Seed Starting in January - Snow Peas

The goal: have the earliest possible snow peas.

I always get antsy in January. As I've mentioned in the past, the Winter Solstice is my New Year's eve, and winter is, for me, a season of awakening, as the days grow longer. Even if they aren't really growing warmer, in the northern Willamette valley or Oregon, winter is usually pretty mild. In fact, first pea planting is Presidents Day in mid February.

One problem with that is our cold, often waterlogged soils, which make germination of direct planted seed difficult. So, what I like to do is to start the seed indoors and transplant the little seedlings. Usually, I'd wait to do this until the first week in February, but given that we're having a pretty mild January, I've decided to start the seed now, a couple of weeks early.

I grow snow peas. They are nice to work with in the early part of the year as they germinate relatively quickly, prefer cool weather, and tolerate frost and freezing weather well. If I loose a planting, I can always reboot quickly.

3 oz. paper bathroom cup

For this project I'll be using paper cups and potting mix to start the seed. Sometimes I use nursery containers or plug trays to start seed, and sometimes I use peat or coir* pellets. But I'm going to be starting a lot of seed, and I want to avoid transplant shock as much as possible. I want to make transplanting as easy on me as possible as well. I used to start my pea seed in 2" band pots, which made transplanting easy as I would just place the little pot in contact with the ground, but it also meant that at the end of the season I had to go out and pick up all the little pots. Using paper cups makes transplanting just as easy as the band pots, but I don't have to go out and pick up containers at the end of the season. They're not reusable, but at the price, about 2¢ each they're cost effective. I buy my potting soil by the yard and pay around $50/yard for it, so I figure around 1¢ per cup for that for a total of around 3¢ in materials.

I don't use the peat or coir pellets for things that I'm growing a lot of, because, even buying in bulk, I can't get a good price break unless I buy 1,000 at a time, and, even then, they're over twice as expensive as the paper cups with a bit of potting soil. I'll be setting out the seedlings at 6" intervals, so I'll need 2 pots per row foot. I'll be planting 200 row feet per succession in 50' rows, so I'll need to start 404 pots (101 per row) per planting. I can space the little cups so far apart because I'm placing 3 seeds in each cup, if I were direct seeding I'd place 2 seeds every 4". Because I'm hydrating (soaking) my seed, I should have a very high germination rate.

I trialed this method a couple of years ago and found it works pretty well for peas, beans, cucumbers and squash, as well as all sorts of leafy greens. I use the plain, small bathroom cups, not the antibacterial ones. For plants that need more room, I'll be using paper cone cups sold for use with water coolers. Those I'll detail in another article later this year.

Pea seed, hydrated and ready to go

When I soak seed prior to planting, I count it out, weigh or measure it first, especially when I'm going to place a specific number of seed in a specific number of containers. I don't want to come up short and I don't want to throw away seed. I like to use these little plastic food storage containers for hydrating seed. They have a lid so I don't have to worry about spills, and I can stack them out of the way. They also work great for storing dry seed.

Usually I'd only soak the seed for 8 hours or so, maybe overnight. But because it's the cool part of the year and the soaking seed was stored between 55° and 60° F, I let it soak for a couple of days. This way I can be sure that not only is it fully hydrated, but I can see that it's germinated as well.

Acrospire (shoot) development in pea seed. The acrospire looks like a little tail or spine growing just under the skin or husk of the seed. 

The seeds in both of the pictures above were soaked in the same batch and were at the same level in the container. Warm water was poured over the seed and the container covered then left in a room at 55°-60° F. The seed on the left of the left hand picture shows an acrospire that is about to emerge from the seed coat (skin). The seed on the left of the right hand picture has already begun to emerge. Another hour or so and this seed would be too delicate to handle without damaging or breaking off the acrospire.

