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If the season is not long enough for direct seed with watermelons I'd use a sterile seed starting mix and a seed starting heat matte under the trays. I know one person on CD that starts due to a short season. Maybe I can get how she does it. I started my tomatoes and peppers late but got them up a few days sooner in the trays using a seed starting heat matte. Peppers take the best advantage of it. Tomorrow afternoon I've got to start a tray of eggplant. I've never started them before but at the extravagant plant prices this year I'm very much inclined to start all of my plants that cannot be direct seeded well.
Good thing about living in the lower South is that you can afford to be a little slow starting tomatoes, eggplants and peppers since we have such a long summer.
As far as watermelons go, I’m pretty sure I saw a variety for growing in places with a shorter season in one of the catalogues recently. Down here all you have to do is poke a seed in the ground and it comes up.
Good thing about living in the lower South is that you can afford to be a little slow starting tomatoes, eggplants and peppers since we have such a long summer.
As far as watermelons go, I’m pretty sure I saw a variety for growing in places with a shorter season in one of the catalogues recently. Down here all you have to do is poke a seed in the ground and it comes up.
This will be my first season in Lower AL. It's similar but different than central FL. What I don't know is even with longer growing time is what kind of damage the summer heat might do to tomatoes. The night time temps if to hot can stop pollination and so can excessive heat in the day time.
Started seeds here in Ohio (Zone 6) around March 1.
Here's the list for this year:
Tomatoes:
Brandy Boy (Hybrid)
Brandywine Pink (Heirloom)
Mortgage Lifter (Heirloom)
German Johnson (Heirloom)
??? Heirloom from saved seeds
Peppers:
Early Jalapeno
Giant Jalapeno
Sweet Banana
Costa Rican Sweet Hybrid
Striped Holland Bell
Cucumbers:
Straight 8
Lemon
Got a good yield from all of these, have done the first transplant into larger pots.
Biggest mistake was planting the cucumbers so early, don't think I would do that again. They grow so fast, might be better to sow them directly, or start them a few weeks ahead of planting time. Radishes and onions go in the ground at the beginning of March. Our ground is usually warm enough for pepper/tomato planting during the first week of May.
The other challenge was tomatoes germinating quicker than peppers, which were about 4-5 days later. If I do it again, might stagger the planting so tomatoes and peppers would be ready for first transplant around the same time.
No matter what I never end up with plants that are as healthy looking as some that I see on here. But even so I prefer them over the local greenhouse, I've gotten any number of plants with blight/fungus.
Lucky! I am in 5b and it is still icy cold - the rhubarb is coming up, but no hope of planting in the ground for a few weeks yet (cold hardy stuff). I don't have a good place to start warm weather crops, so I just buy starts. I let some radishes go to seed and use them as my gauge for when I can plant cold tolerant things.
Thinking of expanding my garden this year by doing straw bale gardening, and am adding some more WI native plants the the area this year...
Gardening in SWFL has a long, hot season that is great for vegetables that need heat and a long growing season. I planted seeds for black eyed peas, okra, luffa. I planted Seminole pumpkin seedlings and have sweet potato slips to plant. I need to get an area ready for a couple of pigeon peas. I have several roselike seedlings to put into the ground yet but need to decide where as they get tall and like sun.
A couple of cherry tomatoes do well in the summer if grown in dappled sunlight. Otherwise the usual vegetables are grown in the very short periods of slightly cooler weather starting in the fall and after the new year. It’s still a lot of trial and error for me and trying vegetables I never ate or heard of before.
My wife bought tomato, banana pepper and lettuce plants this week. We are now waiting on the low temperatures to warm up. We are in NW Arkansas what temperature should we wait for? These will be put in containers to grow in. Also the area where we want to put the containers start getting filtered sun around 9 AM and full sun an hour later. Full sun stays there until around 4 PM. Will this be enough sun?
I think we are going to transplant our tomato and pepper seedlings into individual containers this week. That will buy us time until we can get sod transformed into a garden plot as well as free up the germinating matte for more seeds to start. Not the best to prepare sod in the spring I know but we didn't have a say in the matter.
Regarding seed starting experience, I have had no luck with germinating watermelon seeds by various methods (pre-soaked in water, in milk, direct planting etc.). I will the milk presoak method another try this year to see whether another brand of seeds would do better.
I had a nice phone conversation tonight with a commercial watermelon grower tonight in SD. For watermelon they use a homemade potting mix, not a seed starting mix, for water melon and they do not soak. I know that watermelon plants do not like to have the soil disturbed around the roots during transplanting and they confirmed this. I think a bag of raised bed soil and potting mix 50/50 would be close. Potting mix has needed peat to bind the soil and the raised be soil has enough clay type particle to strengthen the material around the roots. I'm going to try it with some cucumbers and cantaloupes which I think are similar to a watermelons requirements. I will not use trays for these but a paper based small coffee cup. If I don't get ground ready soon enough I will even do some watermelons. They grow all melons, squash, cukes, etc on black plastic to warm the soil.
Tonight I'm starting:
Bok Choi
Egg Plant
Celery
A test tray of beets (They should be growing in the garden now)
Red Cabbage
Green Cabbage
None of these may work this late but I will find out. I'm hoping it does not go into full blown summer early. If it does the sweet potatoes and okra will be happy.
"Full sun stays there until around 4 PM. Will this be enough sun?" Some sites consider 6 hours a day full sun, others consider 8 hours full sun...you should be OK, but more sun is better in the case of most veggies.
I'm sure my 4 packs need to be transplanted by now, but I'm in MN where it is still snowing and my plants are in VA...grrr.
lol. I'm watching the map all day. It's winter across Midwest, Ohio Valley and Northeast. 30s and 40s! Even at the coast here. Spring is only 1 month worth around here. Frustrating. Summer comes so quick.
Snowing at my sisters house near Binghamton
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Even at the coast here. Spring is only 1 month worth around here. Frustrating. Summer comes so quick.