| Greetings from Start A Garden,
Are you ready?
We are just a few days away from April and that means it’s time to start preparing our seeds for this amazing growing season.
Good news! You’ve already have the complicated stuff out of the way. You now know what you can plant in the containers you have....or know what containers you need in order to plant your veggies in this year. The Start A Garden platform makes that part oh-so-easy.
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| There are a number of plants ideal for starting indoors. If broccoli, eggplant, cauliflower, spinach, kale and winter squash are on your list, then get ready. Indoor seed starting is knocking on your door.
Why start seeds indoors?
You have the option of purchasing plants that simply need transplanted to the garden, or starting from seed.
Starting from seed takes a few more weeks, but it’s so cheap and incredibly rewarding to watch your crop through the entire growing process.
Not all plants need to be started indoors but the “early spring” plants do. We start seeds indoors so that your seedlings are protected from cold temperatures and cold soil.
For most plants it takes 4-6 weeks to grow your seed to the size where it’s ready to be planted outside.
The goal with starting indoors is to prepare your plant so that its mature enough to move to a larger container or garden space when the ground and temperature warms up. The key date is “after your last frost.”
Planting your vegetables in the ground too early, while there is still a chance of frost, can destroy your crop before it even gets started. That’s why knowing your estimated frost date is so important. Here’s a handy online tool that will tell you the probability of the last frost date for your area. This photo shows an example of how to read the chart for your specific area.
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| | | Now that you know when your last frost date is, it’s time to strategize.
Here’s an example of how it works.
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| There is a 10% probability that the last frost date will be May 17th or later, in this region. That means I should be able to safely plant my veggies outdoors on or after that date.
This year, I’m going to start my veggies from seeds. Using the Start A Garden spinner, I picked Leaf Lettuce and Kale to start with this year. |
| | Both take about 4-6 weeks for my seeds to grow into plants before I can transplant them into the ground or in a container. I should safely be able to plant outdoors by May 17th (to avoid frost). That means I need to start my seeds indoors by mid-April. |
| More to come on seeds.
We’ll be talking A LOT about seeds and seed starting over the next few weeks, so don’t worry. We’ll give you everything you need to know. That’s what we do at Start A Garden.
Step 1 is to simply know what veggies you want to start with and a rough timeframe as to when you can safely transplant them outside. (aka your "last frost date").
Next up we’ll be talking about how to start your seeds indoors and then which containers to use for both indoor seeding and outdoor container gardening.
Did you know that some containers are actually bad for your plants? We’ll give you all of the details on which containers work best. That’s all coming up over the next few weeks. Stay tuned!
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| We are so excited for your planting season.
The Start A Garden Team |
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What features would you like to see?
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| We would love to hear about your experience as an early user of the Start A Garden platform. Our team spent an entire year building the site to make this an incredible resource. What do you think? Tell us about your experience and how we can make this even better for you. Your feedback will be so helpful. |
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