Cool Season Starts (lettuce, spinach, kale, collards, kohlrabi)
Start these at the beginning of February here on the Front Range of Colorado. This includes most leafy greens such as lettuce, spinach, and cabbage crops. It is a little early but we like to be ready to plant these in the garden at the earliest possible date (March 15).
Warm Season Starts (squash, pumpkin, melon, cucumber, tomato, pepper, eggplant)
For warm season crops, start seedlings at the beginning of April to plant out after our last spring frost in the middle of May. The strategy for both type of crop is the same; start planting seeds early and plant more each week. This way, you can make several plantings in the early spring.
Soilless starting mix
For our seedlings, I like to use a soilless medium known as “Coir” which is composed of ground coconut husk. This is a natural and organic product but it does not provide any nutrition to the plants. For nutrition, we use our own “Gardner Cultivation Blend” fertilizer products. This allows us to feed our seedlings a precise mix of plant nutrients and grow them quickly.
- Wet the coir thoroughly in a large container before filling your pots.
- Fill the pots with the moistened medium and smooth the surface gently. Do not compress the medium.
- Use a dibble stick to make a small, shallow hole in the surface of each pot and drop 2 or 3 seeds into the hole.
- Gently smooth the coco coir over the seeds to completely cover them and place the pots in a sunny window or under a plant-growth lamp.
- Keep the pots evenly moist but not saturated. A good way to do this is by spraying them with water from a spray bottle.
- When the starts begin to grow, you can begin watering them with a hydroponic nutrient solution as directed on our fertilizer products page.