By Patricia Beynan
I like instant gratification
in my garden. I found a place to buy
inexpensive seedlings ready to plant last year and used their seedlings to make
my naked plot a garden. It was
the first year for my community garden, and I'd spent a lot of time improving
the soil, removing the rocks, adding amendments and raking and mounding to raise the
level of the garden. Therefore, I wanted a garden with green things right away, my reward for all that hard work. My first green things were three
kinds of lettuce, cabbage, spinach, and peas.
Other people arrived with
home grown seedlings in toilet paper tubes and peat pots that they'd been growing on window sills and under
lights since there was still snow on the ground. I'm trying my hand at growing my own this
year too, but I'll remember where my bargain plants came from last year in case
I need a little more instant gratification.
My big success with planting
from directly into the garden came from two sources. First, I pulled some pole beans from a pile of tree trimmings next to the gardens and grew on a tepee of poles . They grew not as tall as I expected, but were
endlessly prolific even during the record rains of August that drowned my
cucumbers and melons. The second, a package of marigold seeds
provided dozens of plants that I transferred from their original positions
around the tomato plants to form a perimeter of orange and gold. They bloomed far into the fall, dropping the
blooms and seeds into the garden when I was neglectful of my deadheading
duties. I expect I'll be finding new
volunteer seedlings all over the space when I get into it this spring
So, instant
gratification=planting seedlings, but it is the more expensive option. If you want the satisfaction of do it
yourself, get out your peat pots, and plant your own six weeks before you want
them in the ground. For the fast
growers, put them right into the ground, and stand back and let that beanstalk
spring up.
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