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Home Vegetable Gardening

STARTING THE PLANTS

This beautifully prepared garden spot--or rather the plant food in it--
is to be transformed into good things for your table, through the ever
wonderful agency of plant growth. The thread of life inhering in the
tiniest seed, in the smallest plant, is the magic wand that may
transmute the soil's dull metal into the gold of flower and fruit.

All the thought, care and expense described in the preceding chapters
are but to get ready for the two things from which your garden is to
spring, in ways so deeply hidden that centuries of the closest
observation have failed to reveal their inner workings. Those two are
seeds and plants. (The sticklers for technical exactness will here take
exception, calling our attention to tubers, bulbs, corns and numerous
other taverns where plant life puts up over night, between growth and
growth, but for our present purpose we need not mind them.)

The plants which you put out in your garden will have been started
under glass from seed, so that, indirectly, everything depends on the
seed. Good seeds, and true, you must have if your garden is to attain
that highest success which should be our aim. Seeds vary greatly--very
much more so than the beginner has any conception of. There are three
essentials; if seeds fail in any one of them, they will be rendered
next to useless. First, they must be true; selected from good types of
stock and true to name; then they must have been good, strong, plump
seeds, full of life and gathered from healthy plants; and finally, they
must be fresh. [Footnote: See table later this chapter] It is therefore
of vital importance that you procure the best seeds that can be had,
regardless of cost. Poor seeds are dear at any price; you cannot afford
to accept them as a gift. It is, of course, impossible to give a rule
by which to buy good seed, but the following suggestions will put you
on the safe track. First, purchase only of some reliable mail-order
house; do not be tempted, either by convenience or cheapness, to buy
the gaily lithographed packets displayed in grocery and hardware stores
at planting time--as a rule they are not reliable; and what you want
for your good money is good seed, not cheap ink. Second, buy of
seedsmen who make a point of growing and testing their own seed. Third,
to begin with, buy from several houses and weed out to the one which
proves, by actual results, to be the most reliable. Another good plan
is to purchase seed of any particular variety from the firm that makes
a leading specialty of it; in many cases these specialties have been
introduced by these firms and they grow their own supplies of these
seeds; they will also be surer of being true to name and type.

Good plants are, in proportion to the amounts used, just as important
as good seed--and of course you cannot afford losing weeks of garden
usefulness by growing entirely from seed sown out-doors. Beets,
cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, egg-plant, and for
really efficient gardening, also onions, corn, melons, celery, lima
beans, cucumbers, and squash, will all begin their joyous journey
toward the gardener's table several weeks before they get into the
garden at all. They will all be started under glass and have attained a
good, thrifty, growing size before they are placed in the soil we have
been so carefully preparing for them. It is next to impossible to
describe a "good" vegetable plant, but he who gardens will come soon to
distinguish between the healthy, short-jointed, deep-colored plant
which is ready to take hold and grow, and the soft, flabby (or too
succulent) drawn-up growth of plants which have been too much pampered,
or dwarfed, weazened specimens which have been abused and starved; he
will learn that a dozen of the former will yield more than fifty of the
latter. Plants may be bought of the florist or market gardener. If so,
they should be personally selected, some time ahead, and gotten some
few days before needed for setting out, so that you may be sure to have
them properly "hardened off," and in the right degree of moisture, for
transplanting, as will be described later.

By far the more satisfactory way, however, is to grow them yourself.
You can then be sure of having the best of plants in exactly the
quantities and varieties you want. They will also be on hand when
conditions are just right for setting them out.

For the ordinary garden, all the plants needed may be started
successfully in hotbeds and cold-frames. The person who has had no
experience with these has usually an exaggerated idea of their cost and
of the skill required to manage them. The skill is not as much a matter
of expert knowledge as of careful regular care, daily. Only a few
minutes a day, for a few sash, but every day. The cost need be but
little, especially if one is a bit handy with tools. The sash which
serves for the cover, and is removable, is the important part of the
structure. Sash may be had, ready glazed and painted, at from $2.50 to
$3.50 each, and with care they will last ten or even twenty years, so
you can see at once that not a very big increase in the yield of your
garden will be required to pay interest on the investment. Or you can
buy the sash unglazed, at a proportionately lower price, and put the
glass in yourself, if you prefer to spend a little more time and less
money. However, if you are not familiar with the work, and want only a
few sash, I would advise purchasing the finished article. In size they
are three feet by six. Frames upon which to put the sash covering may
also be bought complete, but here there is a chance to save money by
constructing your own frames--the materials required, being 2x4 in.
lumber for posts, and inch-boards; or better, if you can easily procure
them, plank 2 x 12 in.

So far as these materials go the hotbed and coldframe are alike. The
difference is that while the coldframe depends for its warmth upon
catching and holding the heat of the sun's rays, the hotbed is
artificially heated by fermenting manure, or in rare instances, by hot
water or steam pipes.

In constructing the hotbed there are two methods used; either by
placing the frames on top of the manure heap or by putting the manure

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