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Home » Plant Care Articles

Plant Care Articles

Benefits of Thinking Organically When Seeding

Benefits of thinking organically when seeding, January 29, 2009.
(I was supposed to present on this topic at the Winnipeg Wellness Show on January 23 & 24. Unfortunately I was pretty sick and lost my voice, so here is my make-up talk!)

Many gardeners are discovering*, choices that reflect a more environmentally sound lifestyle have benefits beyond being good to the earth. In fact, simple organic strategies in the garden can yield bigger, healthier gardens with less work and reduced gardener stress. Now that is a good reason to grow organic!

*or re-discovering - healthy gardening is not new, of course, it just took a significant back seat to the age of chemicals!

I believe that "thinking organically" from the first stages of the planting process is an excellent way to start things right. Before the first seed is planted, a small amount of holistic planning will improve the over all experience of starting your own seeds. I frequently recommend that gardeners right down or a least verbalize just what they are hoping for: self sufficiency for home grown vegetables, a low maintenance patio herb garden, a huge cutting garden full of flowers, a native perennial garden, a whimsical experience with no particular results expected... what ever your goals, it helps to match your seed starting decisions to the dream. Timing is the first critical decision.

As a rule, the seeds that take the longest to germinate, grow on, and that can be started any time of the year are exotic, warmer climate perennials. This brings to mind seeds such as Aloe, San Pedro Cactus, Apricot Tree Tomato, and Mescal Bean. So, if the gardening itch hits early, these types of seeds can be confidently set to soil on the December or January windowsill.

Next up are the hardier perennials, including wildflowers. These plants also develop more slowly by nature, and a longer growing period is important for healthy transplants come spring. Perennials can be tricky to germinate (often improved by cold storage up to the point of sowing), but also rewarding. The cost of buying established perennials is higher than annual herbs or annual flowers, as quality growers typically spend 12 months or more establish plants before sending them home to gardeners; as such, seeding your own is a great way to establish larger stands of perennials and wildflowers. The guideline for most perennials is that they can be started on a sunny window starting in late January onward.

Vegetables are increasingly popular among gardeners, and very worth growing from seed. At SGH we start our peppers around March 1st and our tomatoes around March 20th. many other vegetables can be direct seeded into the garden as the ground warms up (some as early as the beginning of May).

Annual flowers and herbs really should be kept snug in their seed packs as long as you can hold out! These are the plants that require the most daylight to establish successfully. On the one hand this is a disappointment, since you may want to get growing now! On the other hand, this is a real advantage, since growing annual herbs and flowers from seeds delivers high return on little investment.

Another way of looking at the timing issue is to decide whether or not starting indoors is an option that suits you. Perhaps you take an out of town vacation just at the time your seedlings would be sprouting, or adequate day light is a challenge in your home. For many, simply having the time to tend to seedlings indoors feels unrealistic. If any of this sounds familiar, you can exercise what may turn out to be the easiest and lowest stress seed starting option of them all: direct seeding outdoors. This is ideal for all hardy perennials, annual herbs, many vegetables (not tomatoes or peppers in our climate) and flower seeds. Perennials are typically direct seeded in the fall. Most everything else can be planted out doors once the ground has really started to warm and all chance of frost has passed (but some veggies like lettuces can be planted much earlier!). The key advantage of direct seeding is the reduction in time spent tending seedlings, but also leveraging the generally better conditions of the great outdoors. One thing that I find amazing, even after many seasons gardening, is that plants will actually grow and produce like crazy when direct seeded in early June! You would think our season is simply too short, but seedlings germinated in early June easily catch up to seedlings started indoors, as the major determining factors to seedling growth are amount of daylight and temperature.

With all of the above in mind, it is time to work on the soil - the real building block of healthy plants. These days we are used to getting a straight-up premixed bag of soil for starting seeds, but for little dollars and a very small investment of time you can create a really good mix that will get you and your seedlings ahead.

Soil has three main qualities, each of which works in synergy with the others. These qualities are: nutrition, structure, and water retaining ability. Seedlings require a soil that is able to breathe (i.e. drain) well, while at the same time not dry out too quickly. Seeds do carry on-board nutrition to get them going, but this gets used up very quickly after germination and so available nutrients are critical to the young seedling.

