Nursery Starts vs Seeds

My husband John and I raise most of our food from seed, but at the start of the growing season, for “insurance,” we treat ourselves to a few store-bought organic nursery starts.

This particularly chilly spring, when even the weeds are behind schedule, we figure the spinach and onion starts will give our garden a little headwind.

A few days ago, we had a warmish, sunny day—but the forecast called for rain and chilly temps the next few days. The spinach starts looked good—yet I knew they wouldn’t be happy in their four-inch pots for long.

I had some home-grown onion sets to get into the ground too, and sowing peas had been on my radar big-time.

So getting the first of the veggie beds planted needed to happen.

I planted the spinach starts first. I can always buy onions year round, but homegrown baby spinach is one of my favorite spring delicacies. Once the starts were tucked in, I sowed two rows of seed in the rest of the bed. 

It’s interesting that with direct seeding spinach, your plants are actually much more resilient. Often, after a few weeks, the direct seed spinach development will overtake the nursery starts and kind of leave them in the dust!

Anyway, after planting the bed it didn’t seem like a whole lot of spinach, so I decided to plant a second bed.

That is, after I got the onions in the ground! This spring, I’m conducting a little experiment.

Usually we plant organic onion nursery seedlings (raising onion from seed is a challenge I haven’t taken on yet). And I did have a couple of pots of the small, slivery starts.

But late last summer, my onion crop had been a bust. The bulbs didn’t really grow: their average size was about half the size of my thumb. I couldn’t figure out what went wrong…until I cleared out the bed at the end of the summer.

I discovered there was an extensive network of roots in the bed just below the surface.

Well. I figured out the culprit immediately: the B-I-G patch of crocosmia growing about a foot away from this bed. Since the bees and hummingbirds love this tall, vivid red-orange perennial flower, I wasn’t about to get rid of it.

I yarded out the roots sort of resignedly, sure they’d be back full bore next year. Lesson: don’t try growing root veggies in a bed filled with other roots. Maybe shallow-rooted peas.

But…looking at my disappointing harvest, I decided: silver lining!

I could save these shrunken little onion specimens over the winter, to plant the following spring as “sets.”

So on this planting day, I cleared the winter mulch off the raised bed I’d chosen. Next, I did my usual gentle spade-forking: it opens up the soil a bit after the winter rains, creating looser soil for root crops.

After lightly raking the soil level, I planted the sets, though I won’t know if they’ll take until I see green sprouts.

I’m also doing a second experiment this season.

Last summer, I could see my next strawberry crop would be sad. My four beds hadn’t produced many berries; the plants were mostly worn out. They would probably product next to nothing this spring.

But I had one big volunteer that was shooting out runners like crazy!

Usually, I’ll buy nursery strawberry crowns—those are the itty bitty beginnings of a strawberry start. I plant them in March, but the berries won’t be ready to harvest until the following summer. If you ask me, that’s a really long time to wait for a crop!

So I had set the little rooting ends of the runners in pots, to allow the roots to get established. Then last November, I cut the runners from the “mother plant” and transplanted the runners in new beds. 

Here’s the link to my blog post.

Strawberry crown starting spring growth!

Now, about four weeks before I can expect to see some blossoms (future berries), the new plants are looking very robust.

I’ll let you know if this “skip-a-year” experiment bears fruit—pun intended!

That evening, after all my planting, I had a wonderful little epiphany.

One year ago, at spring planting time, I had this strange indecision about where to plant what vegetable—crop rotation being one of the best ways to avoid pests and disease in your annual vegetable crops.

I had already created a garden map so help me figure out my rotations. Yet I was still paralyzed by doubt.

Where to plant it all? What if I pick the wrong spots? Which bed to put the potatoes and carrots, tomatoes and cukes; onion and garlic, beets and zukes…on and on it went. While nothing got in the ground!

I’ve read that it’s human nature to get overwhelmed when we are presented by too many choices—like when you’re in front of the toothpaste aisle at the supermarket, and there’s dozens upon dozens products and brands (and re-brands) to choose from.

Result: you just can’t figure out what to buy!

Anyway, that spring a year ago, my hemming and hawing was so bad my planting schedule was delayed by two or three weeks. Which at planting time is a lot.

I suppose my hesitancy stemmed from the challenging year John and I had experienced—more than the usual health and family concerns, with lots of extra decisions to make about finances, the future, and life in general.

On top of it all, we’d just lost three hens to wildlife in quick succession. And I wasn’t sure what to do about the other two girls, who weren’t doing very well—I think they had PTSD from all the bobcat incursions.

And my strange indecision seemed to culminate with my sorry veggie beds: too many choices to make.

That evening, though, after my productive day, I pulled out my map, studying it once again. Suddenly, I said to myself: Just. Do. It!

Really, what’s the worst that could happen? Not deciding, I was risking some crummy results with my food production. Besides, it’s not rocket science!

So after comparing each bed’s succession of plant families, I simply chose a crop from another plant family that hadn’t been in the bed for two or three years. 

I swiftly assigned each veggie crop to each bed on the map and called it good (as my husband John would say).

Garden rotations for 2023!

Whatever issues or setbacks crop up in the garden this year—and there will be plenty, that’s Mother Nature’s specialty—my indecision won’t be one of them!