How To Grow Vegetables from Seed: After Germination

Here are the two pak choy punnets. The one on the left is the forgotten punnet, a few weeks old, and the other was planted last week. Isn't it wonderful to see tiny plants appearing in your punnets?

They had dried out a bit this morning, so I gave them water with a soluble fertiliser. Don't use soluble fertilisers on seeds: seeds have enough nutrient for germination, and too much nutrient does more harm than good. Appropriate warmth and light are more important than fertiliser, anyway.

The next step is to thin the punnets so that you have one healthy seedling in each cell. Planting several seeds in each cell allows us to choose the best.

Make sure the growing medium is moist. If it isn't, you may find too much medium -- or even the wrong plants! -- comes out when you pull the unwanted seedlings. Moisture also minimises root damage and shock to the plant you want to keep.

I use my fingers to thin seedlings, but you might prefer tweezers. I press a finger into the seed raising mix when I uproot a seedling, to prevent too much root damage to the others.

Any that are sickly-looking should go. Check for any plants which have stems thinning near the base and pull them. Look for a sturdy, upright stem. If you still have a choice, leave the one that is nearest the middle of the cell.

Feed the thinnings to your guinea pigs, chooks, worms or compost heap. Actually, you could even eat these ones yourself, though I suggest washing them first...

Here is the final result of thinning, with a single healthy seedling left in each cell. You might notice that one cell contains no healthy seedlings; that is the price of neglect. Now, I need to wait for the seedlings to grow to planting-out size.

Previous posts in this series are Ingredients and Method and Mistakes.

Dragonfly

I found this beautiful dragonfly caught in a spiderweb outside my back door last week. It was a huge as well as beautiful one, probably about 8cm long. Each eye was about a centimetre across! I haven't been able to identify it yet. The two photos below show its beautiful markings, reminiscent of Aboriginal art.


I had never seen this type before, so I freed it. While the spider concerned does need to make a living, she is of a good size (she's a Garden Orb Weaver) and I am sure can cope without quite so much dinner! Below you can see traces of web still wrapped around the wings. Fortunately, the dragonfly was able to break the strands after it had had a rest on a nearby rose-bush. If you are wondering where the spider was, she comes out after dark to make her web and goes to bed before light. She leaves the web up so she can have a good meal before she makes a new web the following evening.



This post is part of this month's Garden Blogger's Design Workshop, on Wildlife in the Garden.

How To Grow Vegetables from Seed: Method and Mistakes

Start by filling your punnet almost all the way to the top. Tap the punnet to level the seed raising mix. Press a finger lightly into each cell to make a hollow for seeds to sit in. In larger punnets, you can make grooves -- otherwise, the seeds tend to roll to the edges of the punnet.


I'm right-handed, and I sow seeds like this: pour seeds into the palm of your left hand. Pinch a small number of them between your right finger and thumb. Roll your fingers over a punnet cells, enabling 3-6 seeds to drop into each cell. Why so many seeds? Some won't be viable, and some won't produce strong plants. Later on, you'll pick out the seedlings you don't want, and just keep the strongest ones. Unlike seedlings, seeds are cheap, and you get lots in a packet! How many broccoli seeds can you see in this punnet cell?



Mistake 1: Burial. One of the commonest mistakes is to cover your seeds too deeply. The little seeds we put into punnets are generally the kind that land on the ground in vast numbers near the parent plant. They don't need, nor want, a heavy blanket on their heads. Sprinkle some seed raising mix to cover the seeds up, but no more than you need.


I planted up a punnet of snapdragons yesterday. The seed was like dust, and the packet said to just sprinkle the seed on the surface. Even seed raising mix can be too heavy for such tiny seeds.

Mistake 2: Drowning. I stand my punnets in trays, and water from below. When the surface of the punnet is dry, I add water to the tray. It is OK for the punnets to stand in water for a few days at the start. When seedlings emerge, however, they are susceptible to mould ("damping off"), so make sure you only water seedlings when the seed raising mix is starting to dry out.

Now for some recent mistakes of mine:

Mistake 3: Invoking Phil. These beetroot seedlings only get morning light, and that's not a big problem -- the sun is terribly strong here at this time of year. The problem is that I haven't turned the punnet around to keep the seedlings upright, so they're all lopsided. (After I took the photo, I turned them around, and they look fine today.)


Mistake 4. Complete Forgetfulness. I really truly thought I'd taken all the planted-up punnets out of the shed last week and put them on my porch...


These are pak choy. The residual moisture in my rather dry seed raising mix was enough to get them going. Good germination rate, you may notice. The seedlings have reeeeeally long stems because the only light source in my shed is the east-facing window... across from the bench!

The previous post in this series is Ingredients and the next one is After Germination.

