AnnaIkona
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Which of the following do you directly sow outdoors?

My neighbors decided to start a garden this year, (finally some use for all that space!! :D ) Here is a list of what they are planning on growing:

•tomatoes
•cukes
•radish
•carrots
•watermelons
•lettuce
•spinach
•onions

And he asked me which one of those he should sow directly outside, and I amswered: carrots, radish, lettuce, spinach, all herbs, onions.

Is this what you do as well?

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digitS'
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It sounds good to me ... especially hinting to him that he could be growing some herbs ;).

Your neighborhood is probably a better environment for lettuce than mine. I find it easy to transplant. In an attempt to extend "salad season" as long as possible, I start leaf lettuce seed in the greenhouse and set the plants out over weeks and weeks. They can be in little clumps of 4 or 5 plants and may be harvested that way. Everything is pulled.

After awhile, everything else is out of the greenhouse and even though it's as open as I can get it, it's getting hot in there! That's no good for lettuce. So, the containers go into my "sweet spot" in my backyard. Fortunately, that is right beside my back steps so I can keep better track of water needs until those plants also go into the garden.

After hardening off, some lettuce starts went into a full sun location a couple of days ago. I hope frosts aren't too hard on them. The last lettuce starts from beside the back steps will have a real shady garden location.

Steve

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rainbowgardener
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watermelon is often planted directly in the ground once the soil is warm. They are quick growing so you don't really get much head start by starting them indoors and they will quickly outgrow your indoor space!

imafan26
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I directly sow cucumbers, melons, gourds, garlic, shallots, squash, Asian greens (sometimes), and carrots. I could directly sow the other things, but the garden is usually occupied and I hate to thin so I plant in community pots and transplant out. Sometimes I do directly sow beets, spinach, Asian greens, and lettuce but I always have to thin. I don't even like having to thin the carrots much. I only need a couple of tomatoes but I have a hard time planting just one seed so I usually plant three so I have back up. Onions are very slow, so I plant in community pots and transplant them out into the garden. Once they size up they are not that hard to transplant with the right spacing. I have to plant lettuce in succession so it is easier to plant in compots so I can put them in as other things come out. I only need about 10 heads anyway. I will often plant lettuce around young tomatoes, eggplant and pepper since there is room while those plants are small. I usually have left over seedlings which I can give away or trade for other things.

Some things that I only need a few of I buy starts like thyme, oregano, lavender, mints, parsley, cutting celery, rosemary. I propagate them from cuttings and I only have to buy replacements when the mother plants die. Borage, basil, fennel, dill, parsley, cilantro, I do grow from seeds since I can bring the extras to the garden for the monthly sale and put some of them in the herb garden. I also grow a variety of peppers for the sale and many of the ones left over from the sale also end up in the herb garden. I will plant the broken and crooked but otherwise healthy ones in the herb garden. I cut the tops so they will grow back better. It takes awhile but most of them thrive.

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jal_ut
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Peppers and Tomatoes are the only ones I pre-start or buy starts for. Everything else gets directly seeded in the garden.

•cukes
•radish
•carrots
•watermelons
•lettuce
•spinach
•onions
can all be direct seeded.

On onions, for large onions it may be best to plant some onion sets.

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jal_ut
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Of more importance is knowing when to plant the various crops.
Carrots, lettuce, spinach, radish and onions are cool weather crops and can be planted early. They have some frost resistance.
Cucumbers, beans and watermelons on the other hand are warm weather plants and should not be planted until danger of frost is past.

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digitS'
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I got off on lettuce and failed to say something about 2 other garden crops: onions and melons.

Onions take too long for me to grow by direct-sowing. I plant seed in the greenhouse in February and set out the plants in April. Onions from sets were planted in the garden in early April and are coming up, now.

Melons. I'm not sure about watermelon for your location. They need lots of warmth to reach maturity. I start both cantaloupe and galia melons in the greenhouse and set them out when they are about 3 to 4 weeks old.

:) Steve

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Gary350
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You can plant all of those seeds outside in the garden but most people buy tomato plants or start tomato seeds in trays.