When soaking for longer than a few hours, especially when it's very warm, care should be taken to place the seed prior to emergence of the acrospires and rootlets. The acrospire is the plant shoot that emerges from the body of the seed. It goes up and the rootlets go down. If you handle seed after the acrospire has emerged from the seed coat, it's easy to damage it or break it off, rendering the seed useless.

In cool environments (50° - 60° F) you have a couple of days from wetting the dry seed to placing the seed in growth medium. As the environment gets warmer the time from wetting to germination can shorten dramatically. In the summer, when temperatures are 70° F or higher, I allow no more than 24 hours from putting the dry seed in water to planting. I only hydrate large seed such as pea, bean or corn. I don't bother hydrating small seed like radish, mustard or seed for squash and cucumbers.

While the seed is hydrating, I prep the cups by cutting a cross in the bottom and partially filling with potting soil, then tamping. Cutting the bottom of each cup is important. It allows for drainage and it also allows the roots of the plants to grow out and, eventually, into the soil of the beds they're destined for. The cups also need to be place in a container to hold them. I usually place them in plug trays with large cells or in nursery trays. But, really, any container will do as long as it will drain excess water. You don't want the cups sitting in standing water.

Filling and tamping.

You can tamp the soil with anything that will fit in the cups. On the left is a measuring cup from a liquid cold medicine. On the right is a small nursery pot.

Seeding.

When the seed is ready, it's added to the cups, which are then topped with potting soil and I tamped down with my hands. After that it's just a matter of waiting for the plants to emerge and grow big enough to plant out. If I am delayed in planting, I may let the plants grow to 3 sets of leaves and harvest some of them above the bottom set. That gives me pea threads for salad greens while still leaving enough of the plant that I can set it in beds and grow it out for the pea pods.

I'll go over the bed prep and planting for these pea plants in another article. So stay tuned....

All content, including pictures, © Joanne Rigutto unless otherwise noted.

Low Tunnels, Winter Planting, and Season Extension

Red Oak Leaf lettuce, January 2011

To many people, winter is a time of rest for the garden. The days are short, the soil is cool (or frozen), and there's a lot or rain falling or snow on the ground.

But to me, winter is the time of beginnings because my New Year's Eve is the winter solstice.

I live in the northern Oregon Willamette valley, and our winters here are pretty mild. Only short periods of freezing weather, and usually a fair amount of rain. On the shortest day, we get about 8 hours of sunlight. Not enough to keep things growing like they do in July, but it's enough to keep plants in maintenance mode or, on sunny days, even slowly growing. In my opinion, the biggest challenge I have in my gardens during the winter are cool soil and waterlogged soil.

Back in 2010, I started looking at ways to grow produce in my gardens during the winter. The problems that needed to be dealt with and mitigated were cool soils and too much water in the soils. I already knew that these issues could be solved by using greenhouses but I didn't have those, nor did I have the money to buy one.

So, the alternative was to look at something smaller. My research lead me to low tunnels, which are truly amazing devices. They are inexpensive, portable, easy to configure in any way that works for a particular garden bed. They can be used on the flat or over raised beds. Easy and fast to set up, and take down as well. In cold weather they can be covered with greenhouse film. In warm weather they can be covered with floating row cover fabric or shade cloth, depending on what you're growing and the time of year. They can be used to get a jump start on spring, and extend the season on the back end of the year.

Celery, planted in late January 2011. The kneeling boards down the center of the tunnel mean that the tunnel doesn't have to be opened other than the ends to allow entry and exit.

But care needs to be taken, as a low tunnel with greenhouse film on a sunny and warm day can also turn into an oven. I found that out when I first started working with low tunnels. I had 120  72-count nursery trays (aka plug trays) in a tunnel one day. The little seedlings had only been up for a few days and were looking good. One day it got up to the low to mid 60s, but I didn't think anything of it because it was cloudy. Then the sun came out. Working in the gardens, I enjoyed the sunshine for a couple of hours. And then I went to check on the seedlings.... The tunnel had been sealed, and when the clouds parted and the sun started shining that tunnel turned into an oven. It was probably between 90° and 100° in that tunnel. If the plants in the tunnel had been larger they probably would have survived. But still being in the cotyledon stage, they fried. I lost 8,642 plugs of seedlings in just 2 hours on that day.