How To Grow Vegetables from Seed: Ingredients

As we enter autumn planting season in Australia, and as Northern Hemisphere gardeners approach spring, growing vegetables seems to have come back into fashion. It's partly due to the global financial crisis, I suppose, but also due to the quiet, long-term influence of the green movement. Long may it continue!

Most of us start gardening with plants in punnets from a nursery, or with the large, easy seeds that can be sown directly where they are to grow, like sweet corn and beans. Growing plants from seed in punnets is the next step. Below are the things you'll need:

Seed raising mix. This isn't potting mix; it's much finer in texture. Buy a smaller rather than a larger bag. The mix should feel damp, but not wet. If you need to rehydrate the mix, put a few scoops of it into a bucket, add water (say two cups) and stir. If you can, let the mix sit overnight to absorb. It is easier to handle if it's damp rather than sopping wet.

Empty punnets. You do have some in your garden shed, don't you? Left over from the seedlings you bought last time? I have the kind that are divided into individual cells as well as the older kind where all the seeds bunk in together. I use the cell kind for larger plants, where I have specific numbers in mind. The older style are good for lettuces, leeks, spring onions and other vegetables that don't take up much space or where you don't really care how many you have. I also use plain punnets for out-of-date seeds, which I sprinkle thickly, as germination rates are much lower.

Seeds. For most gardeners, this is the fun part, where we tend to get carried away. My preference is for heirloom seeds, which are better suited to home gardeners. Heirlooms tend to crop over longer periods, while modern varieties tend to be produced for farming, where an all-at-one-go harvest is preferred as it lowers production costs. Besides, the heirlooms have interesting names and stories and are sold by interesting people.

A place to keep sown punnets. I stand punnets in shallow trays, usually saucers from big pots. In winter, I use a mini-greenhouse to start off my warm-weather crops, but my climate is mild enough that it is unnecessary most of the year. The punnets usually stay on my back porch, which has a north-easterly aspect. The gentler morning sun won't cook them. Your climate and hemisphere may vary. The basic requirements are: morning sun, close to your house (you need to talk to them every morning and keep an eye on their water needs), not in anyone's way, and not too cold, hot, light or dark. 20-25 C is the temperature you want: most vegetable seeds will germinate and grow optimally there.

A workspace. I use the potting bench in my garden. I have a tray where I fill the punnets, which makes clean-up much easier. There's also room for my other gear...

Something to store your seeds in. The metal biscuit tin is traditional. I have an old rectangular ice-cream container: it is wide enough to allow my seed packets to stand upright.

Identification tags and a pen or pencil, and storage for them. You can buy blank tags, or just cut up a plastic container. Permanent marker is always legible, but a good gardener's pencil lives in my shed in a jar with all the unused tags; you can reuse tags for new things. Always tag your punnets, preferably with cultivar name as well as plant name -- you quickly find out which plants will and won't work in your garden, and re-buying a dud variety is terribly frustrating!

I think I've mentioned everything, but if I haven't, please comment!

The subsequent posts in this series are Method and Mistakes and After Germination.

Garden Roundup

It has been a quiet couple of weeks in the garden. First, we had the hot weather. Too hot to do much work in the garden when it's still 30 C in the late afternoon! It's a matter of keeping plants alive -- and I lost most of my seedlings, though my recent purchases of native plants survived.

Now we have rain. We have had nearly 80mm since Tuesday; half of it fell yesterday. Again, it's too wet to do much gardening, though we need the rain... but like most of Sydney, I'd send it to Victoria if I could. Today, the number of confirmed deaths from the terrible bushfires is 181, but that number is expected to rise. 1800 homes have been lost, and that number is also expected to rise. Overseas readers may wish to view the photos at the ABC website for a better understanding. It may help to know that our previous worst fire event, the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983, took fewer than 80 lives across a much larger area.

This afternoon the rain let up enough for me to replace some of the old rusty chook-wire on the chook dome with nice new chook-wire, and position the dome in my vegetable garden. At dusk, we caught the girls and popped them onto their perch. Penny has never been keen to share her sleeping quarters; she's never really been convinced that Annie and Clarabel are part of her flock. It was entertaining to hear the three of them complaining together about the indignity of being caught and carried, then arguing about who got which bit of the perch! There's plenty of room; the issue is precedence. I wonder how they'll get on tomorrow?

Pets in My Garden: a Multi-Meme

This month's Garden Bloggers’ Design Workshop asks: Have you made any design changes to your garden to accommodate your pets? Care to share how you use their manure in your garden? Have you designed part of your garden specifically for your fuzzy or feathered companions? Care to share your strategies for keeping your pets out of places you don’t want them to be?

I also thought I'd answer some questions from my Backyard Chook Primer post here, as promised. But I'll start with my guinea pigs.

