Transplants

Until this year I didn't really fully appreciate all the advantages of starting seedlings indoors and transplanting them outdoors when the soil is ready for them. I thought the only real advantage was to get a bit of a head start on the season.

Now, however, I realize there are many, many advantages to starting seedlings NOT in the main growing bed. Among these advantages are:

• It takes much less water to water seedlings when they are not surrounded by the many, many square feet of empty soil they will eventually occupy. 

• It is much easier to keep seedlings evenly moist when they take up a small amount of space. Most seedlings don't grow well if they alternate between wet and dry soil.

• You can protect the seedlings from insect and disease damage and from birds and other seed-eating creatures and put them out when they are able to withstand most of these.

• They are protected from sudden plunges in temperature (or from the cover on the hooped bed blowing off on the very night the temperature sinks to 22 degrees).

And of course, starting vegetables from seeds has a huge advantage over purchasing plants, both in terms of cost savings and what varieties you are able to grow. There is such a limited selection of varieties if you don't plant from seed.

Things that I wish I had started from seed indoors before transplanting outside:

• Broccoli and cauliflower, because I fear that by the time they are ready to produce the scorching heat will have arrived and we won't be getting much.

• Basil. I think the alternating wet/dry is slowing it down and causing pretty uneven growth throughout the various basil areas. They would be doing fine, I think, if they got watered daily without fail. Sometimes I fail!

• Melons. I think these would have done great over a heated germination pad. The little sakata melon seedlings are just now finally starting to take off after having sat with nothing but their first set of true leaves (after the cotyledons) for quite some time, probably because our weather is now consistently above 85 during the day. I hope they'll continue to flourish and bring us melons!

• Eggplant. Ditto.

• Peppers. Ditto.

There are also a few things, like the peas, that I wish we had started earlier, but we sure got a much earlier start than we did in 2011, and I suspect we'll be even more prepared to let the cow out of the barn in December/January instead of February. It takes a while to adjust to the rhythms of southern vegetable gardening!