Everybody Jump Up!

A few weeks ago I planted quite a few trays with seeds—several perennials and peppers and tomatoes. That's not unusual for this time of year, but I was trying to get a lot done before a 10-day road trip. I'd asked Son #3 and my brother-in-law to water the plants while we were gone and to move the trays to the lights in the basement once the seeds germinated.

Now that we're back, the seedlings are up! How encouraging it is to see all those fragile little seedlings push out of the soil! I'm always astounded at the magic of nature, how the tiny cherry tomato seeds will eventually grow into vines that stretch to eight or more feet, how those stalks will send out tons of suckers and branches and leaves that can cover my hand, how they'll produce clusters of 10 or 15 fruits as big as marbles (the shooters, of course!).

The germination (i.e., success) rate was pretty excellent this year. I planted four trays of peppers, including hot peppers and Italian sweet peppers, and nearly every insert has a plant. The tomatoes did even better, since I put two to three seeds per insert in those trays, and most of them came up. Now they're happy under the lights (just a few inches above them and with the fans going), and I'll be transplanting to larger pots soon.

Speaking of which, I've already begun making the large newspaper pots I need for transplanting tomatoes. So far I've got five trays of 11 pots each. That's 55 tomato plants, but I expect I'll need at least twice that. The peppers get transplanted to plastic pots that work well for them but not as well for the tomatoes.

The garden stores and magazines always seem to produce much sturdier tomato plants than mine—they're a bit leggy and long before they get planted in the garden bed in May—but I haven't noticed that it matters. In 15-plus years of growing tomatoes, and usually 50 or more plants each year, I've seen maybe 10 of mine keel over. I doubt their legginess was the problem, yet the ratio is good enough for me.

Another encouraging sign when I returned from the trip: the brassicas, which were up before we left, are growing well under the lights and the broccoli especially look happy and sturdy. The weather was really warm while we were gone and has since cooled down, but that didn't stop me from beginning the hardening-off process for them this week. I set them outside on the deck in the sunshine for a few hours at a time, then either move them to the (covered) porch or into the house again. You've got to gradually get them used to the outside air—the temperature that fluctuates, the breezes, the bugs—before planting them in the garden beds, so that they're better equipped to survive the transplanting and the new environment.

The hardening-off process is similar to developing a child's immune system. You don't expose newborns to all manner of germ situations because they'd not protected from them yet. You start with Mom and Dad, who wash their hands a lot to handle the new baby. Gradually they stop washing their hands every single time, and they also introduce Baby to Grandma and Grandpa and the siblings, then friends and extended family. By the time Baby is a year old, she's developed a strong enough system to handle a cold bug (albeit not happily!). It's the same with plants, only probably a bit faster.