gardening
BY RACHEL FOSTER
Lively Organic
Farm Stand
Great Starts
Convenience wins out over economics
Tera Rutecki
T
o all the people who grow and sell
vegetable starts, thank you! Those
little trays of baby plants, locally
grown and ready to go, are well worth the
money for a casual gardener like me. I love
eating out of the garden, but there are only
two of us. I don’t need to grow a heap of
food, and I don’t have a lot of time to harvest
and put food by. Besides, I like to support
the local farmers, who grow many things far
better than I can.
Growing vegetables from seed is much
more economical — as long as you are
successful. But if your situation is similar to
mine, there’s a good chance that a seed packet
holds more seed than you really need for one
season. Admittedly, seed properly stored
remains viable for another year or several,
depending on the crop. But if the economy
of growing things from seed depends on
keeping seed from year to year, do you have
the right conditions to store seed properly?
Are you well organized? And how do you
compensate for declining germination rates?
Most things are not diffi cult to grow from
seed, if you pay attention. This is especially
true of crops sown directly in the ground,
such as salad greens, carrots, squash and
beans. Growing certain things from seed can,
however, be quite a challenge if you have
pest problems. In my neighborhood, every
salad and carrot bed has to be protected from
cats. That’s a minor challenge compared to
dealing with the world’s largest population of
mollusks. The slugs here are as big as mice,
and snails festoon every other plant on a cool
morning. Spinach? Forget it.
Then you have to worry about seedlings
drying out on a sunny day. Fresh, healthy
starts are reliable and require a bit less
vigilance. Starts may seem expensive, but
they help me produce organic food far more
cheaply than I can buy it, and very little goes
to waste. For me, at least, convenience wins
out.
When conditions are right, high-quality
starts can double in size in a day or two. Good
soil preparation, followed by careful and
immediate watering in, ensures they grow
away strongly. For six starts, I work a handful
of organic fertilizer into the soil before I
plant. To be on the safe side, especially in
early spring when soils are cool, I follow the
advice of a grower who suggested watering
at planting and every couple of weeks
thereafter with liquid organic fertilizer. That
makes it pretty hard to fail.
This year I missed the one good window
in late winter for planting peas, so I used
starts in April. I planted a tray of snow and
snap pea starts around a plant tower and got
a hefty crop, more than enough for two of us
and occasional guests for the three or four
weeks the pea plants were producing well. In
warm weather I picked them every morning
for two or three days, until I had enough for
a meal. It worked out fi ne. Last year I did the
same with green beans.
One of my favorite candidates for
purchasing as starts is cilantro. Six sturdy
little plants produce copious greens for
several weeks. Before those plants go to seed,
another tray goes in the ground. Each tray
costs less than two bunches at the market,
and there are no leftovers going slimy in the
fridge. More importantly, we can use cilantro
on the spur of the moment, so we get to enjoy
it more often.
Starts seem doubly worth it at this time of
year, when we should be gearing up again for
a fall garden. Some people grow their own
starts from seed, keeping them under cover
to avoid the scorching sun while they wait
for some vacant ground. Since I fi nd that, for
instance, six kale plants each of two varieties
is plenty (and we like kale!) starts make more
sense for me than seed. I’ll still sow short-
term fall and overwintering salad crops,
because I can do that when the weather cools
down in September. There’s more space in
the garden by then.
If you are a serious vegetable gardener and
you need lots of produce or desire specifi c
varieties, seed is undoubtedly the way to go.
Maybe you save your own seed, or share
packets of purchased seed with a group of
friends. If none of these apply, and especially
if you are a beginner, I recommend farmer-
grown starts. We are blessed with several
farmers who reliably offer an amazing
variety of high-quality starts, practically
year-round. Just be sure to shop where the
trays have not been allowed to dry out or get
root bound. I buy most of mine at farmers
markets, from people like Tera of Morning
Sun Organics.
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Now open at Friendly St. & 28th
Tuesdays 11am - 5pm
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tomatoes, fresh bi-color
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Fun food for fabulous friends
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Come Visit Us!
Rachel Foster of Eugene is a writer and garden consultant.
She can be reached at rfoster@efn.org
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EUGENE WEEKLY JULY 26, 2012 29