly tomato seedlings again.  The following year I was extra careful, throwing out all the seeds from the previous year and starting in fresh, clean pots and soil.  But disaster struck again, and at the last minute I bought seedlings from the nursery to plant instead.  (Inspecting them ever, ever so carefully.  Except that damn (ahem) paste tomato plant that I knew was sick but they only had one kind of paste tomato and they all looked sick and I really, really wanted one.  (I'm not so good at this vow stuff.)  And I got excellent results - but no paste tomatoes.

So you'd think I'd have learned my lesson.  But no.

This year I started with all new seeds from excellent suppliers.  I scrubbed my pots in bleach water and used the last of my store-bought potting soil for the tomatoes.  I set up the seedlings in a drier, warmer room with no rats to nibble on them.  I babied them with fancy fish emulsion.  And what happened?

A leaf from one of my sick seedlings

Sigh.  "Where did I go wrong?!" I wondered.  I tried moving them outside, reducing the water, a nice dose of fish emulsion.  No improvement, plus they kept getting tipped over by the wind and the damn (ahem) squirrels.  Finally I decided it was time to either throw them away or plant them.  I couldn't make up my mind, so... 



A half-staked row of tomatoes

Runty little seedlings barely outpacing the weeds

I planted half of them and threw the other half away, starting new ones in the ground from seed.  When I planted the seedlings I removed all of the affected leaf stems, burying the plants deep underground.  For a while, they just stayed sickly looking, yellow and stubby and rather as though they wished I had thrown them out.  I began mentally re-arranging my garden so I could stick in nursery starts somewhere else and grow squash or cucumbers or anything other than tomatoes in the soil that had touched the untouchables.  "Why?!  Why did I do this to myself again?!"

And then, recently, the former seedlings have started to look...downright happy.  They have grown several inches, put out lots of suckers, and even set a few blossoms.  Last week I decided it was time to commit.  I put plastic over the soil and staked the first several plants.  I'm still suspicious of those plants.  I will pluck an entire leaf branch off at the least hint of imperfection.  But now I have to admit I'm wondering why on earth I ever started them from seeds in the other bed, and wishing I hadn't thrown the other half of my seedlings away.  Those other plants are just so small.

I know, I'm incorrigible.  But you knew that already, right?

Bullet Point Update

Here I go again with the bullet points:

• I got the rain barrel back out, still need to hook it up
• I bought a grapevine to put in the asparagus bed
• I got the potatoes planted, but had to buy some more because there just weren't enough - now I have too many
• some of the peas are planted, but there's more to go
• another gardner from the community garden gave us some garlic and I planted a few in the home garden
• possible freezing on Tuesday night
• momotaro tomatoes are dropping their bottom leaves - Territorial rep suggested they may be too wet, but she's going to send new seeds in case these have a disease; they're quarantined in the low tunnel for now
• I came up with a new trellis for the raspberries - the old one wasn't large enough anymore

gift garlic

new raspberry trellis

Seedling Space

It's getting crowded around here.  Really crowded.  The low tunnel is full...

Low tunnel brim-full with lettuce, spinach, onions, and broccoli

 The counter is full....

Newly planted seeds and a couple transplants

The space under the shoplights is over full!  (I've been rotating the plants under the lights.)

I have two shoplights, but only one is hung upstairs

And of course there's still a lot of things to plant...

I always fall behind on herbs and flowers



I've never grown this many things from seed before, and after last year's fiasco with the rat who ate most of my seedlings, I've been forced to give up growing in the basement.  That leaves me a lot less growing space.

This can't continue, though.  This morning I jerry-rigged a larger platform for the seedlings to sit on, and tomorrow I'll hang my other shoplight.  It means giving up about a quarter of my guest bedroom and poking some more holes in the ceiling, but N's patience with respect to my seedlings seems to increase every year.

Meanwhile, I brought some of the plants out of the low tunnel onto the sidewalk, and put the rest of the onions and lettuce in there.  Barring squirrel attacks everything should be fine for another week, and then I'll plant the lettuce and onions in my community garden plot.

