Putting Seeds in the Ground

I garden a lot like I cook. A sprinkle of this, a shake of that, a whole ton of butter on everything. No recipes, nothing I can’t pronounce, if I don’t have it in the pantry, I wasn’t making that anyway. I’m a simple girl and I follow simple guidelines. Once I have my goalposts and my scoreboard laid out, I just measure from the heart.

I hope then, if you are nothing like that and actually have the sense to follow instructions and do things well, you still find some use in the following guidelines on how to sow your seeds in the garden.

Direct Sowing Seed Guide – (Zone 6) Southern MO

Cool vs Warm Crops: most seeds fall into two categories, cool & warm. Cool crops need light freezing temps to establish and produce well once it starts to warm up in the spring. It’s important to give them those slow, cold, long nights of growth so they can put all their effort into quick growth as soon as daylight hours lengthen and daytime temps warm up.

Warm crops need night temps above 35-40 so they’re not stressed at planting time. This means you wait to plant until those daylight hours are already here and spring is well under way. Warm crops will grow quickly through the first few weeks of planting to begin producing fruit mid-summer.

Seeds need moisture & soil to germinate, but they also need certain temp ranges to trigger them out of dormancy. That’s a different temperature for cool crops than warm crops, but generally speaking a seed is a seed. They break dormancy when given moisture and warmth. Carrot seeds can germinate when the soil temps are between 45-50 but pepper seeds don’t germinate unless soil temps reach 75-80. So perhaps it’s not surprising to hear that carrots are cool crops and peppers are warm crops.

It may feel like you need to get everything just right so your seeds have the best chance at germination, but the reality is that seeds will come out of dormancy when they’re good and ready and not a moment sooner. Sow your seeds, water them in, and let nature do the rest.

Planting Depth: Seeds should be planted 2-3 times the depth of the seed size. For example, lettuce seeds can just be tousled into the top layer of soil, but zucchini seeds should be placed an inch deep.

When to Plant: Below is an example planting schedule to follow for a spring, summer, and fall garden. Pick and choose what works for your space and time allowance. Try to pair cool and warm crops together to fit more things in your garden & long and short growing items on top of each other. For example, sow radish on top of carrots – harvest the radish out of the rows of carrots just before the carrots really start filling in. Or grow beets where you’ll have your peppers so the beets come out as the pepper plants go in. This takes practice as you experience the cycles of your garden. Certain things might make sense on paper but don’t in real life.

• Mid to late-February:
  Sow onions, carrots, radish, beets, cilantro, spinach lettuce, kale & snap peas outdoors. Soak large seeds like cilantro and peas for 4-12 hours before planting. Plant cabbage, brussel sprouts, cauliflower/broccoli, kale, mustard & onion starts.
• Mid March:
  Sow swiss chard, dill, cool flowers outdoors. Plant potatoes & parsley starts on Saint Patrick’s Day. Plant perennial herb starts like thyme & oregano.
• After mid-April (final frost):
  Sow basil, zucchini, cucumber, okra, green bean, corn & warm flower seeds outdoors. Sow a second succession of cool crop root vegetables such as carrots, beets, radish. Plant rosemary.
• First week of May:
  Sow pumpkin/squash seeds. Sow a third succession of root veg. Plant tomato, pepper, basil, okra, cucumber, zucchini & eggplant starts.
• First week of June/July:
  Sow a second succession of quick growing warm crops such as zucchini, green beans, okra, cucumber.
• First week of August:
  Sow cool crops again for a fall garden. Plant cabbage, brussel sprouts, cauliflower/broccoli, kale, mustard & onion starts to harvest in early winter.

What to Plant with What: If you love a tidy garden, grow a tidy row. If you love a whimsical garden, scatter a little here and there. Companion planting works best when you pair tall with short. That way the plants aren’t competing for the same space. For example, grow marigolds and basil in between your tomato starts. The tomatoes get tall and bushy while the marigolds and basil are kept short with pruning. Grow onions under the feet of your okra so the bulbs are shaded a bit by the tall okra leaves. But don’t put lettuce in between kale plants – they both grow low and bushy and one will crowd the other out.

Spacing: Different gardens call for different approaches to spacing. Your preferences on tidy vs whimsical will also play a role, as well as your soil health. The better you maintain your soil, the more plants can happily live in a small space.

Square Foot Gardening or High Intensity Planting calls for way more plants in an area than Pinterest or Instagram inspo pics. But in the end, only you can decide what works for your garden. As long as you cover your exposed soil with mulch (shredded leaves, weed free straw, or wood chips), it doesn’t matter whether you plant 4 onions or 16 in your row.

Drag a trowel or your finger down the length of your row, sprinkle in the seed, pat it closed, water it in. Thin to your preferred spacing once they germinate. For example, I thin carrots to about 1 carrot per inch after I harvest out my radish. This gives me baby carrots for roasting but also gives the remaining carrots more space to keep growing (repeat as needed). I thin onions down to 1 onion per 2-3” when they’re pencil thick and use them for green onions allowing the rest to stay and bulb into the summer. I plant peppers and tomatoes 1ft apart, pruning the tomatoes to 2-3 main leaders and removing suckers for the first month after planting so I can keep the size of the plant manageable.

Harvesting: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten a photo of a vegetable with the question “How do I know when it’s ready to pick?” My answer is always very unhelpful because harvesting feels a little like creating a symphony or painting a picture. You just kind of… feel it out. Of course tomatoes shouldn’t be green when you harvest them, they should have turned red or orange or whatever color of the rainbow they were meant to be. But a pepper CAN be harvested green before it turns its rainbow color. A green bean shouldn’t be left to get bulbous but an onion should be. Kale tastes better harvested young and tender but corn should firm up a bit before it’s ready to eat. Leave a beet in the ground too long and it might taste a little more earthy than you remember beets tasting. But harvest a butternut squash before its time and it won’t be orange and sweet inside.

Perhaps “days to harvest” numbers can be helpful (a quick google search will give you the answer), but sometimes they just cause undue stress as you stare at your carrot root protruding from the soil and wonder why it hasn’t gotten any bigger. And sometimes “days to harvest” are based off of when the plant was transplanted, not when it was started from seed, which has caused many a first-time grower understandable frustration.

What I can tell you is that the best time to harvest is when you’re out in the garden. While you whimsy your way through a cup of tea and stare at all your cute little leaves and stems and buds. Don’t wait for later when the kale plant looks a little fuller. Just snap the bottom few leaves right now and put it in your morning omelet. Tomorrow you’ll find yourself rewarded by a few more leaves you wouldn’t have gotten if you hadn’t harvested before you thought it was ready. The more you harvest, the more you get to harvest.

Of course, you can only pick a tomato fruit once and that’s it. But picking fruit triggers your plant to keep trying to produce more. Harvest a few green bell peppers before letting them all turn red. Pick those six green beans even if it feels like a pointless harvest since it can’t make a meal.

Ask your garden to create food for you, and it will rise to the occasion. Your plants will tell you when they’re stressed or hurting. But they’re not as good at telling you it’s time to reap the rewards of your labor. Don’t be timid in your harvest – be bold.