Our neighbor Pam Dawling, a contributing writer at Growing for Market, has just released her first book: Sustainable Market Farming: Intensive Vegetable Production on a Few Acres. Pam has been gardening here in the Southeast for many years, and we’re delighted to have this resource, with so much wisdom relevant to our bio-region. We’ve asked Pam to contribute to our blog, and we hope you’ll enjoy reading about her gardens. Pam blogs at sustainablemarketfarming.com/news.

Starting Seedlings, by Pam Dawling

We’ve been starting seedlings since late January, and the greenhouse is filling up with flats of lettuce, cabbage, kohlrabi, spinach, scallions, and broccoli. We’re eating our way through the lettuces that grew overwinter in the compost in the block-work greenhouse beds, and shoveling out the compost to fill our flats. All our seedlings are grown in 100% home-made compost. We screen compost to fill the beds in September and transplant lettuce there in October. When we need the compost for the seedlings, it has mellowed nicely and has plenty of worms. This beats buying in bags of compost, or chipping lumps off a heap of frozen compost outdoors in January!

Our greenhouse has a masonry north wall and a patio-door south wall. It has no heating apart from the sun (this is Zone 7). This space is warm enough and just big enough for all our seedlings once they have emerged. For growing-on the very early tomatoes and peppers, destined for our hoophouse, we use an electric heat mat and a plastic low tunnel in one corner of the greenhouse.

Many seeds benefit from some heat during germination and are then moved into slightly less warm conditions to continue growing. This means it’s possible to heat a relatively small space just to germinate the seeds in. We use two broken refrigerators as insulated cabinets, with extra shelves added. A single incandescent lightbulb in each supplies both the light and the heat (we change the wattage depending on what temperature we’re aiming for). Some people construct an insulated cabinet from scratch, with fluorescent lights suspended above the flats.

We use traditional coldframes for“hardening-off”our plants (helping them adjust to cooler, brighter, breezier conditions). They are rectangles of dry-stacked cinder blocks, with lids of woodframed fiberglass. Having heavy flats of plants at ground level is less than ideal for anyone over thirty-five! Shade houses and single-layer poly hoop structures with ventable sidewalls and benches for the flats are a nicer option. Some growers report that some pests are less trouble when flats are up on benches. Others say flats on the ground produce better quality plants. According to the nighttime temperatures, we cover the coldframes with rowcover for 32°F–38°F (0°–3°C), add the lids for 15°F–32°F (–9°C–0°C) and roll quilts on top if it might go below 15°F (–9°C).

For brassicas, lettuce and our paste tomatoes (a big planting), we use open flats — simple wooden boxes. The transplant flat size is 12" × 24" × 4" deep (30 × 60 × 10 cm). It holds 40 plants, “spotted” or pricked out in a hexagonal pattern, using a dibble board. For sowing, we use shallower 3" (7.5 cm) flats. Usually we sow four rows lengthwise in each seedling flat. We reckon we can get about six transplant flats from each seedling flat. This allows for throwing out any wimpy seedlings, and lets us start a higher number of plants in a smaller space.

Because we transplant by hand, and because we hate to throw plastic away (or spend money when we don’t need to), we use a range of plastic plant containers. For crops where we are growing only a small number of plants of each variety, we use six- or nine-packs, or a plug flat divided into smaller units.

The first crops sown are not necessarily the first ones planted out. Our spinach gets sown Jan 24 and transplanted out 4 weeks later. The early tomatoes get planted in the hoophouse at 6 weeks of age (slower-growing peppers go in at 7.5 weeks with rowcover at the ready!). Lettuce goes outdoors after 6.5 weeks, cabbage after 7.5 weeks, cipollini mini-onions after 8 weeks. These are early season timings and as the days warm up and get longer, seedlings grow more quickly. Being a few days later sowing something in early spring makes little difference, as later sowings can catch up by growing faster in the warmer weather.

