On this Focal Point Friday, we go back to Episode 101 and talk about three important things to consider when starting plants for the fall garden: germination time, days to maturity, and harvest window.
Episode Resources:
Ep. 101 - How to Prepare and What to Grow in Your Fall Garden
Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group
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Welcome back, my gardening friends, to another focal point.
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Friday Episode Let's spend just a few minutes together reviewing
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A snippet of information from a previous episode, highlighting a
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new topic, or quickly focusing on a current event in the Food
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and Agriculture world. Let's get down and dirty.
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Now, what's important here is timing your fall planting.
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Just like when we're planting in the spring, there are three
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different things that you have to take into consideration when
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you're figuring out when. You should be starting your
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seeds and when you should be transplanting, and then when you
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should be actually putting your seeds directly into the ground.
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You want to think about the germination time, the days to
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maturity, and then your harvest window.
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So germination time. The days to germination
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sometimes are listed on the seed packets, and sometimes they're
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not. A lot of the time there's
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something that you kind of have to look up, but the days to
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germination are going to differ a little bit.
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Depending on how you're starting them, when you're starting them
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for the fall garden versus the spring, in most instances for
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the spring we're starting them indoors.
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So it's a kind of a carefully controlled environment a little
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bit, but it's generally not quite as warm as if, say, you
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were to start them now and start them outside.
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So right now, my fall brassicas, I started those seeds outside in
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the greenhouse. Well, it routinely gets up to be
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100 to some odd degrees in that greenhouse in the middle of the
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summertime, in the middle of the day.
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So those suckers popped up like within a couple of days.
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I think it was two days before I started seeing most of those
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plants start popping up, and then by the end of the third
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day, almost all of them had germinated.
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That's a stark contrast for the I want to say it was 8 days at
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least. For those to germinate in the
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spring when they were downstairs in my little seed germination
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area. So take that into consideration
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when your timing, when you're going to start your seeds, if
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you're starting them indoors or if you're starting them outside,
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the next thing that you want to look at is days to maturity.
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So how long is it going to be from the time that those plants
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come up to the time that you're going to get a chance to harvest
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them? Remember, when you're looking on
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these seed packets, a lot of the time those days to maturity are
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from transplants. So it makes a difference if you
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say if something says, well it's 50 days to maturity, but it
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takes 7 to 10 days for it to germinate and then you don't
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transplant it out for another two to three weeks.
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You have to take that into consideration to base your
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timing on that. And then you also want to take
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into consideration the harvest window, so something like green
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beans. You're generally going to be
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harvesting over a two to three-week period versus carrots
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where well, you're either going to dig them all at once because
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they're all mature or you're going to dig the smaller ones
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1st and then leave the rest of them in the ground for a little
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while. How long of a window do you
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have? Once you have all of these
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things sort of figured out, that's when you Add all that up.
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And you go and you look at your first frost date and then you
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start counting backwards from there.
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Once you figure out that date, that's going to tell you the
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date that you should be starting your seeds for your own
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transplants. And then obviously, if you're
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going to be buying transplants elsewhere, you can take off that
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germination time and the time that you're growing them before
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you put them in the ground and just base it on the days to
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maturity and the harvest window. This also, you would also take
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into consideration the days to maturity in the harvest window
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if you're planting directly from seed.
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So things like green beans or peas or beets and carrots, the
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things that you're planting directly into the soil, you're
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just wanting to figure out the germination time plus the days
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to maturity plus the harvest window.
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You don't have to worry about that couple of week period where
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you're growing those seedlings on before transplant.
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So really the timing is going to depend on what it is that you're
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growing, how you're starting it, if you are starting it, or
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whether or not you're going to be buying them from seedlings
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and then whether or not you're planting them directly into the
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soil or starting them ahead of time.
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Now if you don't have a first frost, you still need to be
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timing these things because. You're going to hit your
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Persephone period. That period where your daylight
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hours drop below 10 hours a day. Once you hit that part of the
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year, your plants pretty much stop growing.
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So if you even if you're in a milder climate and you don't
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actually get a frost, you still have a deadline for when you
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want to get these things into the ground.
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Thanks for joining me on this focal point Friday.
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I'll be back again on Tuesday for another regular.
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Episode of the Just. Grow Something podcast.
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So until next time, my gardening friends, keep on cultivating
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that dream garden and we'll talk again soon.