March is a great time to start your vegetable and flower seeds indoors. You can use any container. Here is how I am doing mine.
I took the plastic lids off my storage boxes and filled it with seed starting soil. I moistened the soil and laid the seeds on top of the soil. I am getting a bumper crop. Keep them moist and in the sun. On warm days, they go on the porch. Tomatoes grow quickly. In May, they all go outside.
I am a do it myself person and made this method up. It works.
By bali from Summerhill, PA
This page contains the following solutions.
I was sitting here reading some of my gardening notes from 2015. I made a lot of mistakes last year. Hopefully, the notes will help make this year's gardening more fruitful and with less work. One thing I like to try is planting seed from hybrid fruit and veggies.
After my garden is tilled, quite a few rocks get dug up. If they are about the size of a fist, I put one at each end of each row of seeds planted or in the middle of a hill of squash to mark the spot.
When I cut the root end off of scallions, I plant them in a pot on my porch and within a week or two, the tops have grown enough to use them. I do the same with any root vegetable and soon I have a free, healthy alternative to buying greens for salad, etc.
I do this each and every year for my tomatoes and peppers. When I am cutting/slicing my tomatoes and bell peppers, hot peppers, banana peppers, I slice them on a paper towel.
When you shop greenhouses in the spring, you may have noticed that some types of vegetables are rarely available as transplants; e.g. beets, peas, and carrots. That is because these types of vegetables grow best when sown directly into garden soil.
When planting your seed rows, plant a few onions on each end of the row so you can tell where the rows of slow germinating seeds are. By the time the onions are ready to pull, the seeds will have sprouted.
Grow vegetable seeds in smaller pots or a small garden plot. The seeds will grow better than being just scattered around a big plot. When you throw seeds in a wide space, there is little chance that you see the tiny plant growing.
I use my flower pots from last year that already have soil in them. When I transplant, I then use the pot for my summer flowers. Works great!
Here are the questions asked by community members. Read on to see the answers provided by the ThriftyFun community.
I am a beginning gardener and I would like to grow veggies with my kids. I was wondering what seeds are easiest. Also, can I use seeds I already have in the house like a peach seed or apple seeds? Can I plant seeds I cut from cucumbers? Do I need to dry out the seeds first? I'm just curious what will grow and what won't?
Hardiness Zone: 9a
By michelle from Phoenix, AZ
Tomatos seeds are great, right from the tomato and into a hole in the ground.
You can cut up a potato that has started to root and plant that. It will grow into beautiful green leaves and after the season there will be baby potatoes under them.
Also, a great thing to do is to buy a bag of pinto beans and plant them all out in the garden. They grow bushels and bushels of green beans and you can eat them off the vine, they are so good.
I am sure that sweet potatoes are the same, they have such beautiful vines, they are related to the morning glory vine. Sweet potatoes are great detoxifiers for the body.
I dont have much luck with carrots for some reason.
Most seasons, I save seeds from when I eat tomatoes and throw them out in the garden. Whichever ones come up, when I see them and they are about two or three inces high I transplant them where I want them to be. I throw seeds of tomaotos to test the soil to...if they come up the soil is good, if they dont, it needs a little organic matter dug into it. I don't really mess with all that very much. I am partial tot he green beans from pinto beans and the tomatoes!
Blessings,
Robyn
Michelle, here in the low desert, you can grow something during every season. I have snow peas bearing right now and lots of lettuce. I have some snow peas where I planted them last year, came up from some dropped. More and more people are growing their own food.
I have a gardening group on Yahoo, PhoenixGardenersExchange. If you would like to join, we have Master Gardeners in the group who are always willing to answer questions. Pat
Michelle, I love to try interesting things and I have planted and grown an unusual plant from a Mango seed. Yep, ate the Mango, cleaned the seed up a bit and stuck in a pot of potting soil. Took about a month and lo and behold up came a sprout. After it's developed its second set of leaves, pinch the entire top off (sorry, I hate to do that too) and soon it will begin to make more leaves and branch into a tree.
You know what great for kids and grows so easy is beans. Kids love to watch them grow and they sprout within a few days. You can even put them in a papertowel with a few seeds and wet the papertowel and stick in into a plastic baggie so the kids can see it happening. After they sprout you can take the papertowel and put them in a pot and watch them produce!
I am a beginner vegetable gardener. Which seeds grow the fastest? Thanks!
By Trudy from in the woods, PA
Once again this year I purchased my vegetable seed packets to start inside. Other years I started them with special starting soil, placed them in a sunny window and kept them watered. I always end up with spindly plants with weak stems. How do I get stronger plants?
Hardiness Zone: 6a
By MaggieGrace from PA