I save garden tomato seeds by the 1000s during the summer. When spring is here I sprinkle 1000s of seeds in a 50 foot row. Several will come up then I thin them out leaving 1 tomato plant every 24". If you have a small pack of $1 tomato seeds you probably don't have enough seeds to do this with good success. Mark plant locations every 24" then sprinkle a bunch of seeds at each location. You sprinkle 50 seeds maybe 5 come up. It is easy to thin them out.

Some people plant vine plants like melons in hills but they do much better planted in rows so plants are not in competition with each other. Plant 3 seeds in the center of a 50 foot row then if they all come up pull out the 2 smallest plants leaving only 1 plant. Make 1 vine grow East and the other vine grow West, cut off all the other vines so there are only 2 vines. Cover vines with soil every 4 feet. Keep out all weeds and grass. Don't let melons set on wet soil they will rot. I put a 12"x12" cement patio block under each melon. If melons get Blossom End Rot they need lime. Pellet lime is best. Melons need full sun all day or they will not get ripe and they LOVE hot 100 degree weather.

Jal is right, plant seeds at the correct time.
Last edited by Gary350 on Fri Apr 15, 2016 7:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

AnnaIkona
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Thank you for your advice everyone! :)
I want to try to grow Kale this year. Any suggestions?

imafan26
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Gary, it is not that easy for me to plant a lot of seeds and have to pull most of them out. It seems like such a waste and it is hard to kill perfectly good plants. I know it is better for the plants that remain to do that, it is just hard to do it. A 50 foot row would be most of the width of my back yard. My lot is 54 x100 and the house occupies 1900 sq ft of it. My largest garden is 19x40 and half of it has five citrus trees on it. My main veggie garden at home is 8x16 ft roughly oval. I have to make the most out of every inch and every seed.

PaulF
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I directly sow:

•cukes
•radish
•carrots
•watermelons
•lettuce
•spinach
•onions

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rainbowgardener
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I found a planting chart for you, for British Columbia, but it is divided up into coastal, south central, and northern:

https://www.westcoastseeds.com/garden-r ... ng-charts/

kale, like most greens, is a cold weather crop. Depends on what your summers are like, whether it is still workable to plant it now. It does not like hot summers. In a hot summer area, it will bolt and be done quickly. If your summer is more like Seattle, staying cool and moist, then it may be fine for you to still plant your kale seed.

AnnaIkona
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Thank you Rainbowgardener! The link was very helpful :)
Yes, my weather is just like Seattle's so I might try to plant a couple kales this spring and then a few in the fall maybe?

Peter1142
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I would recommend onion plants over sets. More variety and less apt to bolt.

You can buy large bundles of plants (60+ in a bundle) cheap both locally and online.

I grew onions from seed indoors this year, and they are off to a slow start, compared to the large plants you can buy that are started outdoors down in Texas and pumped full of nitrogen.

I start indoors:
Artichoke
Cardoon
Tomato
Eggplant
Pepper
Broccoli
Brussels Sprouts
Cabbage
Cauliflower
Sometimes Basil

Everything else is direct sow.

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digitS'
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I start kale with the cabbage and broccoli, indoors. Some plants have already gone out into the garden. They are quite small.

My interest in kale is primarily for summer harvest. I've eaten kale since I was a kid. A few years ago, I tried Portuguese kale. I was very pleased! I like Russian kale but the aphids seem to like it even more than I do!

This will be my 3rd season with Italian kale. DW claims that she doesn't like it. Now, our daughter wants us to grow it! Scotch, Portuguese and Italian -- In for a penny, in for a pound :).

Steve

Mr green
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Interesting, I have allways direct sowed kale plants, I should experiment with pregrowing them, maybe next year if I can get more space. Maybe this can make me grow broccoli wihtout having it bolting.
I start tomatoes, peppers, tomatillo, eggplant, cukes and I planted watermelon in hope of getting a harvest (first time trying and I'm not in the best climate for it so will see how it goes.)

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rainbowgardener
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Broccoli is one of the things I have always started indoors, because it is slow and it tends to bolt as soon as it gets hot. When I was gardening in zone 6, I planted broccoli seed indoors mid-January and put the (by then good sized) transplants in the ground mid-March. My average last frost date was mid-April, but once hardened, the broccoli plants didn't have any trouble going through some freezes or snow.

Peter1142
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My broccoli and other brassicas were nipped by frost this year. It really needs very thorough hardening before it can handle frost, if started indoors. But, it bounces back anyway.