If the spring is cold and late, you may find your greenhouse packed to the gills with flats you don’t want to take outside. We try to put the faster-maturing crops near the doors and keep the open flats, which will need spotting-out, near the accessible north side.

But let’s not complain about the bounty of so many plants! Spring is an exciting time of year, full of new growth and new potential. Working in the greenhouse with tiny plants on a sunny day when it’s cold outside is a special treat.

Article by Ira Wallace, with Lisa Dermer

Cold nights let us know fall is really here, along with the certainty that a killing frost will arrive any day. We’re enjoying bushels of broccoli along with the last outdoor beans, cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes. Beds of greens promise frost-touched sweetness for months to come.

For those who still haven’t made fall sowings of winter greens, it may not be too late. Last year we sowed greens under quickly put together cold frames on November 9, thinking they
would overwinter and be ready for early spring harvest. To our surprise, we were harvesting baby greens from those frames in late December and occasionally throughout the rest of winter. And when the weather warmed up in February, those plants took off well ahead of spring-sown greens.

My fastest growing fall-sown greens were arugula, cress, tatsoi, and kale. Baby lettuce seedlings transplanted from a crowded bed in the garden took off and grew quickly under row cover supported by hoops. We even harvested a last round of radishes from that November planting.

It’s best to avoid unrealistic expectations: last winter was unusually mild, and direct sown plantings made this late in the year may not reach harvestable size until early spring. Transplanting seedlings under protection in late fall gives a better guarantee of winter harvests. We’re transplanting crowded seedlings from the outdoor garden into cold frames or under row cover. A circle of gardening friends is also a great resource for extra fall seedlings, ready to be nestled into their cozy winter homes.

I hope you’ll take a chance on late fall sowings or transplants. Fresh winter harvesrts are one of the most important steps we can take towards food independence.

April brought us cooler days than March, but warm, settled weather is just around the corner. We’re busy hardening off transplants, preparing our beds, and getting ready to sow warm season crops straight into the ground.

Direct sowing seeds outdoors can give big results, fast, without all the fuss of caring for transplants. And many summer crops generally grow better when direct sown, forming deeper, more drought-tolerant root systems. In late spring we direct sow corn, snap beans, zucchini, summer squash, winter squash, and pumpkins.

We’ll wait until mid-May, when the weather has really settled, to sow melons, watermelons, cucumbers, okra, peanuts, southern peas, cotton, and lima beans. Direct sowing flowers in May lets us easily establish glorious, pollinator-attracting stands of sunflowers, cosmos, zinnias, marigolds.

Any gardener who has seen tomatillo and ground cherry volunteers come up in the garden knows that these nightshades are hardy enough for direct sowing.

When grown in pots, flats, or nursery beds, many crops will change their root systems – instead of a deep, water seeking taproot, which breaks off during transplanting, these wandering (plant) souls develop shallower and more spread out root systems. Plants sown directly in the ground quickly establish deep roots, so they’re better prepared for summer dry spells. They also don’t suffer transplant shock. And when you thin out all but the sturdiest seedlings, you get to choose the ones best adapted to the strong sun, wind, insects, and other demands of the great outdoors.

To direct sow squash, melons, okra, or any crop that needs a wide spacing, simply “station-sow”: sow three or four seeds into each spot where you want to have a plant. You may want to sow a little more deeply than you would for transplants, as this will help prevent the seed from drying out. You’ll need to pay special attention to keeping the ground moist while the seeds are germinating.

Once your seedlings emerge and begin to show true leaves, you’ll want to thin them down to one per station, ideally before they begin to shade each other. Choose the sturdiest, most vigorous seedling to save, and snip or pinch off the others where they meet the ground.

To give direct sown seeds a head start before letting them loose in the great outdoors, simply soak them for a few hours before sowing. The seeds will plump up with water, giving them internal reserves to prevent drying out.

This year, think about direct sowing a crop instead of buying or growing transplants. You might be surprised by how quickly these plants catch up to early transplants, and how they’ll continue to thrive when those early transplants get touched by drought.