Here’s a bit of geeky plant science for you. David Bradbeer at the Delta Farmland & Wildlife Trust sent me this great image of the roots of white clover. You can plainly see bumps along the roots that are called nodules. Over millions of years, the plant has evolved a symbiotic relationship with certain species of soil-dwelling bacteria called Rhizobia. This group of bacteria has the ability to take nitrogen from the atmosphere and “fix” it by metabolizing it into ammonium, which is a nitrogen compound that the plants can make use of. The plants benefit by using this extra nitrogen to compete with their neighbours by growing stronger and faster. Without the nodules along the plants’ roots, the bacteria could not exist, let alone function. It’s a win-win situation.
Clover is a member of the family Fabaceae (all are called Legumes), and many plants within this family share this quirky talent to host nitrogen-fixing Rhizobia. Some of the best known of these plants are soy, peanuts, beans, peas, lupins, sweet peas, chickpeas, licorice, carob, alfalfa, and vetch. Each plant has a relationship with its own species of Rhizobia, although there is some cross-over. When the plants are harvested or die back, the nitrogen (in ammonium form) is left in the soil, making it more fertile for the next crop that is planted. Nitrogen, after all, is the most difficult of the major plant nutrients to maintain in soil.
It makes sense, then, that organic farmers would grow a crop of nitrogen fixing plants and then till them under before planting a marketable crop. Tilling the plants under takes advantage of their organic matter as well as the nitrogen in their root nodules. In conventional farming, the grower might simply apply hundreds of pounds of ammonium nitrate to her field, simply spreading the raw chemical before planting. In organic farming, a simple cover crop of nitrogen-fixing legumes is planted and grown for around three months before the main crop goes in.
Seed inoculants are simply a powdery form of Rhizobia. Seeds are dampened and then coated with this powder prior to planting. This introduces an abundant population of nitrogen-fixing Rhizobia into the soil at the time of planting, and kick-starts the whole process. If legume seeds are not inoculated, they will still develop root nodules and become hosts to Rhizobia, but more slowly.
Taking advantage of nitrogen-fixing cover crops seems very similar, in my view, to planting flowers that attract beneficial insects like predatory wasps. The grower is able to encourage natural processes to take place that will benefit the crop plants. No chemicals are used. Nothing unnatural takes place. The whole system is sustainable and environmentally sound.
 Careful labeling, moderate watering, and lots of practice! You’ve selected your seeds, you’ve invested in unfamiliar seed starting equipment, you’ve planted the seeds — and now the damn things are coming up! What to do?!
First lesson: Take it easy. Remember that seeds are just like any other embryo, and that their parents have bestowed upon them a supply of food to get them started. As seeds germinate, they use this food to unfurl their first leaf/leaves, and to pop out a tiny, rudimentary root with which to take in water and nutrients. As those first leaves unfurl, the plants will begin taking energy from the sun through photosynthesis. My approach is to lay off all fertilizers until it’s time to transplant them into their permanent growing spots. Seedlings just don’t need a lot of food. They need light and a steady, but moderate supply of water.
Second lesson: Watering is part of the process. If you’ve used sterilized seedling mix to start your seeds indoors (a sensible choice, in my opinion), you can rely on it to provide two key essentials to your seedlings. The first is even moisture, and the second is drainage of excess moisture. You want the soil to feel just moist. After some practice, you will be able to look at the soil surface and judge by its colour whether more water is needed. If not enough water is present, the soil will be a lighter colour, it will feel dry to the touch, and your seedlings will shortly begin to show signs of stress by wilting. If too much water is present, the roots of the seedlings will not have access to the oxygen that normally fills spaces between soil particles, and the plants will drown. Too much moisture can also encourage the growth of mould and even the fungus that causes “damping off,” which is something to avoid.
Third lesson: It’s hard to supply too much light. The growlights & reflectors that are on the market now are much better than they used to be. Some credit is owed to the ingenuity of marijuana growers in developing these products, it must be said. Keep your growlights close to your plants, and expose your plants to 12-18 hours of this bright light every day. This will make all the difference by keeping the plants compact and strong.
Fourth lesson: Those heat mats really do work. Seedling heat mats will shorten the germination period by several days in many cases. With tomatoes and peppers (which can be agonizingly slow sprouters), the difference is substantial. But once your seedlings sprout, take them off the mat so the soil cools down again. As with a lack of light, soil that is too warm can cause legginess – tall, spindly plants with weak stems.