Guinea pigs are, as most people know, small quiet herbivores. In Sydney, they can live outside (with shelter, and protection from dogs and cats) all year round. Ours live inside at night and on wet/hot days. They love hiding in long grass, so pen them in the unweeded wilder parts of your garden. I use a very simple corral of one-inch mesh, about 50cm high, with bricks to cover any holes, and a simple weather-shelter. This photo shows Lilac in the corral eating sweet-corn husks.
Occasionally, when the chooks are elsewhere, I'll put the piggies into the chook dome.

The handy thing about guinea pigs is that they eat quite a wide variety of food, from fruit and vegetable scraps to most grasses. As long as other food is ample and varied, guinea pigs do not need the prepared food from pet shops. As a matter of fact, the prepared pet food is harmful: it usually contains a lot of lucerne, which can cause kidney stones. Their chief diet is and should be grass. Being small, an escaped guinea pig is unlikely to cause enormous damage even if it does escape into the vegie patch for a night, so I have not altered my garden much for their sake.

Whatever the guinea pigs don't eat can be offered to your chooks. In fact, I put all the used piggie bedding (grass, hay, uneaten scraps, and piggie poos) into the chook dome for the chooks to scratch in. Spoilt fruit should not be given to guinea pigs, but your chooks will eat it happily. So these are two animals that complement each other. Children like chooks, especially friendly, hand-reared pullets, like the Isabrown the Twig is holding. It isn't one of ours: Penny is an adult Isabrown, and our pullets, now about 17 weeks old (almost point of lay), are a White Leghorn and an Australorp.

Unlike guinea pigs, chooks will wreak havoc in a vegetable garden in a very short time. Their strong legs will scratch up shallow-rooted plants, and they have a good appetite for seeds and seedlings. Any new plantings will need protection. My vegie patch is surrounded by star pickets and one-inch mesh a metre high, to keep out my free-ranging girls. I'd like something a bit more attractive, but slightly loose mesh is something that a chook can't perch on. A permanent fence would need to be much higher, too.

I use the chook dome (described in the Primer) in the vegie patch for about half the year, so the poo is used where it falls. The other half of the time, I let the chooks free-range and fertilise my other plantings. Much of my garden is pretty low-maintenance, and autumn, our main planting time for perennials, is when the chooks are in their dome. So I can't say that I've done much altering of my garden for my birds. I suspect my children have driven my planting choices as much as the animals have!

Home Handymum wanted to know what the chooks' feed containers look like. They are made from two-litre milk bottles. The handle is on one corner, so I cut a hole from the opposite corner. There needs to be plenty of room to get the feed or water in easily, without causing the bottle to rip or collapse.

It's easier to have a hook than a tie: trying to tie on a full water container is an exercise in frustration. The hook is made from fencing wire. There is a hook at one end and the wire is doubled back on itself at the other. Flatten the handle of the bottle and slip it into the doubled-back section. Hope the pictures help make sense of this description.

A Drink for Just-Past-Bloom-Day

In some parts of the Northern Hemisphere the gardeners are getting a bit desperate for some colour, but I haven't managed to post on Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day yet because I keep missing the day! Founder Carol sounds a bit down, and I thought I'd offer a virtual drink to her and to all of you who need cheering up. A nice, bubbly, girly kind of drink. Cheers!

Here are some shots of flowers opening on my pink bottle-brush, Callistemon 'Pink Champagne'. Mine must be eight years old or more, and is approaching three metres in height. The brushes would be 10-15cm long.


I love the way the stamens unwind gradually from their capsules.






Insects and honey-eating birds flock to the flowers, which come in flushes. I love this fresh shell-pink, though I don't like the way the flower fades to a washed-out grey-pink after a few days. Once it stops flowering, the plant tends to disappear into the background. For this reason, I think Callistemons are at their best in a mixed shrubbery. If they are left unpruned, bottle-brushes become trees, but they retain a shrubby habit if clipped. A gentleman in a nearby street has two beautifully kept bottle-brush balls on his nature-strip. The new leaves are a pretty grey-green and hirsute, nice to touch -- when they age the leaves become hard. The foliage has a pleasant medicinal sort of smell when crushed.

Callistemons are tough (they're commonly used as street trees) and can be long-lived -- the three bottle-brushes outside one of my childhood homes must be about 40 years old and are still looking healthy. Callistemons like some water and many species do well on clay soils or in boggy ground. There are many cultivars, most with flowers in the pink-red-purple range, though there are cream/white species and a green one. Bottle-brushes are a good size for gardens: heights vary from under a metre to the magnificence of the Mildura specimen I photographed earlier (it is probably 'Harkness', an old hybrid). They require almost no attention. I'd suggest an annual feeding with blood and bone and to prune after flowering to discourage legginess. Or you can try your hand at topiary; either way, the plant won't mind. A toast to the Callistemon family!