Want to grow a bountiful spring garden? The time to act is now
Want to grow your own veggies? Now is the perfect time to start preparing!
With grocery prices on the rise, you might be considering growing your own garden this spring. March is the perfect time to start planting seeds indoors, and if you're unsure how to begin, gardening expert and author Niki Jabbour is here to help.
The cost of a pack of seeds is significantly lower than buying a plant from the garden centre when it's warm enough to plant outdoors.
But what do you need to get started?
Jabbour says investing in a simple grow light is a great place to start "because you can start one flat of seedlings, which is quite a few seedlings.”
Gardening expert and author Niki Jabbour gestures toward a grow light behind her. (The Weather Network)
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If a grow light is not an option, you can also just use a sunny window to start growing everything from vegetables and herbs to flowers.
The main key to success for starting seeds indoors is light and time: you don’t want to start too early or too late—the pack your seeds come in will have instructions on the side.
“For example, tomatoes are started inside six to eight weeks before your last expected frost date, so for my garden, that’s going to be late May, so I’m starting my tomatoes indoors in late March, and that’s going to give them eight weeks of indoor growth,” Jabbour explains.
Onion seeds will need 10 to 12 weeks.
“Generally, you’re planting them at a depth about two times their diameter, so, not very deep,” she says.
If you don't have a grow light, place your seedlings in the sunniest part of your home. (The Weather Network)
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When it comes to watering, you’ll only need to water once or twice for the first couple of weeks because the soil should initially be damp and the plants aren’t growing or using much of that water at first. It shouldn’t be sopping wet or very dry, just lightly damp.
Once leaves appear, you can start to fertilize, and then you can harden them off before they go into the garden by gradually acclimatizing them to outdoor growing conditions.
“Which means putting them in some shade for a couple of days first and then giving them more light over 5 to 6 days, and then they’ll be ready for the garden,” Jabbour says.
Jabbour is a speaker at events called “Seedy Saturdays,” which happen from coast to coast, where you can pick up seeds from local seed companies and talk to the growers themselves. You can go to seeds.ca and click on events to find one happening in your area.