Lesson learned. Now, if it's going to be over 55°, especially if there's a chance of the sun coming out, the least I do it to open the ends of the tunnels. But usually, if the highs are going to be in the mid 50s, the danger of freezing temperatures is probably over, so the greenhouse film may not even be necessary and the tunnels will have floating row cover fabric over them. If, for some reason, they do still have  greenhouse film, I'll open the ends and roll up the sides during the day.

There are many ways to build low tunnels. My preferred style is bows made from 10' sticks of 3/4" schedule 40 PVC pipe over 5' wide beds. It's best to use schedule 40 PVC because it's more resistant to UV radiation and temperature fluctuations. A tunnel built with 10' sticks over a 5' wide bed will be approximately 40" tall, which gives the average person enough room to work in a closed tunnel when crawling down the center, and if working from the sides with the walls rolled up, the gardener only has to reach 30" (or less if you leave a center path.

Low tunnel set up for peas in February. The sides are anchored by blocks made of left over mortar (I'm a retired tile and stone installer).

I cover the tunnels with 12' wide greenhouse film or 12' wide floating row cover, which leaves one foot on either side for weights to anchor. Sand bags, rocks, soil, boards or other weights can be used to anchor the sides of a tunnel. Sand bags (or bags filled with soil) are the best weights to use as they are easy to move and won't damage film or fabric that flaps against them.

66" wide tunnel (that used to be my default width of beds). This tunnel's film is held down by boards. The ends of the tunnel are kept closed with pinch clamps that anchor the film to the end T-posts.

To anchor the bows of the tunnel, I use ground pins, a top rail, and T-posts. The ground pins are made from 4' round fiberglass rods normally used for moveable electric fencing. The rods can be cut with a side grinder using either a carborundum or diamond blade and the blade is used to shape the blunt end into a point, which makes driving it into the ground easier. Each rod is cut in half, making 2 2' ground pins. When driven into the ground to a depth of 12", they are sufficient to keep the bows in place. The ground pins are placed on either side of the bed at 5' intervals, and the pipe slid over them.

T-posts are driven into the ground at each end of the bed and the end bows are tied to them. A top rail of the same pipe that the bows are made of, is run down the center of the bows after they are installed, and anchored to the T-posts with string and the tops of the bows with duct tape. This makes a surprisingly sturdy frame to hold the film or fabric. I also like to lay plastic construction netting over the ridge pole and bows. This adds extra support to the film or fabric and helps to keep them from sagging when it's raining.

Low tunnel with netting on the sides and ends to keep chickens out of the tunnel when the film sides are raised.

All content and images, unless otherwise noted © Joanne Rigutto

Growing Micro Greens and Baby Greens

Microgreens and baby greens are very easy to grow and make for a nice quick crop for the garden. They're excellent in salads, some are very good for cooking.

If you're going to grow microgreens, you'll need lots of seed as you won't get as much food per seed as you will if you let the plants grow into baby greens. That's because a microgreen is harvested at the cotyledon stage or it may be harvested after the first few true leaves have emerged.

 

Radish microgreens (left) and Garden Cress microgreens (right) The radish has been harvested at the cotyledon stage, the garden cress has been harvested after the first few true leaves emerged. Some plants, like radish, need to be harvested no later than the cotyledon stage if they're to be eaten raw as the true leaves are tougher and have an unpleasant rough texture when raw. Others, like the garden cress, are very small and delicate even when 2 or 3 sets of true leaves have emerged, and are still very good raw.

When deciding what to grow for micro greens and baby greens, some things need to be taken into consideration. These are the 3 criteria I use when growing for home use: cost vs yield, will I eat them raw or cooked, and how will I grow them.

