I’ve been reading about direct sowing all seeds here which is definitely my preference because I don’t have an area to start them. I have done it indoors in the past but most never make it once planted so I end up buying tomato, brassicas and pepper plants from the local nursery (where they organically grow them/small shop). I’m in SE NC (coastal) but we get pretty cold here in Jan/Feb so most start those seeds indoors. I despise row covers lol (never had luck with them), hoop houses and all those implements that create more work and make gardening less fun (for me anyway). Other than those few crops, I direct sow everything year round but I’d love to be able to do the same for tomatoes, brassicas and peppers.
Has anyone had success doing that with cold Jan/Feb temps? I’ve tried domes as well with little luck but I might try that one again since they’re fairly simple. Are there certain seeds I should get (larger?) or will they most likely just die because of the frigid temps (can get into the low 20s)? I could possibly direct sow at the end of Feb and see what makes it. Anyway, just curious how others have done this.
You can look for my direct sowing experiments in this forum (some others have done similar trials also). I have trialled direct sowing just about anything in my short about 3 month season. Granted I do use black mulch, cloth etc to increase my changes for some crops, but with longer frost free season anything is possible. Just time sowings to miss last frosts. Tomatoes I find fairly easy here even without any added help. I would get more ripe fruits if I used transplants, but my priority is breeding. Using transplants doesn’t affect the earliness that much either, some 2-3 weeks at most even if you start transplants 2 months earlier. Direct sown grow so much faster that they catch up most of the difference. With the ones that have small seeds it’s advisable to oversow more heavily and thin early. There is a little more luck involved with them and in some cases more might fail/start slow.
In Quebec I have cold temps until May, last frost is mid May.
Last year I direct sowed tomatoes second half of May, and got my first tomato on August 31. No extra implements at all.
I expect to have tomatoes earlier from direct sowing a bit earlier and from saving seeds from plants that produce well.
You can probably start sowing planting up to 2 weeks before your last frost and figure out what works. Sounds like you have plenty of time for plants to grow where you are.
I suppose that just trying it will be the best way to know if it works in your particular climate. This year at the end of February I planted a bunch of tomato seeds in a cold greenhouse; after planting, temperatures went below freezing inside the greenhouse. I was expecting total failure–but just hoping for 1 or 2 plants to germinate and survive. I planted approximately 1,000 seeds of various varieties–some I had bought, many I had saved. None of them were seeds that I super super cared about. I was completely prepared for total failure. I grouped the seeds as cherry and non-cherry, but I didn’t track them any further than that. (All were self-fertilizing.)
I was shocked when about 5% of the seeds grew into good plants. My guess is that the surviving seeds simply waited to germinate until temperatures were consistently favorable whereas the failing seed germinated quickly and then died in the frost (or never germinated at all). Just my guess, because the plants took a long long time to come up. An alternative theory would be that the tomato seedlings learned to adapt to frost–because after I planted them outside we did have a light frost one night and 90% of them survived it and are still growing.
Anyway, my advice about direct sowing tomatoes in February would be to just try it, but be prepared for failure. Use seeds that aren’t super precious to you, from a range of different varieties. Plant maybe 10-20 seeds for every plant that you hope will survive to produce tomatoes. If “not failing” is important, I would probably wait until March or April to start planting (or whenever you are safe from hard frosts because nighttime temps will stay in the upper 20’s F or warmer). So that you’re only experimenting with survival of light frosts–not hard frosts. To be super safe, and have a higher success rate, wait until no danger of any frost and direct sow at that time.
I would expect the brassicas to be easier than tomatoes to germinate and grow under these circumstances, and I would expect the pepper plants to be more difficult than tomatoes.
Appreciate it! I’m going to try this next year but I was also thinking if I direct sow now I might have enough time to grow some fruit before the first frost (projected 11/11) but that’s only 4 months.
Yes, trying it is the best way to see what we get. I don’t have the space to try a 1000 seeds so I’m trying to figure out how to grow food for this year while also planting with the objective of getting hardy plannts for future years. Maybe I could dedicate an area to these types of plants and put them all together. Really cool you got some tomato plants from your experiment! I’d like to try this with brassicas too since so many just get destroyed by bugs and I loathe cloths which don’t seem to work anyway.
Also thinking it would be good to have an area for bi-annuals like beets which have never gone to seed in my garden but it’s probably because I just pull the whole plant. Hoping if I leave a couple in the ground I’ll end up with some seeds or maybe they just self sow and come back every two year. So much experimenting to do!
I feel you, I have the same issue when I transplant, everything dies… except tomatoes. For some reason, tomatoes seem to thrive, even non-landraced seeds, so perhaps you should give tomatoes another try.
This is my process:
start seeds inside, at a minimum 6 weeks before last frost (the most obvious step)
harden off the tomatoes, take them outside 1h day 1, 2h day 2,… day 8 keep them outside for the full day. After they are hardened off, it helps if you can keep them outside for another week (you can put them inside when frost is expected), I have noticed that they adapt more quickly to the transplant and continue growing quicklier when I give them the extra week.
to plant: take off all leaves except the growing tip, plant the tomato plant vertically as deep as possible so only the growing tip and 1/2 inch of the stem is showing (the stem of the tomato plant underground will become roots)
water the plants for a week
After this, my tomatoes are good to go, since they grow a deep root system immediately via the deeply planted leafless stem.
There are too many to link. You can use search bar to look posts I’ve made and look for the topics that have direct sowing. Or you can look all topics I’ve made. Up to you. My survivor plot is also done with direct sowing, although not on ideal conditions, but there seem to be some that manage.
Thanks, Maarten! Hoping to get our greenhouse up this fall so I can start my seeds in it in January. I’m planning to do that (for the first time) and also try direct sowing around mid-March (last frost is 3/27) to see if anything takes. If any of those do well, I’ll save the seeds.