Mr green
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rainbowgardener wrote:Broccoli is one of the things I have always started indoors, because it is slow and it tends to bolt as soon as it gets hot. When I was gardening in zone 6, I planted broccoli seed indoors mid-January and put the (by then good sized) transplants in the ground mid-March. My average last frost date was mid-April, but once hardened, the broccoli plants didn't have any trouble going through some freezes or snow.
For me they tend to bolt no matter how cold it is... What is hot for a broccoli? Should be something like 10-15 degrees celsius in my experience. I reccon there must be more factors to this...

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jal_ut
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Many plants are day length sensitive and tend to go to flower when the days are of a certain length.

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digitS'
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I made a rather strong commitment to having plant starts quite a long time ago. It's part of an "Instant Garden" notion and it extends my growing season ... of course.

Broccoli. I seems like way back when, I tried direct-sowing broccoli in a "nursery bed," in the garden. I know I did this with cabbage. I was growing Copenhagen Market cabbage then. I would move the plants out of that bed into locations in the garden. Treated this way, the cabbage would mature in the fall.

If I had broccoli in that nursery bed, it would have been Calabrese. I remember that I was happy enough with it. That suggests that it did not bolt quickly with the onset of summer, which is what broccoli nearly always does in my garden.

Have others had success sowing broccoli seed in the open garden? Might this be a way of being assured a fall harvest?

Steve

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AnnaIkona wrote:Thank you Rainbowgardener! The link was very helpful :)
Yes, my weather is just like Seattle's so I might try to plant a couple kales this spring and then a few in the fall maybe?
I planted some kale last fall, a little later than I wanted; it barely broke thru the ground and then stopped. But, it went thru the harsh winter we had, under snow, lots of single digit nights, then started growing again with the spring warmup. Now, we are harvesting and eating it a few times a week in salads. Fall planting is great.

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rainbowgardener
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Agree about fall planting. I have done very well planting broccoli and spinach seed in the ground late (like about at my first frost date). They sprout and just get a few inches tall and then stop. But then they overwinter, and in late winter start growing again. Spinach especially is amazing that way. Gets so much bigger and lasts so much longer than the spring planted ones.

Taiji
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Maybe that's how I need to plant spinach too, I don't have much luck with it otherwise.

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jal_ut
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digitS', "I like Russian kale but the aphids seem to like it even more than I do!"

That is sure the truth with all the cabbage family. The bugs sure do like cabbage. If you are to grow it, you need to figure out something to discourage the bugs.

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rainbowgardener
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Benefits of companion planting. I plant cabbages with onions, chives, and/or garlic around them. I have seen the cabbage white butterflies fluttering around them and still not had trouble with cabbage worms.

I know it's harder to do if you are planting fields. I plant 8x4 beds. But you might want to think about planting a row of something in the allium field on the outside, and a row every third or fourth of cabbage. At least try it one year. One benefit of having a lot of land is that you can do controlled experiments. Make a cabbage patch somewhere with the alliums and another one somewhere else without and see if you find a difference. Then share what you find with us! :)

I love it when people actually do the experiments like this. With 250 sq feet of veggie gardens (so far), I just can't really do much of this.

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jal_ut
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When planting lettuce I like to put a small pinch of seed every 8 inches in the row. When it comes up and is about 3 inches tall thin it to one plant per spot, then you get some nice plants. I have never had any luck with the heading types, but the leafy types do very well here.

Image

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Mr green
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Nice specimens jal_ut! I share your experience that leafy types does better in my climate. Iceberg and similar types don't get very productive for me.

Thats big lettuce bouquets tho who needs thick heads when has lettuce like that?. Iceberg aint very nutritious for example anyway tho I like the crispyness.

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Gary350
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In my climate if I sprinkle cool weather crop seeds in the snow they come up when weather is right but about first harvest we have 85+ degrees weather and longer days plants all go to seed. My cool weather crops do best in the fall, I plant them about first week of Sept. Our first frost is usually about Halloween. First freeze is often not until last week of December. My kale lives all winter then re seeds itself in summer the mother plant continues to live for many years with lots of baby plants all round that all turn to mother plants that make more babies. One time I had kale for 5 years 1 plant turned into 100 plants. Kale was taking over so I pulled it all up but seeds kept coming up for 3 years.



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