Hi All, Lane County Extension Service Master Gardener here with KLCC's Good Gardening. I love growing vegetables from seed. That one kernel of corn produces two luscious ears and an eight foot stalk in just a couple of months.
But there are crops where I use starts - sometimes for the plant's needs, other times for mine. Tomatoes, Peppers, and Eggplant need a longer stretch of warm weather than our climate usually provides. Putting in plants in May will get you fruit for months - from seed, maybe just a small crop at the end of the season.
Because I'm often busy in March I also buy broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower plants. That way they mature before the real heat of summer sets in, and have better flavor when they hit the table.
I'm not only a gardener, I'm also a practiced cheap skate. I buy six packs of cabbage and broccoli starts with multiple seedlings in each cell and separate them; not by ripping them apart, but by washing the soil off the roots, and gently separating the individual plants. Then I can either put the seedlings directly in the ground, or plant them in pots for a week to get their roots reestablished.
I got 18 Brussels sprout plants for the price of six. Likely a few won't make it, but I'm giving you forewarning about my dish for November potlucks.
Tomatoes I take out of the little cells in the six pack, remove some lower leaves, and replant them deeply in a six inch pot. They get a sunny location all day, and a warm spot to spend the night until in ground planting in mid May. When putting those super-sized inexpensive tomatoes in the ground, remove the leaves from the bottom of the plant, bury it deeper, and you'll get more roots to find what could be scarce water this summer.
The only problem with this system - the big tomato nursery industrial complex conspiracy. They only sell big plants. It's very hard to find six packs of most tomatoes anymore.
I'm John Fischer with Good Gardening.