Lets start by tackling the question of aeration. The basic bulk of your soil is likely going to be peat moss or Coco Erarth. We aim for either a 50% peat moss or Coco Earth base. Coco Earth is better than peat moss in a few ways; it holds water, lasts longer, and breathes better. However, for the purposes of seed starting we have found that straight Coco Earth performed poorly compared to straight peat; blended together these two basic ingredients are fabulous. So, your base could be 25% peat and 25% Coco Earth or 50% peat. So far we have a well draining, sterile medium - but no nutrition and not ideal water holding capacity.

Next up we can add the essential basic nutrition that will allow the young seedling to grow strong. What is very important here is that we want the seedlings to grow sturdy and evenly, not long and leggy. The slow release nature of compost makes it an ideal source of nutrition for your young plants (by contrast, soluble fertilizers encourage more rapid growth in stems, making the plants more leggy). You can use home made compost if it is fully broken down. We use either Sea Soil or worm castings. In our studies, Sea Soil provided dramatically better results that other forms of organic nutrients, although we have not tested directly against worm castings alone. Scientist would say that worm castings are really the ideal compost, as the worms pre-digest the nutrients rendering them very available to plants. As well, worm castings are particularly good at holding then slowly releasing water. Sea Soil has the benefit of adding extra structure to the soil in the form of larger, gritty pieces that improve air circulation around the roots. What every you choose, a compost base is going to work wonders on your seedlings. We recommend 25% quality compost in your mix.

A good question at this point would be, "why add compost to the mix if I am going to fertilize with organic fertilizer anyway?" My answer is that it makes life much easier! If you choose a nutrient-neutral soil mix, you have to remember to fertilize, remember how much to fertilize (which can feel scary, even when using an organic approach that will not burn), and figure out when is the right time to start fertilizing. if there is compost in the soil, the plant will figure all of these questions out on its own. I still do recommend using an organic fertilizer later on, once the plants are bigger - and then there is that wonder product Sea Magic. More on this later.

Before we get to the Sea Magic, I do have to cover the third quality of a healthy soil: the ability hold water. Seedlings like to be evenly moist, but cannot be too wet. Soggy soil does not breathe, and without oxygen roots will not form or function properly and seedlings quickly die. Many fungal and bacterial problems in seedlings come from a lack of adequate air. So our goal is to have the soil not dry out so quickly as to stress you out, but enough that the roots can breathe. Coco Earth is one ingredient that can help with this issue, as it holds water nicely while remaining fluffy. The best ingredient is called Diatomite, which feels much like lava rock: very light and porous. Diatomite looks a fair bit like gravel, but does way more than create drainage. It does a remarkable job of holding on to water, then slowly releasing it to your plants. It also releases silica, which has been demonstrated to increase plants' general resilience to diseases. Diatomite is not very common at garden centres (we will have it starting in April), but worth investing in once the season gets going. You can reuse it forever, it is non-toxic, and can be added to all types of gardens (indoor, outdoor, potted, raised beds etc).

If you have all of the above ingredients, an ideal seeding mix could look like this:
25% Peat 25% Coco Earth 15% Sea Soil 10% Worm Compost and 25% Diatmoite (broken into smaller pieces for seeding).

If not everything is available to you, you can adjust accordingly. For example if you do not have Diatomite, you can increase the amount of Peat and Coco Earth. I would try to keep the compost at around 25%.

Lastly, I need to talk about the Sea Magic. This is the famous kelp based "fertilizer" that has been around for some time (actually developed by a Winnipeg company, and now sold all over North America), In fact, Sea Magic should not really be though of as a fertilizer but rather a supplement that acts in a rather different way compared to a normal fertilizer. Kelp is loaded with enzymes that have been shown to improve many aspects of plant growth, starting from the roots on up. In addition, the seaweed is known to reduce the incidence of common dseases in seedlings, such as damping off. Sea Magic can be added to your water the first time you wet your seeding trays, then applied every 7-14 days right through the growing season. Sea Magic starts as a small 30 gram package of powder, that when mixed up into full dosage makes 250L of juice! Tried and true, we use Sea Magic on all of our seeds and cuttings.

Any one with questions about my suggestions is welcome to contact me by email.

I do hope this helps get many of you going with your healthiest crop of seeds to date!

Thanks - Dave, SGH.

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