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There are advantages to growing plants from seed ahead of the normal planting season and transplanting them as seedlings in your garden.
Virgin soils harbor insects and diseases. These frequently kill seeds just as they are sprouting or pushing through toward the light.
Cold soils delay germination. Prolonged germination and retarded growth have a permanent adverse effect on plant growth and yield.
Healthy seedlings, grown in a protected environment, have the advantage of fast germination and a well-developed root system. When transplanted in the garden, they are better able to resist any antagonistic forces. Thus, yields are better and the crops mature earlier. This lengthens the growing and harvesting period and makes it possible to raise two crops of some vegetable types in the same soil-bed during one growing season.
In summary, plants transplanted in the garden from seedlings
You can purchase seedling plants at nurseries or you can grow them yourself in your own inexpensive greenhouse.
Dr. Mittleider grows most crops first in the seed house and then transplants to the garden. However, he seeds certain crops directly into the soil.
Click on the Transplanting/Planting Guide to see a chart that shows which plants respond well to transplanting and which are best planted directly from seed.
Click on Planting Guide and indicate which of your crops you will plant from seedlings and which you will plant from seed. Alternatively, The Garden Wizard can help you do it easier and faster.
We invite you to join with us as an affiliate in selling the Food For Everyone Foundation’s Mittleider gardening digital products!
You can immediately be making 40% of each sale of these excellent vegetable gardening classics.
Download free greenhouse plans to build your own inexpensive greenhouse!
Simply join the free Yahoo Groups MittleiderMethodGardening group and under comments say “send free greenhouse plans.”
Sign-up to receive a free gardening Ezine. You will get helpful gardening tips and insights to help you face your toughest gardening challenges.
Here is a Free Garden Journal that you can use all year long in your garden. Download now! (PDF, 447 KB)
Complete Mittleider Gardening Books now available on one cd-rom. Read more.
It's Fall and time to prepare your soil for winter! For those of you in the Northern hemisphere who have winters, October, November, and and early December are the time you need to be cleaning up your garden and preparing it for next spring's planting. You can even plant hardy garlic, which will overvegetable crops such as radishes, peas, cabbage and broccoli.
The freeze/tha-winter and get an early spring start. Before snow covers your garden mae sure all old materials are either removed from the garden, or if they are clean of weed seeds and disease, till them into your soil-beds. Also, when it's not too muddy, go in and give everything a good weeding with the 2-way hoe (see Tools). Weeding thoroughly in the Fall helps keep the weeds from getting a big head start on you before you can get into the garden in the spring, and is very important.
If you grew a Mittleider garden this year, your beds will benefit from tilling or digging. You can apply Pre-Plant and Weekly Feed to the bed area now, then till them in, or wait until early spring. Either way after tilling place strings on your stakes, and re-make the beds.
Be sure to re-check the level of each bed accurately, since they may have changed a little. Do not be satisfied with anything more than 1" fall in a 30'-long soil-bed. Good Gardening!
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