Tomato Seedling Trouble, Again

Sigh...
Last year I had some trouble with my tomato seedlings (Hardening Off & Tomato Problems).  Then later in the year all of my tomato plants - and my cucumbers as well - got sick.  This year all of my tomato seedlings were doing wonderfully until a few weeks ago, when I started to notice that some of the leaves were yellowing, turning black in some places, and even falling off.  I tried fertilizing, and picked off all the yellowing leaves promptly, but I think they have some kind of blight.  I'm pretty upset, since I thought the problem last year was a disease and went to great lengths not to allow any kind of contamination (new pots, new soil, disease resistant seeds, no tomatoes or cukes in the home garden this year, etc.)  It's also just disappointing to watch them growing so strong and healthy and then have to trash them.  But, it's better than watching them grow for months and only getting about 10 tomatoes, which is what happened last year.

I tried keeping them alive in the basement and just letting them go to see if it would make the problem easier to identify, but I never could see any "concentric rings" that would indicate early blight.  So either it is a fungal problem and the spores are in my basement (totally possible and I think I may have to move my whole operation upstairs next year) or it is a disease (in some of the seeds left over from last year?) and was spread from plant to plant by the marauding critter that's been nibbling down there.  Whatever the cause, I decided to buy my tomato seedlings this year from a reliable source.  At least I did get a lot of other things off to an early start, so I don't feel like my seed-starting was a waste.

Unlucky Patsy!

Well, it turns out that Gauss was not eating my seedlings (see World's Worst Cat...).  Several days ago I transplanted a bunch of petunias from a frozen lunch tray into Soho cups and moved them down the basement.  When I went back to check on them two days later three of them had been eaten down to nubs.  (And a few other things as well!)  I'm positive Gauss hasn't been down there, so he is off the hook.  I went ahead and moved everything but the tomatoes and dill upstairs and N is going to hang a light fixture in the downstairs bedroom for them.

I'm not really sure how to make it up to Gauss.  I did splash his wanted picture all over the internet.  Maybe a can of tuna?

World's Worst Cat? Or Unlucky Patsy?

Gauss "Mouse"

I think it was the day after "The Waterfall Day" that I went downstairs to check on my seedlings and found something very disturbing.  Many previously healthy, happy little gazania and medallion flower seedlings had apparently snapped off near their bases, the tops nowhere in sight.  I figured there were two possible explanations: either something had eaten the tops (possible given some odd, tiny little holes in one of the cabbage leaves) or they fell victim to damping off and the tops withered away before I noticed. 

I noticed that several of the cabbage seedlings, while intact, were leaning oddly.  In case this indicated I did have a damping off problem, I took the cabbage/cauliflower tray and the empty gazania / medalion flower tray outside and set them on top of the grill, thinking I'd check on them later and bring them inside.  (Of course we were pretty busy that day so I forgot about them and they got rained on, flooding the trays, which caused me to take them out of the base - separating the plants from their labels! - and forget about them again, but somehow the cabbage and cauliflower lived anyway and are now happily growing in Soho cups in my basement, sans labels!)  Anyway, I also worked really hard for a couple weeks to keep the cat out of the basement.

Why the cat?  It's those tiny, round little holes - totally wrong for flat little for mouse teeth, but perfectly sized for pointy little cat incisors.

Then, a couple days ago, I slipped up and Gauss (aka "Mouse" because he is scared of everything) snuck down there while I was watering.  Once he gets down in there it is literally impossible to get him out until he's good and ready, so I shut the door and waited several hours until he cried to be let back upstairs.  Two days later when I went down to check on the plants again, the gazanias and medallion flowers had all been eaten again!  And this time, the bell peppers and eggplants were gone as well, and not from near the base like what would happen with damping off!  All the "stinky" plants - tomatoes, dill, lemon grass, etc - were untouched.

To add insult to injury, Gauss proceeded to throw up three times that morning and once again the next day.  Normally I would feel sorry for him - "Poor little kitty has a hairball!" - but not this week.  "Go outside to eat greens, you dumb, cowardly cat!"