Lesson five: Air circulation is your friend. Once your seedlings sprout, remove the plastic dome from over your tray. The seedlings do not benefit from intense humidity. And if you leave a domed seed tray in direct sun, you can end up (as I did once) with a tray of steamed seedlings. Air moving around your seedlings will reduce the moisture that can lead to mould and fungus, and it will actually help to strengthen the stem tissues of the plants, to boot.
Sixth lesson: Cats can’t help it. At least mine can’t. She does not like the taste of onions, but she sure loves to pull them out of the seedling trays and spit them out. Keep your seedlings well protected from cats, toddlers, and all other curious onlookers! Filling up all the spare space on your planting table with watering cans, stacks of pots, and other odd objects will usually keep cats from investigating in the first place.
Lesson number seven: Stay rational. It’s tempting to invest an emotional attachment to seedlings that can interfere with both judgment and actual success with seeds. One gardener asked me in early March at what point should she be potting on her sunflowers, because they seemed to be getting big. Well the brutal truth is that she planted them too early: By the time it’s warm enough outside to transplant them, they will be huge plants already, with such confined roots that they will not be able to develop the sturdy anchor then need to remain upright. My advice was to toss the plants away and plant new seeds at an appropriate time. You wouldn’t plant sow them indoors before the middle of March, and that’s the very earliest date. But simply discarding plants that you have grown from seed can be too much to bear for many people.
This emotional attachment can lead to other kinds of mistakes, too. Plants rarely benefit from being fawned over. It may actually help to think of seed starting as a mechanical process, like the assembly line approach commercial growers need to take with seeds. It’s a useful exercise to plant 500 of something (or 1,000 or 10,000), because you just can’t afford to fuss over them. I’ve done mass tomato plantings like this… It still feels rewarding to see the seeds sprout and the plants do well, but in the home setting it can be tempting to obsess over individual seedlings. Try not to.
The eighth lesson would be about “potting on.” Potting on is the process of moving one seedling into a larger container with more soil to allow for root growth. Remember that the plants are growing below the soil as well as above. Healthy roots will allow the mature plant to take in moisture and nutrients easily. There is no hard and fast rule about when it’s appropriate to pot on. In the case of tomatoes, you may be able to gently tip the root ball out of the existing pot and judge by the number of visible roots if potting on is called for. Whenever you handle seedlings, handle them only by the root ball. Their stems are easily bruised by even light pinching. The need to pot on is largely dictated by the size of the container the seed sprouted in. The cells in our 12-cell seedling flats are much larger than those in our 128-cell flats. More room means the seedlings can stay in the 12-cell flat for two to three weeks longer than one planted in a 128 flat. If you see roots emerging from your jiffy pellet or coir pot (or cowpot!), it’s obviously time to pot on the seedling. Those roots want to grow into more soil.
Lesson nine: Label everything. The greater the variety of seeds you are planting, the easier it is to lose track of which is which. I did this last year by carelessly mixing up some peppers at my home garden. I had three seedlings each of four types of pepper, and thought would just keep the three pots of each together, with only one label identifying them. This was pure laziness on my part. Of course, once they started getting potted on into larger containers, and getting moved around to make room for new seed trays of other plants, they got mixed up. Pepper seedlings look, for the most part, interchangeable, so I had to wait until they actually set fruit to tell them apart. So err on the side of caution, and label as you go.
The tenth and final lesson for today: I now start all of my leafy greens indoors in trays. I like the 72 and 128-cell trays particularly for this purpose. I find it’s worth the effort of tediously planting a single seed per cell, and then getting them on a heat mat until germination. After the majority in the tray have sprouted, I remove the heat mat and put them in a bright, but cool room. I happen to have a south facing sun room for this purpose, but if I didn’t, I’d get some artificial light on them with the T5 fluorescent growlight tubes. When they have reached the right size to transplant, I pop them out of the cells with a length of ¼” dowel, and transplant them into a prepared row. I find this is the most economical way of planting leafy greens. There’s no over-planting or thinning involved, and you always get a plant where you want it to be in the row. If some of the seeds in your flat don’t germinate (and this will always be the case), just let the soil mix dry out, and it can be reused.
