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Starting Your Summer Garden Indoors - Don't Hurry!

© Mary Henry

When I moved to Minnesota three and a half years ago, I traded a growing season that averaged 183 days for one that averages only 122. With statistics like these, it's easy for me to see why I start seeds indoors. On New Year's Day, I'm looking at planting my beans a half year away! Never mind that starting them indoors is the only way I can have my favorite heirlooms or specialty flowers, I can't stand the wait. I start to itch just about the time the seed catalogs begin arriving. Though I try to make the planning phase last a long time, when I finally get the order in the mail, the seed can't come fast enough! I really love putting together the trays and soil, making out my labels and planting the seeds. After they are carefully watered and set on the heat mats under the plant lights, their humidity domes in place, I begin the hopeful watch for the first tiny green sprouts. As a child, Christmas morning was no more exciting to me than the appearance of my first seedlings is today.

I spent my early gardening years starting the seed on windowsills. I lived in the South then and the seedlings were already long and lanky by the time I planted them out. Windowsills are even less satisfactory to hurry-up gardeners like me in this climate. If I started them when I was ready instead of calculating the proper time, I would have plants too large for their containers that would have to have water almost hourly for their cramped roots to survive. After frequently losing most of my crop in just a couple of busy, distracted days, I finally noticed that the ones that did get set out never made much of a crop. That's when I got smart and set calender limits for myself. Here's how it works:

When the seed packet says:

"Transplant to the garden as soon as the ground can be worked." That means when the ground has thawed and dried enough to dig. That is usually some time in mid to late April here.

". . .when all danger of frost has passed." For this part of zone 4b that averages around May 12. We use Mother's Day as the Rule of Thumb.

". . .when the ground has warmed." Waiting for warm soil in a northern climate is like watching for the pot to boil, you think it will never happen, but it finally does - around Memorial Day.

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