The Modern Victory Garden

Today turned out to be mostly about onions. In order to clear out the seed starting area in the shop for the first big round of 2009 seed starting, I had to transplant the bunching onions and the remaining lettuce starts into the unheated greenhouse. The bunching onions were definitely ready for the move as their roots were starting to get pot bound. Here's a picture of them in their new home in the greenhouse.

These are "Pacific Pearl" bunching onions. This little planting will provide fresh onions after the storage onions run out and prior to the main 2009 crop of onions coming to maturity. Another big part of the main crop of onions is the patch of multiplier onions and shallots that I planted last fall. These provide a bounty of smaller sized good storing onions and the shallots while also quite small and good keepers - are particularly prized by those of us who like to cook due to their excellent flavor. The multiplier onions seem to be off to a great start this year and already have quite a bit of growth on them. This is a picture of them as of this morning.

This same bed also has the soft neck garlic and the shallots. The elephant garlic is in another bed and is really doing well too. Since onions are a big component of my routine cooking, I plant quite a lot of them in the main season garden. In addition to the multiplier onions and shallots, there is always a big patch of storage onions and another of sweet onions for slicing and fresh eating. This year I am planting "Candy" for the sweet onions and will be growing "Copra" again for the storage onions. I had intended to try a new storage onion ("Talon")  but the seed was back ordered and I could not wait any longer to get the onions started. I will save the "Talon" for next year. I dug into my seed reserve stash and pulled out a packet of "Copra" and got the seed starting for 2009 underway.

Today I planted two full trays of seeds. The ending count is twelve 6-packs of "Candy" onions, ten 6-packs of "Copra" onions, and two 6-packs of "Super Gourmet Blend" lettuces. Here are the trays of empty plastic planting cells.

Some of them are new but many of these are ones I have previously used and just rinsed out for reuse. If handled carefully these plastic seed starting packs will last through many seasons. I place them in the garden bed to add the germinating mix so that the extra and spillage ends up just landing in the growing bed area which keeps my clean-up work to a minimum and is a benefit to the garden soil. Once filled with germinating mix and tamped down well, they are thoroughly watered and are then ready for planting.

I use my finger to make a small depression in the center of each cell and then add approximately 2 seeds. Sometimes my fingers get clumsy and more seeds end up in the depression but I try to keep to 2 so that my thinning later on is as minimal as possible. I then press the seeds into the soil to bring them in full contact with the wet soil mix. At this point I use a finely crushed layer of perlite to provide the remainder of the covering for the seeds. I prefer this method because the perlite provides better drainage and reflects light back up at the baby plants - both of which reduce the likelihood of damping off disease occurring.

Once the seeds are covered, they are watered carefully and then a plastic lid is placed over each flat of seedlings. The plastic cover helps trap heat and moisture and improves the speed of germination. This cover is only kept on until the seedlings have all emerged, after which it is promptly removed to avoid excess moisture on the young seedlings that would encourage bacterial growth and disease problems.

The final step is to place them on the heat mat under the grow lights in the shop.

The 2009 seed starting effort is well under way!