 There are hundreds of heirloom apples! My learned colleague (and lovely fellow) Brian Campbell will be providing a course in Grafting Heirloom Apples & Other Fruit Trees on March 25th, here at the classroom at West Coast Seeds. It’s a course I look forward to because, frankly, I know so little about fruit trees.
In fruit tree grafting, a piece of scion wood is cut from a named heirloom tree variety during winter and kept in cold storage so it remains dormant. This piece is then grafted onto a root stock – a sapling fruit tree that can supply the necessary energy so that the graft takes and buds can form. Voila – instant fruit tree!
Brian will be supplying both root stocks and scion wood for each student as part of the class fee. Scion wood from the following apple varieties will be on hand:
Annie’s Apple
Belle de Boskoop
Braeburn
Cox’s Orange Pippin
Devonshire Quarrenden
Fuji
Gala
Golden Russet
Honeygold
Howgate
Hudsen’s Golden Gem
Lemon
Lord Lambourne
Lyman’s Large
McIntosh
Northern Spy
Peasgood Nonsuch
Pitmaston Pine Apple
Pomme Gris
Priam
Roxbury Russet
Royal Gala
Snow
Spartan
Summerred
Vanderpool Red
Winter Banana
York Imperial
Now, I have only ever heard of about five of those… The root stock provided is rated M9. M9 is very dwarfing, suitable for espalier growing, or growing in a large pot on a balcony. Trees grafted onto M9 root stock need to be staked for the duration of the tree’s life because once it’s in full fruit production, the root is not big enough to hold the weight of all the apples.
So if you would like to learn this forgotten art, please pre-register. The class will run from 1-3pm on Sunday, March 25th. The address here is 4930 Elliott Street in Ladner, BC. You can pre-register by phone: 604-952-8820. The class fee is $45.00, and extra pieces of root stock and scion wood will be available for $15 each. Brian asks that you bring a sharp knife to the class.
 Time to clean your chickadee house! One of my readers, Angela, suggested that I try to give month by month tips on what can be done in the garden, or what should be done at various times of the year. So today I’m going to dedicate some time to this question with late February/early March in mind.
Customers in our retail store here in Ladner have been chomping at the bit to get their gardens started. One sunny day, and there’s a stampede of enthusiastic gardeners getting ready-set-go. So my first garden tip for early spring is this:
1. Be patient. I am frequently asked at this time of year, “What seeds can I plant now?” And the answer is, “Very few.” Broad beans can go out now, but you can plant them pretty much any time on the south coast. In truth, it’s still February. The days are still short, and light from the sun is still hitting us from low in the sky. The soil is cold and wet, and it looks like we’ll be getting a frost tonight, anyway. Remember the (south coastal) gardener’s mantra: The last average frost is March 28th, and that’s over a month from now.
It’s true that you can start some plants indoors right now. I have my sweet onions Ailsa Craig and Kelsae started in flats in my sun room. But other plants like peppers and tomatoes (and these absolutely want an early indoor start) need to wait a bit longer. I normally plant my tomatoes and peppers in the second week of March. One year I planted them January first, and I ended up with ridiculously large plants that I had to pot on over and over… There’s no need for this. Wait until March and keep the plants compact and healthy, not scraggly and stressed.
2. Plan, plan, plan! You’ve received your seed catalogues, and I happen to know that a great many of you have received your seeds already, too. Now, what are you going to do with all those seeds? I find that making drawings of the garden plot is quite useful, and also quite exciting. Veggie gardeners need to plan in both space and time, and prepare for both considerations. You won’t be sowing squash seeds outdoors until late May — maybe a bit later if we have another cold spring (Mark knocks on wood). So what can you plant where your squash will eventually grow that will mature in that time?
Look at the “days to maturity” on your seed packets and in the catalogue, and take seriously the advice about spacing in the row. The planting chart on page 5 of the catalogue shows that you can direct sow arugula, corn salad, kale, pac choi, mustards, peas, and radishes all around the beginning of March. These types of seeds don’t need a lot of warmth to germinate, and they may even benefit from a light frost. According to the catalogue, arugula takes 30-40 days to mature into a full sized plant, so if you plant it in the first week of March and allow several days for germination, you can be fairly confident that you can harvest mature leaves by mid- to late April. You can probably do a second and third planting as well, at 2 or 3 week intervals, so that you’re harvesting right up until it’s time to plant squash seeds (or transplant the squashes you have started indoors).
