Page 13 - Your Home Your Way

This undated photo shows tomato being planted in a garden in New Paltz,
N.Y. One week after the “average date of the last killing frost” for your
garden is the time when it’s generally safe to plant out tomato transplants.
(Lee Reich via AP)
Time to try growing some

vegetable or flower transplants

BY LEE REICH Better to hone your trans-
plant-raising skills with a
If you’ve never grown your plant that really does need
own transplants for your gar- to be grown this way, such
den, perhaps this is the year as tomatoes. In much of the
to do it. It’s economical, it al- country, we need to start to-
lows you to grow varieties you matoes indoors so the plants
might not be able to buy as have enough time to ripen a
transplants, it’s satisfying and decent yield out in the garden.
it’s easy.
If you’re new to the trans- GERMINATION
plant game, start with a flow- To get started with trans-
er or vegetable that’s relatively plants, you’ll need a suitable
easy to raise from seed. Zin- container and soil. The con-
nia, calendula and cosmos are tainer need not — should not
some of the easiest. Among — be too big, but does need
vegetables, choose from to be two to four inches deep.
among lettuce, kale, cabbage Plastic yogurt containers
and — that most widely are good, even egg cartons (for
grown vegetable of all — to- “jumbo” eggs), and, of course,
mato. those cell packs in which your
There are some vegetables purchased transplants once
that shouldn’t be grown as lived. Perhaps you still have
transplants. Beans, peas and some lying around.
okra fall into that category Most important is that any
because the yield is small from container have one or more
each plant. Outdoors, in the holes in the bottom, so excess
garden, you sow these plants water can drain out.
in a furrow with seeds only a Garden soil, even good gar-
few inches apart. That would den soil, is not suitable because
take a lot of transplants! For it doesn’t drain quickly enough
some other vegetables, such as in the confines of a container.
carrots and parsnips, the roots Drainage of a “potting mix”
don’t take kindly to being
transplanted. » Continued on Page 14