Planting for a Four Season Harvest, Part 2
A Window
"Greenhouse"
A sunny window is my
"greenhouse." Eggplant, pepper, and tomato
go in a heated room; the others, more hardy, in a cool bedroom.
The tender seedlings are removed from the sill at night, but the room
itself is cooler than in daytime. Except on very cold nights, I
merely draw the shade between the glass and the comparatively hardy
crops. These methods give good results (I admit a greenhouse
would give better); if there are failures, it is my fault. Once
I forgot to take flats of eggplant and tomato out of the window at
night. It was above freezing; the seedlings
didn't die, but they
stood still in growth thereafter, and weren't worth setting out in the
garden. Eggplant especially must be coddled and can suffer no
setback. I find 10 weeks necessary for growing eggplant seedlings
in the house the way I do. Under controlled greenhouse
temperatures, 7-8 weeks is enough.
During their stay inside,
seedlings must be transplanted when they are
a convenient size to handle. Best spacing in the new flat is 3 to
4 inches each way. Tomatoes benefit from a second transplanting
inside --- I don't always bother --- perhaps to a peat pot that can be
set directly into the ground later on.
To be continued....
Tirrell, R. 1966, February. Planting for a 4-Season
Harvest. Organic Gardening and
Farming.
Reprinted by permission of Organic Gardening magazine. Copyright
Rodale, Inc., U.S.A. All rights reserved.
www.organicgardening.com.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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