Most of us have short seasons and need to start our eggplants indoors or buy them as seedlings from the nursery. By the time the soil is warm enough for transplanting, eggplants are already mature, tall plants. Some even set flowers at this point. So what’s the best way of transplanting them? Do we bury them deep, like tomatoes, or do we keep the soil line where it is?
If you’re growing pepper plants from seed for the first time, you’ve embarked on a long journey. It can take up to 12 weeks of dedicated care and attention until you’ll be able to transplant your seedlings outside. In the meantime, a lot of things can happen to your plants.
You might be facing this situation: you’ve assembled your first compost heap ever, waited for a few months, and now you’re wondering whether to turn it. Aside from the burning curiousity of looking inside, do you really need to turn compost? Most information out there says you do, but is turning compost the main factor for success?
Is a building or a tree shading your garden or backyard? Do you want to start growing some simple vegetables, like lettuce, but worry they won’t get enough sunlight to grow and mature? Well, you’re in luck. Lettuce is one of the easiest vegetables to grow, and it does well in the shade.
I’m a big advocate of starting many of my vegetables in modules or containers and moving them into my garden as they mature. For a small garden, this method ensures that I don’t get as many empty patches as I would get with direct sowing and spotty germination. But starting seeds indoors has its trade-offs, and the biggest one is transplant shock.
Starting seedling can be a straightforward process, but as we keep them indoors under constant observation, we may start to notice issues like yellowing leaves, legginess, damping off, etc. It happened to me, too. I started some of my seedlings early, but the weather didn’t allow them to go in the ground yet. After nearly a month, some of the bottom seedling leaves were turning yellow, and I soon learned why.