Cost vs Yield

Having grown many types of plants for both microgreens and baby greens, I've had the opportunity to evaluate them and track their yields. I grew microgreens and baby greens for restaurants one summer and they had me growing all sorts of interesting and delicious greens. Growing these types of crops can be somewhat expensive, and that's because this type of production uses a lot of seed. It was microgreens production that caused me to start buying my seed by the pound for many types.

If I'm growing microgreens, I'll be harvesting them at the cotyledon stage or just a little older. The cotyledon are the first two leaves put out by the plant, but are not true leaves, so there's really not much there to harvest. Restaurants usually use them only as a fancy garnish, and they are sold at extremely high prices because they are very expensive, in terms of seed, to produce. Some, even when harvested as baby greens, are still pretty expensive to grow, because they have small, delicate leaves, so the yield is measured in ounces, not pounds or heads. The radish and garden cress pictured above are good examples of these.

If you're going to eat them raw, some, like the radish, really need to be harvested at the cotyledon stage, but if you plan on steaming or adding them to soups, you can let them grow into quite large baby greens. Others, such as mustard varieties, will change in flavor as they grow. Mustard varieties can be quite spicy when they grow their true leaves. So they can go from having just a little bite as microgreens to being like horseradish once they're 4" tall, especially when grown in a hothouse or during the warm months of the year. But, if you let the greens continue to grow, you'll get more greens for your money.

As far as cost of seed, Radish is one of the least expensive and will give you the most volume in yield for microgreens. The fancy mustards such as red streaks are some of the more expensive seed and will yield less as microgreens because of the small, delicate leaves.

My recommendation is to buy at least 4 ounces of seed to start, and when you decide what you like, then buy your seed by the pound or half pound at a time. A couple of seed suppliers who I like to use for bulk seed are Mountain Valley Seed Co. and Kitazawa Seed Company. Both have a very nice selection, and both sell seed in bulk quantities.

Will I eat them raw or cooked?

As I mentioned above, some plants are best raw at the cotyledon stage, some I'd rather let grow to the baby green stage so I get more yield. Others though, are best cooked if I let them grow true leaves. So, what I'm going to grow will depend on what I'm going to use it for. Below is a list of some of the crops I like to grow as microgreens and baby greens.

• Radish - best at the cotyledon stage if eating raw, otherwise, let grow some true leaves which are very good steamed, used in soups, and other cooked dishes. One of the things about radishes that always amazes me is how fast they are. During the warm months, when started in a warm greenhouse, radish will go from seed to harvest at the cotyledon stage in as little as 5 days, and 10-14 days for baby greens.
• Mustard varieties - Good at the cotyledon stage, but not much yield, so I prefer to allow them to grow into baby greens. They can get hot, and Mizuna mustard can become bitter, when too mature or when grown in hot weather. Heat is good if you like horseradish tasting heat, and you can eat them raw in salads or on sandwiches. Otherwise, light cooking will turn the heat to sweet. There are a wide variety of types of mustards, from broad leaf frilly mustards like Southern Giant Curled, to deeply veined green and red varieties like Red Giant, and lacy varieties such as Red Streaks and Mizuna.
• Herbs such as arugula, cilantro, basil, fennel, etc. - I prefer to let these grow to baby green size and they are all very good raw or cooked at this stage.
• Cress - All varieties (watercress, upland cress, garden cress, curled cress) are good as baby greens and add a peppery accent to anything they're used in. They can be used raw or in cooked recipes. Upland cress is kind of cool looking as it grows in a rosette.

Baby beet greens = delicious!

