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Growing from seed or seedling?
This is a common question for backyard gardeners who form part of the ever growing urban agriculture movement. People who want to grow their own vegetables, fruit and herbs, and achieve some level of self sufficiency and reduce their carbon foot print.
It’s an important question because it not only relates to the physical practice of food gardening, but it also connects to the feeling one gets from gardening and the potential to gain a deeper experience from growing your own food.
City people involved in growing vegies are generally short of time and committed to many other things. They like to take short cuts to save time. So buying a seedling is a very enticing short cut when you want to get your vegetable garden underway now. Someone else has done the work of carefully tending the young plant from seed, when it is in its most fragile stage.
Growing from seed requires you to very diligently monitor the seed during its growth to ensure: its getting enough moisture, the appropriate heat/climate, has the right soil mix and is located in a place where it will not get pounded by extremes in weather or eaten by pests as soon as it comes up. The seed also needs to be good quality, as it is difficult to see from the exterior of a seed if it’s worth planting. You then need to decide on the right time to move the seedling, if the seed has germinated, out into your garden.
Why not just go to the seedling shop and buy your bush bean seedling and place it straight into your garden, no messing around with checking the seedlings each day and making sure they are happy and comfortable . You can watch your seedling grow in your garden, but there are some hidden traps:
1. The seedlings may have been grown out of season, i.e. grown in a temperature controlled environment and sold to you in a healthy state , but when they hit the real climate of your garden, they weaken and die. This is a very common experience for food gardeners.
2. You may not know how the seedlings were grown and whether any artificial stimulants were applied to make them look robust. Artificially stimulated seedlings are not likely to survive in your garden.
3. You may buy the seedlings on impulse after visiting a nursery and not really know if it’s the right time to plant the seedlings based on your local climate. Planting at the wrong time will either stunt the seedling growth or bring about its early demise.
4. If you want to grow a big amount of food, seedlings can be very expensive and you would need to drive your car to the nurserym, thereby contributing to CO2 by just buying them.
5. You miss the opportunity to be involved in the seed to seed process with growing food, a marvellous process which adds a level of magic to food gardening which you cannot know until you do it.
My own experience in hobby food growing is that I will normally grow from seed and this would always be organically grown seed from my own garden (number one preference) or from an organic seed supplier. Seeds propagated in my own garden from healthy plants have already commenced their adaption to my garden conditions, so they are more likely to germinate and be healthy plants than any seed propagated elsewhere, so long as I have looked after the seed properly.
I will resort to seedlings when I know its ideal conditions to plant a certain type of plant, from climate and planetary points of view and I do not have any seedlings of my own coming up in my seed trays. I would normally only buy seedlings from a supplier who was local and had propagated the seedlings locally. Such a supplier may not be available to all gardeners, so you should be insistent on asking these questions from your seedling seller.
By growing from seed and then using some of your own seed from the plants you have grown, you get to observe and experience a process which is not dissimilar to how we live our lives. I find this experience helps in gaining clarity for reflecting on daily activities and bringing balance into life. Of course, you need to make the time for inner reflection.
The seed process starts with the dormancy or sleep like state, then the chaos of its transformation into something else with root and stem. Then it comes out into the world and draws upon the forces around it to grow. When it is strong enough, it is ready to flower and bring something beautiful into the world. This flowering then leads to another state of chaos in the plant where the seed is formed, the blue print of the next plant. Our lives are filled with: dormancy, flowering, chaos, order out of chaos, new life, more chaos and transformation out of what we do each day, just as it is with plants.
To me, the opportunity to deepen one s thinking from participating in plant growth is actually more important that the food grown. It helps to develop a healthy attitude to life, which then flows back into your food gardening. It’s what I call gardening with soul . This is where your real green thumb is hidden.
Peter Kearney www.cityfoodgrowers.com.au
This is a common question for backyard gardeners who form part of the ever growing urban agriculture movement. People who want to grow their own vegetables, fruit and herbs, and achieve some level of self sufficiency and reduce their carbon foot print.
It’s an important question because it not only relates to the physical practice of food gardening, but it also connects to the feeling one gets from gardening and the potential to gain a deeper experience from growing your own food.
City people involved in growing vegies are generally short of time and committed to many other things. They like to take short cuts to save time. So buying a seedling is a very enticing short cut when you want to get your vegetable garden underway now. Someone else has done the work of carefully tending the young plant from seed, when it is in its most fragile stage.
Growing from seed requires you to very diligently monitor the seed during its growth to ensure: its getting enough moisture, the appropriate heat/climate, has the right soil mix and is located in a place where it will not get pounded by extremes in weather or eaten by pests as soon as it comes up. The seed also needs to be good quality, as it is difficult to see from the exterior of a seed if it’s worth planting. You then need to decide on the right time to move the seedling, if the seed has germinated, out into your garden.
Why not just go to the seedling shop and buy your bush bean seedling and place it straight into your garden, no messing around with checking the seedlings each day and making sure they are happy and comfortable . You can watch your seedling grow in your garden, but there are some hidden traps:
1. The seedlings may have been grown out of season, i.e. grown in a temperature controlled environment and sold to you in a healthy state , but when they hit the real climate of your garden, they weaken and die. This is a very common experience for food gardeners.
2. You may not know how the seedlings were grown and whether any artificial stimulants were applied to make them look robust. Artificially stimulated seedlings are not likely to survive in your garden.
3. You may buy the seedlings on impulse after visiting a nursery and not really know if it’s the right time to plant the seedlings based on your local climate. Planting at the wrong time will either stunt the seedling growth or bring about its early demise.
4. If you want to grow a big amount of food, seedlings can be very expensive and you would need to drive your car to the nurserym, thereby contributing to CO2 by just buying them.
5. You miss the opportunity to be involved in the seed to seed process with growing food, a marvellous process which adds a level of magic to food gardening which you cannot know until you do it.
My own experience in hobby food growing is that I will normally grow from seed and this would always be organically grown seed from my own garden (number one preference) or from an organic seed supplier. Seeds propagated in my own garden from healthy plants have already commenced their adaption to my garden conditions, so they are more likely to germinate and be healthy plants than any seed propagated elsewhere, so long as I have looked after the seed properly.
I will resort to seedlings when I know its ideal conditions to plant a certain type of plant, from climate and planetary points of view and I do not have any seedlings of my own coming up in my seed trays. I would normally only buy seedlings from a supplier who was local and had propagated the seedlings locally. Such a supplier may not be available to all gardeners, so you should be insistent on asking these questions from your seedling seller.
By growing from seed and then using some of your own seed from the plants you have grown, you get to observe and experience a process which is not dissimilar to how we live our lives. I find this experience helps in gaining clarity for reflecting on daily activities and bringing balance into life. Of course, you need to make the time for inner reflection.
The seed process starts with the dormancy or sleep like state, then the chaos of its transformation into something else with root and stem. Then it comes out into the world and draws upon the forces around it to grow. When it is strong enough, it is ready to flower and bring something beautiful into the world. This flowering then leads to another state of chaos in the plant where the seed is formed, the blue print of the next plant. Our lives are filled with: dormancy, flowering, chaos, order out of chaos, new life, more chaos and transformation out of what we do each day, just as it is with plants.
To me, the opportunity to deepen one s thinking from participating in plant growth is actually more important that the food grown. It helps to develop a healthy attitude to life, which then flows back into your food gardening. It’s what I call gardening with soul . This is where your real green thumb is hidden.
Peter Kearney www.cityfoodgrowers.com.au