I decided to challenge myself this year. Not only did I wanted to raise the flowers and vegetables from seeds, but I wanted to raise them organic style with minimum or no synthetic materials like pesticides and fertilizers etc. I learnt that it was lot of more harder than it seems and gardening in this part of earth is lot more different than in a tropical country like India.
I bought the seeds for five types of flowers and red bell peppers. The winter was long this time in North East PA. I could not plant these seeds outside until mid May which turned out to be a mistake. I learned that most people who raise plants from seeds begin the process early in April indoors. So by the time the frost ends beginning May, the seedlings grow about two inches and are ready to be transplanted in the garden and blossom in June. But those were for experienced gardeners to know. The minimal gardening knowledge I carried across the ocean watching my Mom do her garden was of little help. Last year, I bought almost ready to blossom plants and hence that experience did not come handy this time other than the fact that I have to be watchful for aphids in pepper plants.
The seeds were either not so good or the timing was late, the germination did not happen for about three weeks and that too a very few came out of the lot. The rest took even longer. I sowed the seeds in the three 24in window trays I bought last year with the intention to transplant the flower plants in the garden in front of our town home.
During this mean time something happened that would be brought the most outcome with very little effort from my side. I bought a bag of onions from Walmart. After a week some of these onions bore green shoots out of them. My mother-in-law not wanting to throw them away, cut the good part of the onions and buried the green shoots in one of the plant trays that did not bore any plants yet at that time. She did similarly plant some carrots and beetroot shoots and nothing came out of them yet.
During the end of May after about 3 weeks some of the seeds sprouted. I transplanted all the flower plants into the ground. The trouble that came out of this endeavour was multiple and involved a lot of work. First of the all there were two inches thick mulch above the soil. I had to clear them before transplanting the plants into the soil. The soil in this area was clay soil, suitable for making pots but not so much for flower plants. To top of it as soon as I planted them, heavy rain poured in that kept the soil soggy for a long time.
I did not cover the mulch over the area around the plants after transplanting. This caused a trough and soil remained wet for a lot of time. As if this was not enough, the plants began to be eaten by weird bugs from the soil. They were small and white in color. A little search revealed them to be slugs. But I gave up the idea of organic gardening after a period of about two weeks and severe damage to most plants. I got a slug killing pesticide and sprayed them on the soil. I was quite late already and the slugs ate up quite a few plants.
I had some more seeds and after the back breaking transplantation process the first time, I sowed these seeds directly in the ground. But rain was incessant. The rain was so heavy that they washed most of the seeds out and what were left were transported to places close to the edge of the walkway. The plants that came of these are about 2 in tall now. I have no hopes of them bearing any flowers anytime soon.
The slug pesticide was very effective in arresting the death of the plant that remained. I also learnt that it is best to use potting soil in combination with compost. I had potting soil leftover from last year and obtained four 20lb bags of compost from a nearby park for free. I replanted almost all the plants I put in the ground, removing the clay soil for about 3 inches deep and replacing with a mix of potting soil and compost. I did this replanting almost every week for about 4 weeks.
Added to these later were cherry and vine tomatoes and green chilies, courtesy my mother-in-law. She dipped some seeds out of cut tomatoes into some indoor pots we have and almost all of them germinated. She did the same with red bell peppers and green chili peppers. The peppers were the most surprising. After a month from sowing them, more than a h
undred of the plants came out and I had to transplant all of them into the ground. But in all of this, the surprise were the onions that were put in the soil nonchalantly. They grew out to be this giant scallions I have never seen before. Some of them were about 3 feet tall. The two synthetics I wanted to avoid, both seemed to be necessary. The tomatoes hat I transplanted to the ground, refused to grow. I bought Nursery Select 20-20-20 Miraclegro fertilizer to speedup the growth and that did the trick.
After two months of waiting the first flower to blossom was a marigold. It was the ugliest flower imaginable. I shouldn't have expected more from the plant that was hardly 3 inch tall. But as time passed the other marigolds grew and are bearing good normal sized flowers now.
The Zinnias were the most effected by the slugs. The slugs had feast on these plants. Those that survived have a very stunted growth. I have not had time to re-pot (with compost) these plants as I had become busy at home and work. They are bringing out one flower each which are the tiniest flowers I have seen of that variety. I am still waiting for the other kind of plants to bring out flowers. The same is the case with the peppers, tomatoes.
I had also bought about 8 Zucchinis plants to add to my madness. They bore some flowers and they are fast dropping now without turning into Zucchinis. I was told that this is normal and that the first flowers are male flowers and they fall off. I am eagerly waiting for all of them to fully blossom. With some luck and good weather my gardening experiment might be a success making me one constant gardener moving forward.
The humble flowers of my efforts so far can be viewed here where you can find a lot more pictures of my garden and the 3 ft tall scallions.
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