• Beet - My preference are Bull's Blood and Detroit Dark Red. Both are pretty reasonable as far as cost of seed goes. As microgreens, the dark red leaves and stems make a striking garnish to any salad or cooked dish if you want to do something fancy. Grown into baby greens, the leaves and stems are very delicate and make a really nice addition to any salad. They have the flavor of young Swiss Chard, and I actually prefer growing beet baby greens instead of Swiss Chard because beet seed is less expensive than chard. Beets are one of the longest to germinate, and they're comparatively slow growing to boot. The beet greens shown above took about 6 - 7 weeks to go from seed to the baby green stage. If I remember right, the leaves were about 3" long.
• Amaranth - like beet, amaranth is a little slow off the mark but makes a beautiful baby green. And the seed is very reasonably priced when purchased by the pound. Amaranth also comes in a variety of different colors.
• Onion - I think that, given the price of the seed and the amount of greens you get, onions are better left to scallion and bulb onion production. I don't grow onion microgreens for myself for these reasons.
• Squash - Here's one that seems a bit odd, but actually, squash seed is pretty inexpensive and the microgreens are very large and have good flavor when used in salads or lightly cooked in stir fry. Squash leaves are edible and the very young leaves, steamed or cooked in other recipes are pretty good.
• Sunflower is another plant that can be grown for microgreens. They're best at the cotyledon stage and should be used as squash microgreens.
• Corn - This is an unusual microgreen. It's more accurately called a shoot. The plant is harvested when 3"-6" tall. It can be grown green, or, if covered and blanched will make it a pale yellow or cream color. The shoots have a grassy flavor with a little hint of licorice. The best seed to grow is popcorn. You can buy it at the store (yes the grocery store in the popcorn section). Buy regular popcorn, not microwave popcorn. Aside from being too expensive, microwave popcorn already has butter (or butter flavored oil) on it, which will interfere with germination.
• Pea - I prefer to use snow pea seed to grow pea baby greens, also known as pea threads. My favorite snow pea is a variety called Mammoth Melting Sugar, although Oregon Giant is also very good. The nice thing about growing peas is that if you let them get 3 pairs of true leaves, you can cut above the bottom two, and plant the plug out into the garden. Cutting will set the plant back, but you can grow it on for a regular crop.

A word of caution when buying seed to grow microgreens and baby greens: Don't buy treated or coated seed. Only use plain, untreated, seed. Treated or coated seed is OK for crops that you'll be picking at maturity, but you don't know what the treatment is, what's in it, or what, if any, residue will be present on the greens, especially those harvested at the cotyledon stage.

How Will I Grow Them?

72 count plug trays with newly emerged seedlings for microgreens and baby greens.

I've tried lots of ways of growing microgreens and baby greens, but the easiest and most cost effective way, at least for me, is to grow them in plug trays using potting soil with a light topping such as sharp sand (aka clean mason's sand). The trays are relatively inexpensive, costing only a dollar or two each, are economical on the potting soil, and are easy to handle. If I'm growing baby greens, I can set the tray in contact with a mulch such as grass clippings, old hay, or leaf mold, and the fine roots from the plants will find their way out the drain holes and into the mulch. This gives the plants some nutrition, and it makes it possible to pull the tray without too much trouble when I remove it from the bed to harvest the greens. This system also has the benefit of being weed free. Because the potting soil is clean, and the trays over their mulch bed suppress weed germination and growth, when I pull the tray for harvest all I have to do is cut the greens with a pair of scissors and I have greens that are ready to eat that need only a light washing to be ready for a salad.

Trays of microgreens being grown on a mulch bed in a low tunnel.

Harvesting baby Violeto bok choi.

Once the microgreens or baby greens are ready for harvest, I like to bring the trays into the greenhouse where I have benches. I grasp the plant just at the soil line and pull the plant, plug and all, out of the cell. I cut the plant away from the plug, and then the spent plugs can be composted. Because they are still weed free, once they are composted, I have more soil to use to grow more greens. The trays, if cared for, will last a few years. So the whole system is very efficient and cost effective, especially if you price baby greens at the store.

So give these crops a try. I think you'll enjoy growing them.

I'll probably be trialing some other methods this year and if I come up with something easier or more cost effective, I'll write an article about it. I'm always experimenting, looking for a better way...

All content and images, unless otherwise noted © Joanne Rigutto