seed | Gardening in the Panhandle

Start Your Spring Garden Indoors

by Mary Salinas | Jan 25, 2018

Get a head start on your spring vegetable garden by planting seed now for some of your favorite spring crops. A great advantage to starting from seed is the seemingly endless number of varieties of your favorite vegetables that are available from online seed companies. You can experiment with new and heirloom varieties. Look to plant several different varieties that will mature at different times, thereby lengthening your harvest season.

Home grown squash. UF/IFAS Photo by Tom Wright.

Seed is also cheaper than purchasing transplants, especially if you save your seeds in optimal conditions. To save leftover seed, keep it tightly closed in the original packet and store in a closed jar or plastic storage bag along with a desiccant (one of the little packs that come in vitamin bottles or shoe boxes) to absorb any excess moisture. Place in a consistently cool place, like your refrigerator. Some seeds naturally keep longer than others.

No fancy pots are needed, just about anything several inches wide and deep with a drainage hole will work. The pots should sit in a shallow waterproof tray to catch the runoff. Be sure to sterilize any reused pots with a solution of 1 part chlorine bleach to 9 parts water to destroy any lingering pathogens from the previous plants.

A commercial seed-starting mix is your best choice. Compressed peat or coir pots are also a good choice. Some all-purpose potting mixes are okay, but others are heavy and can hold too much water and promote fungal disease.

Plant the seed according the packet instructions, water well and place in a nice sunny spot where you can check them every day. If you don’t have a convenient sunny spot, a shop light with florescent and/or grow lights mounted about 6 inches above the tops of the plants will work well. A timer for the light is a handy device to make sure your seedlings have a good 14-16 hours of light a day. If your pots are in a sunny window, rotate them 180° daily to insure uniform growth. If you find your seedlings skinny and stretched, they are not getting enough sun.

Make sure that the soil stays evenly moist from the time of planting until the young plants are ready for your garden. A clear cover over the pots or tray will help to keep moisture consistent while the seeds germinate.

When the time comes to transition your plants to the outdoors, do it gradually. Expose them to the sun for an hour or two the first day and gradually increase their ‘sunbathing’ time each day for about a week and then transplant them to their new home.

Happy Gardening!

For more information:

Florida Vegetable Gardening Guide

Organic Vegetable Gardening in Florida

Seeding the Garden

Starting the Garden with Transplants

Saving Seed

by Mary Salinas | Sep 9, 2015

You’ve grown some wonderful vegetables, annuals or perennials and you would like to save some of the seed from those plants to have for planting in the future. This is a great way to get more of the plants you know and love while saving on the expense of new plants. One exception are plants that are F1 hybrids; seeds from these plants will produce crops quite dissimilar to the parent.

First, you need to collect ripe seed from the desired plants. How do you know when the seeds are ripe and ready to harvest? The strategies for annuals/perennials and vegetable plants differ.

The ripe seedhead of a coneflower. Photo credit: Mary Derrick, UF/IFAS Extension.

For annuals and perennials that flower without making a fruit, wait until the flower has dried up and the seed head is brown and dead-looking. The seeds are then mature and ready to harvest. Take a look at the photo of the coneflower seedhead for reference. These seeds are already dry and can be put into an envelope and then into a sealed jar or plastic stage bag that contains a desiccant to absorb any excess moisture. There are a few options for desiccants: the little packets that come in vitamin bottles and purses to keep them dry, cornmeal or dried milk in bottom of the bag. Be sure to label your envelope with the date and name of your plant seeds. Store in the refrigerator.

When you are saving seed from a vegetable that has seeds inside it such as a tomato, pepper or squash, harvest the vegetable when it is ripe and ready to eat and scoop out the seeds and wash away all other plant parts from the seed. These seeds are very moist and if stored in this state, they will rot into a mess. You want to get the moisture content below about 8% for long term storage. There are several methods:

If the humidity is low and the temperature high, (I know, those can be rare conditions for Florida) you can put the seeds in a single layer on a baking sheet in the shade to let them dry all day.
Another option is to take that baking sheet with a single layer of seeds and put it in a 100° oven for 6 hours with the door open. It’s crucial to monitor your oven temperatures as those above 100° will kill the seeds.

Once the seeds are dried sufficiently, store them as described above for flower seeds. Your seeds can then last for several years.

For more information:

Seed Saving from Colorado State Extension

Saving Vegetable Seeds from University of Minnesota Extension