A Few Words About Plants & Seeds

A Few Words About Plants & Seeds

Before planting seeds you should determine WHEN to plant them. Frost will hamper

your efforts if you do not time the starting of seeds correctly, so determining when

your Average Last Spring Frost Date (ALSFD) is vital.

Go to National Climatic Data Center to find the State you live in. A PDF will show

all counties in your State, with your Spring & Fall Frost dates. Use this date to

determine when to start your seeds by counting back the number of weeks your

seedlings should be at time of planting in your garden.

Time to Seed                                                                                              Tolerance

Before                                               Germination                  Growth             After

Last Frost           Plant Types                  Time (days)               Rate            Hardening

__________________________________________________________________

VEGETABLES

10 weeks               Broccoli*                   6-10                     medium                good

10 weeks               Cabbage*                  6-10                     medium                good

10 weeks               Cauliflower*              6-10                     medium                good

10 weeks               Head lettuce              3-5                       medium                good

7 weeks                 Tomato                     6-10                     medium                none

7 weeks                 Eggplant                    7-14                     medium                none

7 weeks                 Pepper                      7-14                     medium                 none

4 weeks                 Cucumber                  4-6                        fast                      none

4 weeks                 Cantaloupe                4-6                         fast                      none

4 weeks                 Squash                      4-6                         fast                      none

4 weeks                 Watermelon               4-6                        fast                      none

Using the chart above, take the Average Last Spring Frost Date and count back by the number of weeks listed, to determine when to start your seeds.

There are basically two types of plants:

• Indeterminate, this type of plant continually produces fruit & continues growing until conditions no longer support the plants ability to sustain itself.
• Determinate, grows to a “set” size, produces all its fruit at once and then dies.

So, if your purpose is to say, grow enough to can or “put up” for future use, determinate types may suit you. For instance, you may wish to grow enough tomatoes to make sauce with. The fruit will mostly be ripe all at the same time, making it timely to produce a large amount of sauce at one time.

Indeterminate types keep producing fruit throughout the season and will out produce determinate types over the season. In fact, this type will produce until you basically stop picking fruit or no longer take care of them.

After determining what “type” of plant you want, you then can select if you want to grow Open Pollinated or Hybrid plants.

Open Pollinated plants are plants that produce fruit (or vegetables) that the seeds of, will grow to be just like the parent plant. Saving seed from these fruit will keep producing, with reliable results, the same fruit over and over again.

There are many open pollinated varieties, which have been handed down from generation to generation, which can be called Heirloom varieties. Many of which are the parents of the great number of “modern” plants we enjoy today. A number of tomato plants I grow every year in my garden are varieties handed down from the 1800’s, such as the Brandywine and Cherokee Purple.

Hybrids, on the other hand, are crosses of different plants, to obtain different characteristics. These are specially bred for, say, disease or drought resistance.

The seed from Hybrid plants will not grow to be (true) or like the parent plant. Saving seed from hybrid plants will not work out for you, as you never know what you’ll end up with.