Click below to listen to my 2 min. Garden Bite radio show: Tomato and Pepper seed start time
For those of us in cold climates, we get itchy to get into gardens or do SOMETHING gardeny… and then something like this happens…
The AVERAGE last official frost date for Zone 3 and 4 is May 15th while zone 5 and 6 is looking at about April 15th. But, as mentioned on Monday, that’s changing. Still, it’s best to plan for it.
Warm season crops such as tomatoes and peppers, like soil temperatures to be at least 60 degrees.
Now is a good time to start seeding tomatoes and peppers indoors. These veggies are some of the last to be planted in the garden. For zone 4, typically, you plant outdoors near the end of May. You can loosely figure about a week or so on either side of a climate zone. However, the best barometer is soil temperature. Tomatoes like 60 while peppers prefer closer to 70 degrees. That doesn’t mean you can’t plant them at temps a bit below, it just means that won’t do much until they’re warmed up! You can pick up a soil thermometer for about $5 to $7 at your local nursery. The one below is more expensive.
For seed starting, I prefer peat pots due to their ease of use.
Place them in a shallow tray and use a heat mat to keep a nice steady temp of around 70 degrees. This aids in germination and disease control.
Once the seeds sprout, give tomato and pepper plants 16 hours of light with a shoplight, there’s no need for fancy grow lights unless you have them! Keep the light about 4 to 6 inches from the top. I’ve used a pulley system. Also let a fan gently blow across the seedlings for an hour a day to strengthen their stems. Or “rough them up a bit” once a day.
This is Audra – she shares a lot of information on Seed starting. There are two more videos that you can find on Gertens Youtube Channel.