IT starts with a Seed
too long, however, or fungus might start to grow on the
plant near the medium, causing the fatal condition known as
‘dampening off,’ where infected sprouts will wilt and rot. To
prevent root rot, make sure the seedling medium is allowed
to dry out slightly between waterings. Media should be
moist, not wet. Don’t allow the media to dry out too much,
however—once the plant has germinated it loses its ability to
survive without water and with such a small root system it
can dry out and die quickly.
Seeds are not only essential to the survival of many types
of plants, but they are an important food source. Corn,
wheat and rice are seeds commonly used for food. Quality harvests depend on quality seeds—whether purchased,
exchanged or gathered. Seeds from many plants can be
collected and used the following year. If you’re planning to
collect and use seeds, for predictable results open-pollinated
varieties should be employed—these will tend to produce
similar plants from one year to the next. If consistency isn’t
that important to you, seeds from hybrid plants can be used,
with potentially surprising results that will demonstrate
much greater variation.
In late winter to early spring, it is common to start seeds indoors to be prepared for spring planting. To determine when
to start your outdoor garden seeds indoors, find out the
date of the last frost in your area. Then read the seed packet,
which should tell you how many weeks before the last frost
date to start them. If the information is not available on the
seed packet itself, look up the information online.
There is an additional concern with some plants when
calculating their planting dates because of something called
photoperiodism—which means that these plants use the duration of their dark periods to determine when to flower.
These plants bulk up during the summer until the longer
nights of fall trigger flower or fruit set. The reason that this
can be a concern is that if these plants are set outside in the
early spring months when the nights are still long they can
immediately begin flowering.
This summer I want to try growing loofahs (a plant sponge
that can be used in a variety of ways) on the top of my patio
porch and in my backyard. Loofahs need a very long growing
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Maximum Yield USA | March 2012