Handmade for the Garden

Healthy tomato seedlings ready to be set out in the garden.

Living in New England, I’ve always found the first and last frost dates make summer—that is, the gardening season—seem so short, but the seed catalogs that arrive in January reassure me that spring really is coming—eventually. I spend hours poring over the descriptions and photographs of each seed variety as I plan the perfect garden. I look back on the previous years’ notes to avoid making the same mistakes, try to show a little restraint filling out the order forms, and then sit back and wait for my seed orders to arrive.

I love starting my own seeds. It allows me to grow varieties I might not find locally, cuts costs (unless I go crazy with the catalogs), and ultimately adds to my pride in the final harvest. It also enables me to plant my flower beds the way I most love to see them—in utter profusion, with colors and shapes repeating throughout the gardens. Double all of the above when I save my own seeds from one year to the next.

I always try to get seeds started—and in the ground—as early as possible. I am fortunate that I have a bright, sunny breakfast room where I have successfully started seeds for years, but I recently erected a small, unheated greenhouse that provides more space and better light as the seedlings grow. I have never had to rely on “grow lights,” and although I do occasionally use a small nighttime heater in the greenhouse, I try to keep things there as low-tech as possible.

Seedlings that have outgrown their soil blocks and require more space are repotted in folded newspaper pots.

STARTING SEEDS

Over the years, my New Year’s resolutions to shed extra pounds have helped me amass a tower of plastic trays from low-cal TV dinners. The trays are just deep enough for sprinkling tiny seeds that need to be thinned and transplanted to larger pots later on, and they also make great waterproof trays to use underneath pots. They are narrow enough to fit on my windowsills and help convince me that some of those diet dinners were not totally wasted, but they just aren’t deep enough to grow seedlings to maturity.

Whether I start my seedlings in TV dinner trays, in commercial plastic “cells,” or in peat pots available at garden supply stores, I always start them early enough that they require repotting into larger pots (at least once) before the weather is warm enough to plant them in the ground. Like most gardeners, I save 4" pots from purchased plants, but I always need many more pots than I have stored because what I thought was restraint back in January usually turns into a plague of seedlings by the end of March.

When it got to the point where the cost of larger pots began to outweigh the benefit of starting my own seeds, as compared to just buying seedlings from the local nursery, I began to explore a couple of methods to produce a virtually unlimited supply of inexpensive pots for starting and transplanting seedlings.

Biodegradable newspaper pots are great for repotting tiny seedlings that need more growing room. When the weather is warm enough to move the plants into the garden, I simply tear away the bottom of each pot to give the roots easier access to the soil and sink them into the ground. Because the seedlings are planted pot and all, there is less root shock, a higher survival rate, and no storage issues. I also get to feel pretty smug about recycling paper. Newspaper pots will hold up for about six to eight weeks in trays on the counter and will rot into the soil once planted in the garden, which also adds some bulk to the soil as they decompose.

I especially like being able to write the name or variety of each plant right on the side of the pot with a permanent marker. The writing does fade eventually, so I sometimes write the information on popsicle sticks and tuck one into each pot.

choose the paper wisely

I use The New York Times to make my pots—not because I really believe that I grow smarter, stronger plants but because I know that the Times is printed with soy-based inks. Most organic gardening sources recommend using sheets of newspaper as a mulch layer, claiming that toxic inks have long since been eliminated from the printing industry, but I still recommend finding out what kind of ink your local papers are printed with, just to be sure.

I make my newspaper pots in two styles: One is folded flat like the nifty drinking cups they taught us to make in Girl Scouts and is easy to store until I need them. The other style is rolled around a form and takes up considerably more storage space but makes a stronger pot that stands up straight on its own.

Newspaper pots need to be placed in waterproof trays, with some water in the trays so the paper can wick moisture from below, rather than from the soil. As the seedlings develop, in addition to watering, I use a spray bottle to keep the pots and the top of the soil evenly moist. Check water daily, but avoid overwatering, which can cause plants to damp off (die from fungal disease).

In addition to whatever regular plant trays I have saved over the years, I use TV dinner trays, old baking sheets with 1"-high sides, and some inexpensive boot-storage trays underneath the pots.

When I use a heated plant mat (or the old, stained heating pad I found in the back of the linen closet) to speed germination, I always set the pots in a fairly thick plastic tray to help diffuse the heat, so it doesn’t fry the plants’ roots.

I always start repotting with a stack of paper pots folded and ready to go.

These pots will hold tomato seedlings until the weather is warm enough to transplant them to the garden. I try to fit the pots as close together as possible on a waterproof tray to minimize their drying out and to enable them to support each other.

This little hothouse holds moisture and protects the seedlings from prowling cats.

PROTECTING SEEDLINGS

Most seedlings require protection from frost, wind, and harsh sunlight once they move outside. At my house, they also need indoor protection from a cat that likes to munch fresh greens and take his afternoon nap stretched out on top of the seedling trays occupying his favorite windowsill.

