Covid-19 Victory Gardens

[BakerAunt]

I talked to my sister in southern California last week, and she has started working on her yearly garden. Her though is that a good-sized garden is particularly necessary as we are in the midst of a pandemic right now. She told me a friend of hers who is also planting a vegetable garden calls them Virus Victory Gardens.

It's too soon for us to plant outside, as we are still in freeze danger in north central Indiana, but I've told my husband that we should plan our garden, and possibly start some tomato plants.

Who else has gardening plans?

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• This topic was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by BakerAunt.

[Mike Nolan]

We've been talking about whether we want to start any plants indoors this week, we generally can't put them outside until mid-May, and even that's risky, we've had cold enough weather in the last 8 days of May to kill or stunt the plants three times in the last six or seven years.

We usually get a lot of plants from the UNL Horticulture Club's plant sale, which is still on this year but the plant list seems smaller than usual and it'll be order online for delivery. So I need to check our stock of seeds and see if we've got any tomato seeds worth trying to start. They may be a bit too old and the mice got into our seed box in the workshop a year ago and we had to throw a lot of them out.

We've got some good grow lights, though, from Happy Leaf. One of the professors in my wife's department tested them and liked them so much he ordered a bunch of them for his lab.

[BakerAunt]

When we remodeled, the idea was to use the sun porch as a place to have plants. Before renovation, with "Florida" windows, it was nicely warm on sunny days in the winter. For that side, we did not use the double hung windows that block sunlight entering. (The front has them. That's a long story from the first phase of the reno.) However, these side windows, while letting in more light, still block the heat, so the enclosed sun porch never warms up the way it did in the winter, and it's not warm enough for plants. So, starting plants early will not be easy for us. My husband says it is not a matter of light but heat. It's not just the vegetables. My husband starts trees as well, and they can't be out there either.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by BakerAunt.

[Mike Nolan]

I've always been told that heat is what causes seeds to germinate or roots to sprout, but in the absence of light for photosynthesis the plants won't survive. I remember my son doing a test in junior high science planting some seeds in pots in the dark basement using a seed starting pad for heat. They came up, put out their cotyledons (the first leaves), then died for a lack of light.

[BakerAunt]

Sigh. Yes, that is what my husband, the plant physiologist has been telling me. He used to do an experiment in the labs where cold water was poured over the roots, and the plant showed a negative response.

We had to change out the old windows for structural reasons and to keep from losing heat during winter nights (we do have a heating vent out there that can be opened), but losing the "greenhouse" effect during the day was not in our plans.

[skeptic7]

BakerAunt;
Is there any place warm that you can start seedlings and move them to your porch after they start to grow. I never thought that energy efficient windows would actually block heat from entering the house -- I know that they were designed to do it, but I didn't think that it could work that well.

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