Gardening, get a Head Start continued

You ask for trouble if you use garden soil for indoor planting. It’s likely to be loaded with pathogens. Use sterile, commercial potting mix, or make your own:

• two parts soil
• one part compost or leaf mold
• one part sand, perlite, or vermiculite
• one tablespoon bone meal per quart

Sterilize it in a 150° oven for one-half hour (which may drive everyone out of the house holding his nose). To stay in your family’s good graces, use a microwave oven for speedy sterilization. Put the soil in a plastic bag in which you’ve punched a few holes. Bake it in the microwave for four or five minutes.

Systems save time. To aid in spacing seeds in flats, cut a piece of one-inch-mesh chicken wire the size of a flat. (Put it in a wooden frame, if you want to be fancy. ) Lay it on the soil and plant a seed inside each hole for one-inch spacing. You can also plant on two-inch or three-inch centers.

Foil damping-off organisms, which cause young seedlings to keel over. Plant seeds in a flat, then sprinkle a one-quarter to one-half-inch layer of vermiculite over the surface. Cover with newspaper to hold in moisture until germination. Remove newspaper when seedlings show. Bottom-water to keep top layer of vermiculite dry and prevent young plants from biting the dust. Between waterings, mist lightly.

When it’s time to thin young seedlings grown indoors, snip off at soil level with scissors instead of disturbing roots by pulling.

In January, start indoors at least two dozen seeds of Alpine strawberries. By late May, you’ll have small plants that can be tucked in wherever you have places to fill in the vegetable or flower garden. These beautiful perennial plants will reward you another way — pick and eat their sweet, inch-long fruit throughout the summer as you garden.

Get early spring lettuce with little effort. In the fall, punch holes in two plastic containers, dish pan size if you can find them. Put six inches of a rich mixture of topsoil and compost in them, and store them in the cellar or garage. In late winter, moisten the soil well, then sow leaf lettuce to get plants two inches apart. Cover with clear plastic and keep under fluorescent lights 12 to 18 hours a day. Remove the plastic when the seedlings appear. As soon as possible, move them outdoors or, better yet, into a cold frame, at least during the daylight hours. You’ll be eating this lettuce in less than two months. At first, harvest to thin the plants to six inches apart, then cut off individual plants one inch above the surface of the soil, so they can grow again. Two containers should keep a small family in lettuce until the regular garden crop is ready. Experiment with varieties. Buttercrunch, Grand Rapids, and Salad Bowl grow well together.

“I’ve eliminated the time-consuming fuss of moving tomato seedlings from flats to small pots to larger pots before setting them in the garden,” says Closey Dickey. Plant tomato seeds directly in soil mix in half-gallon milk cartons. Thin to one seedling per carton. When setting out plants, simply slice off the bottom of the carton and slide it up to make a protective collar.

Give hard-coated seeds a jump on germination. Nick them with a file, then before planting soak for forty-eight hours in a solution of one teaspoon Adolph’s Meat Tenderizer to one quart water.

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