To solve the cat problem, I constructed mini-hothouses that have the added advantage of holding moisture close to the soil instead of letting it evaporate into the room. I also use these hothouses to protect young seedlings that I place next to my raised beds when the weather warms a bit and I am overrun with plants inside.

These little hothouses are easy to store when the seedlings no longer need protection. I just tie them all in a bundle and store them flat in a box. I have been using the same ones for years.

These hothouses require only minimal sewing skills and a sewing machine. The instructions below are for a hothouse that will fit an average flat (in which seedlings are sold), which is 10" x 20" (25 x 51cm).

Once I move seedlings outside, I use the mini-hothouses to protect them from unexpected frost and damaging wind.

OTHER METHODS for PROTECTING TENDER SEEDLINGS

Over the years, I have tried lots of methods to protect tender seedlings from the weather since I aim for earlier and earlier planting. Even though plastic grocery bags will never decompose, they generally do not remain intact for the long run, and I wouldn’t bother putting the effort into making mini-hothouses with them. In a pinch, though, I have secured plastic bags over sticks and peony rings (used for supporting peonies) to protect seedlings and tender plants. They aren’t pretty, but they do the trick when the evening weather report predicts frost.

We have dollar stores everywhere now, and often they have exactly what I need to improvise protection for seedlings. I once found some clear plastic umbrellas that made terrific cloches, or protective plant coverings. I poked some holes and made some slashes in them for ventilation and to offer some resistance to the wind, and then pushed the handles into the ground. They were big enough to group multiple plants underneath them, and they worked great for a couple of years. Unfortunately, once a spoke is bent or broken, there isn’t much left of an umbrella. But, at bargain-store prices, they are well worth having because they can accommodate larger plants, are easily anchored in the ground, and collapse for storage.

Another solution for protecting seedlings issued from a bacteria problem we had in our old well that caused us to rely on bottled water for quite some time. As a result, I collected a lot of gallon water jugs before we got the problem solved; and, with the bottoms cut out, these jugs make quick cloches for individual plants. They are easy to anchor to the ground by catching a notched stick through the handle, then pushing the stick into the ground. Because most jugs are not really clear, they filter the sunlight, which minimizes burning the plants. When the bottomless jugs are not in use, I just run a cord through all the handles and hang them from a rafter in the barn (you won’t need the jugs’ caps).

With the bottom cut away, a plastic one-gallon (3.8 liter) water jug makes an excellent cloche. I usually anchor these jugs in place with a notched or forked stick.

I use the longest dibble in this group for planting long rows of beans and peas; the shorter one is useful in tight spaces. The handle at the top of the single dibble makes it easy to push the tip deeply into the soil.

Planting occupies most of my time and energy during the early spring and establishes the garden agenda for the coming season. When the ground has warmed up just enough for planting and the leafy, lush garden of my dreams is still weeks—maybe months—away, time is a luxury I won’t enjoy once the weeds wake up to spring.

An orderly, neat garden is not only a pleasure to see but also easier to care for than one haphazardly planted. That said, I spend a lot of off-season time planning the layout of my gardens, but, at planting time, I always find empty beds a little deceiving. They are never as large as I remembered them, and the seed and row spacing recommended on seed packets always seems excessive. Of course, once plants begin to mature and fill in, it is easy to see why such spacing was recommended, and I am usually pleased that I did not give in to the temptation to squeeze in a few more rows or seeds. I find that by using dibbles (tools that make small, uniform holes in the soil) to space seeds and stakes, and strings to space even rows, I am less likely to start crowding things into the beds just because I bought too many seeds or couldn’t bear to eliminate extra seedlings.

DIBBLES and DIBS

Whether you begin with seeds or seedlings, you still have to make a hole in the soil to get things started. Dibbles, or dibs, as they are also called, have been used for centuries to speed up the process and produce a uniform-sized hole. A commercial bulb planter is a sort of dibble, too, though most dibbles just displace the soil, rather than removing a clod of earth, as the bulb planter does.

As you can see in the photograph at left, I have a long, multi-tipped, straight dibble that allows me to make a line of 35 holes at the same time. I use a rectangular, multi-tipped block dibble to plant small seeds in a patch (see the photo on this page). On both dibbles, all the equally spaced holes are the same depth, so it makes planting seeds fast and easy, and minimizes the amount of thinning needed later on.

Because seedlings, however, generally need to be spaced much further apart than seeds and require a larger hole to accommodate their roots and soil, I use single-tipped dibbles rather than multi-tipped dibbles for transplanting them. I made some of my single-tipped dibbles from dowels and wooden rods, but I have also utilized a chinois pestle that I found at a garage sale. Both single- and multi-tipped dibbles are easy to make (instructions follow).