Sigh.  So I'm replanting everything again, now several weeks late, and ruthlessly hunting the cat down and shoving him out on the porch before I ever open the basement door.  I know he probably couldn't be convicted in an American court, but somewhere in this world he'd get the firing squad for sure!

Seed Starting

Seed-starting season is officially here. The impatiens that I grow for my hanging baskets and flowerpots are supposed to be started an incredible 9-11 weeks before my last frost date, April 18th! I am okay with that as I have found that they do okay if put out while it's still quite chilly, so getting them started early means I have more room under my growing lights for tomatoes and peppers later.

As you can see in the picture, I buy the expensive seed starting potting mix for starting seeds in. The majority of the gardening books I've read recommend doing this, even the ones that are a little disdainful of the usual gardening dogma. I think they're probably right, as I wouldn't want to deal with the disappointment of losing a whole season's seedlings to damping off. If you buy this stuff, don't plan on being able to plant in it out of the bag; it is always extremely dry when you open it. The best thing to do is fill your growing container with soil, tamp down the soil firmly, and set it in a dish of water overnight. (I'm assuming your container has holes in the bottom. It really should.) Weight the container if you must to keep it from floating, and keep an eye on it to see if you need to add more water - I'm always amazed how much water a fine soil can hold. When the top of the soil is clearly moist, as in the picture below, it's ready for planting.


After all the trouble last year with the mosaic virus, which seemed to come from my seedlings, I decided to get rid of my old seedling trays. Cleaning with bleach water is the recommended way to protect this year's plants from last year's problems, but I find it really hard to get all the soil out of the cracks and crevices of those flimsy plastic trays, and I've been trying to think of a new solution. Finally, it occurred to me that the little plastic steamer trays that come in my frozen lunches would make really great seed-starting dishes! There is a removable tray with holes in the sides and bottom, and finger-sized indentations (see pic above) that allow water to be added to the bottom dish without pouring it over the surface of the soil, which can disrupt seeds that haven't sprouted yet. They're also more sturdy than the large commercial trays, so they can be carried up and down my basement stairs with only one hand. And they're smaller, so I won't have so much trouble fitting them under the lights, and I can start different seeds in different containers. Best of all: they're otherwise just food-grade garbage!

I'm also going to start some daylily seeds soon so I won't have to have the lights on for just a few impatiens. More on that later.

No More Newspaper Pots

This year I decided to try growing my seedlings in those trendy homemade newspaper pots. I was tired just thinking about washing out all my seedling pots before planting and thought this might be an easier, low-cost option, with the perk that if I liked them I wouldn't have to store a bunch of pots in my little shed year-round.

Well, I didn't like them. Here are the reasons why, in case I get tempted to try it again:

1. They are too flimsy. I used 3 news sheets stacked together, which I thought was the most I trusted to break down quickly in my tough clay soil, and as you can see, some of them just fell apart.2. Roots sometimes grow right through them, which I find disturbing. But then, I guess they do grow out of the plastic pots sometimes too.3. They're too difficult to move quickly, because they don't hold their shape very well when wet.
4. They sweat too much. When the soil is damp the paper sucks water out of it, and the water then evaporates from the surface of the paper.
5. The vg ;'g'g;'gh;[h[;[; ; ; (from contributing author R)
6. The rotting newspaper attracted bugs - millipedes in my basement and little shredder beetles from outside - which ended up on my kitchen counter. I'll spare you the picture.
7. It takes a long time to make the number I need, and newsprint is very messy. (But you can do it on the couch instead of at the kitchen sink.)

Maybe this year I'll just have to clean and bleach my seedling pots in the fall like committed gardeners do!

Don't Buy Seedlings at Grocery Stores

....unless you know what you're doing.