Corn salad, however, is a slow but steady grower. It takes 50 days to mature. You can get impatient with arugula and harvest its tender baby leaves, but corn salad really wants to mature to achieve the best quality of nice, succulent leaves. It also takes a bit longer to germinate. So if you plant in early March, you’re looking at harvesting at the end of April… You can probably get away with it before your squashes go in.
Peas, of course, are a different kettle of fish. They take a good 65-70 days to mature, and then they produce over a several week period. Plant them in early March and you probably won’t begin to harvest before the end of May, and that’s only if we have a warm spring. In cool weather everything in the garden goes at a slower pace. The last two years have shown us just how slow things can go. Plan for it.
Your squash plant, when it emerges, could take as long as 120 days to develop fully, so that will take you right into September or October. And any vegetable that grows for that length of time is going to get BIG. I have grown pumpkin plants that have been 30 feet across. So again, plan for it.
3. Amend your soil. As it happens, today is particularly cold and rainy outside, and would make for a positively miserable afternoon in the garden. However, if we score a couple of sunny days, or even just a stretch without rain, the soil may become workable. I can’t recall the source, but one garden book I read had the clever advice, if you can walk across the bed without sinking or having clods of mud cling to your boots, it’s time to start working the soil. One of my favourite cover crops is buckwheat, and you can begin planting it in March. Buckwheat grows like stink, and once you turn it under (or cut it down for the compost), it breaks down in only a few days. If you planted some in early March and allowed for the germination period of a week or so, then waited 3 weeks for maturity, you could be tilling under by mid-April. It will bloom by then as well, which provides early food for foraging bees. You want to give your cover crops some time to break down in the soil before you start planting. This will take the best advantage of the organic matter they provide, and it will give your garden soil a healthy leg up at the beginning of the season. Combining some clover with your buckwheat in early spring will give you a boost of nitrogen as well as the always desirable organic matter.
If you haven’t done so already, you may want to add dolomite lime to part of, or all of, your garden. Soil tends acidify, particularly in wet weather. Lime will keep your pH more toward the neutral level. It will also add magnesium and calcium to the soil, which benefits leafy green vegetables from lettuce to kale. Don’t lime where you are planning to put potatoes or other plants that like acidic soil. Allow a few weeks after applying lime before you begin to plant so that the soil chemistry can settle out.
Glacial Rock Dust can be applied with abandon. It is a wonderful amendment that cannot be over-applied. It will add a broad range of mineral nutrients to the soil and actually improve the structure of the soil, and it feeds microbial life in your beds as well. Plus, it is really worth applying on a slightly rainy day, as it is a very fine powder that will blow up your nose in the slightest breeze. You can just apply it to the surface of the soil — it will wash down. Avoid applying lime and rock dust in the same areas, as they both raise pH levels.
4. Clean your chickadee house! Believe it or not, this is a really important spring (maybe you did it last fall) chore. Normally, chickadees excavate their homes in dead wood in a new spot each year. If you provide a clean chickadee house in your garden in the spring, your chances are better that a family will take up residence. All birdhouses and nesting boxes should be cleaned every winter, and now is a good time to get this done, before the birds begin nesting. You need to remove all nesting materials because these can be so lousy with parasites that baby birds may not survive their critical first few days of life. Chickadees, which are fussy about cleanliness in their new homes, positively require a clean house or they will not move in.
If you’re contemplating putting a new chickadee house up in your garden — a perfectly reasonable contemplation, in my opinion — try to mount it near shrubs or bushes, and a minimum of 1.8m (6′) above ground. Chickadees prefer to enter their boxes from the safety of nearby foliage. Choose a box with a specific chickadee-sized entrance hole of 31mm diameter, and one without a perch at the entrance. Entry perches make great places for predatory birds to land, so please avoid them.
5. Keep your eyes peeled for spring! Watch for signs of flowering plants in your area. Cherries can flower really early, but when you start to see dandelion flowers, and when your Forsythia starts to open, these are the true signs of the arrival of spring. You’ll begin to spot bumblebees emerging and the odd honeybee foraging. Prepare to put your mason bees out in mid- to late March, once daytime highs have reached around 13°C.
That’s my two cents for the projects that need to get done early. If you are fortunate enough to have a greenhouse, now is the time to clean it up. Evict the spiders from the corners and give the glass a good rinse. Otherwise, let’s all look forward to March and April, when things really get jumping in the garden, and may our spring this year be a kind one!
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