Gardening, get a Head Start

Is it really worth the trouble to start seedlings indoors, or is it more practical to wait until spring and buy the few transplants and annuals you need? If you’re willing to put in the time to reap the fun of growing your own, don’t fool around with narrow windowsills and straggly plants. Grow them under lights for best results.

You can buy a plant stand for starting seedlings — or you can invest an hour on a stand that’s fine for starting tomatoes and all the rest. You need:

• four 2″ x 4″ x 72″ uprights
• nine 2″ x 2″ x 48″ horizontal pieces
• four 1″ x 6″ x 48″ sides of plant area
• one 48″ x 48″ particle-board or plywood shelf
• one 60″ x 60″ plastic sheet, for shelf covering
• two 48″ two-tube fluorescent units, with hooks and chains Optional:
• one 2″ x 2″ x 96″ to be cut into four supports

Use wood screws throughout. Construct shelf frame and end units, then place shelf at a height comfortable for you. Screw the two top bars into position. Mount steel hooks into the underside of the top bars so that light units suspended from them will be centered. Attach shelf to frame and add 1″x 6″ side pieces. Place the plastic sheet inside the shelf unit and fill it with peat moss. Keep the peat moss damp to increase humidity around the plants.

Buying 48-inch-long shop lights is a lot cheaper than buying fancy plant lights from a garden shop. Replace one fluorescent tube in each fixture with a gro-light. Keep a distance of 5 to 6 inches from plant foliage to the reflector and give plants 14 to 15 hours of light each day.

Leeks are one vegetable worth starting indoors. Their seedlings are so small they’d otherwise get lost among garden weeds, and you’d find yourself pulling up all the leeks — and then you’d want to pull out your hair, as well. Plant seeds anytime from January on and transplant to a trench when the garden is ready. Apply fine mulch to thwart weeds from the start.

Parsley, too, is a good indoor candidate. Plant in March and set out at the same time as leeks.

Winter squash needs to have time to ripen completely before first frost. Otherwise, the meat is light colored, not nutty and flavorful, and the squash won’t keep well. In northern climates, give winter squash a head start. Start indoors six weeks before setting out. “We ate our last winter squash in early July,” says a gardener who can testify to the keeping qualities of squash started in this way.

Start watermelons early, too, and when you move them to the garden, plant through holes in black plastic and give them plenty of water.

Phil Viereck has built a versatile, portable, insulated cold frame which enables him to eat early lettuce. He plants a crop in September and plops the cold frame over it later, to take it through the winter. “I’m convinced that what saves the lettuce is that it doesn’t have extreme changes of temperature quickly,” he says. “My biggest problem is remembering to open the glass on warm days. One year I cooked the whole batch.” Barring that, Phil eats lettuce by April 20.

He plants his first spring crop in late March. “I’ve even sprinkled the seed on ice,” he says. In late April, he moves the cold frame to this planting. Later, he sets it over Early Girl tomatoes.

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