Why shouldn't you buy seedlings at grocery stores? Because these stores are just trying to make a buck, without regard to your gardening success. They know that if you take these plants home and put them in the ground and they die, you'll probably blame yourself. (As you probably should, since you ignored my advice!) Here are some good reasons why I can make such damning statements with confidence:
1) Grocery stores are not properly equipped to care for seedlings.
2) They offer plants at totally inappropriate planting times. For example, in the picture above they've got kale (which should have been planted weeks ago), yellow squash (it's about right for that now) and bell peppers (not for two more weeks by my calendar). Planting at the wrong time makes almost every top 10 list of gardening mistakes!
3) They offer things as seedlings that should be planted from seed in the garden. For most plants each transplant means a setback; the roots are traumatized by the exposure to light and dry air, and the plant has to re-grow some of the finest root-lets. Some plants, like those squash up there, grow so easily and so quickly from seeds that it just isn't worth putting them through a transplant.
4) Do you know where those seedlings grew up? Last year the east coast of the United States experienced unusually damp, cool weather throughout spring and summer. This, in combination with the transport of seedlings from southern states (where they are cheaper to grow because of warmer weather) for sale at northern stores led to a widespread outbreak of late blight, a devastating fungal disease that not only kills the tomato plant you buy at the grocery store, it kills every tomato plant you have, plus any potatoes you planted. And your neighbor's plants. And his neighbor's, and his neighbor's, and so on for up to 40 miles! Those seedlings that look so healthy at the grocery store may be harboring a deadly pathogen.

How about Home Depot or other stores like it? Pretty similar story. If you are a new gardener, and you want to buy plants rather than starting from seeds, go to a nursery or an experienced amateur grower. Not that they might not have a display like the one above, but if you ask them they'll probably tell you what not to buy.

Hardening off & Tomato Problems

Why should we get to be the only ones to enjoy the great weather?



I took these seedlings outside on Sunday to get a couple hours of outdoor time. They seemed pretty happy. Next weekend is our last frost date, so it is time to start hardening them off.

I have been having a little trouble with my tomato seedlings (and now maybe the peppers too). I think they are malnourished. The tomatoes have lost their bottom leaves, which turned purple. The upper leaves got little brown flecks on them (not wet-looking) that have grown in some cases to large black spots.
I used two storage containers of potting soil I dug out of my shed when I transplanted these, and I think some of it was less than fresh. A couple of the Rainbow Cherry Tomatoes are doing fine, but a third is dying. Check out this picture two of the same kind of tomato transplanted at the same time and sitting next to eachother ever since:
What a shame the rest of the tomatoes all must have gone into the same soil as that one on the left, as they are all doing poorly. I have added fertilizer and am hoping for the best.

How I Start Seeds

For any of you who ever asked (and everyone who hasn't), here is how I start seeds. First, I fill a tray with potting soil, and pat it down nice a tight so the soil wicks up water really well. Then I poke holes to the appropriate depth for the seeds I want to plant, and put one or two seeds in each hole, depending on how good I think the seed is - older seeds I usually plant two. Finally, I cover the seeds in their little holes with very fine seed starting mix that I buy in bags. If there's a seed that is supposed to be planted on the soil surface I usually spread a thin layer of the seed starting mix over the top of the regular potting soil before laying the seeds down.

I leave the flat on my counter until most or all of the seeds have sprouted, as it is a little warmer in my kitchen than my basement. Once they're up I snip off any extras at the base of the stem, then they go in the basement under ordinary shop lights. I keep a timer on my lights to automatically turn them off at 1am and back on at 5am. Some plants would be fine with the lights on all the time, but some need a resting period in order to grow.

Once they have their first set of "true" leaves (the ones that look different from the first set) I loosen the soil around them with a small kitchen knife and gently pull them out, pulling on the leaves rather than the stem. Then I really bury them almost down to their leaves when I put them in their own pots. (I think this is supposed to be bad for some plants, but I haven't had any trouble with it so far.) This year I made newspaper pots, but I haven't made up my mind if I like them better or not. Usually I just re-use plastic nursery pots, or in a pinch I poke holes in old margarine containers.
Before they get transplanted they really need to get accustomed to the outdoors. I try to set them in a spot where they won't get too much wind or sun, on a nice mild day. They should go out for just a couple hours the first day, then longer on subsequent days. After about a week of this I go ahead and transplant. Of course, I am not always very good about following my own rules, but I do my best and they don't seem to mind.