february matters
February is not the loveliest of months, but it has one redeeming quality: it’s seed starting time. Depending on your hardiness zone, February brings the seed starting trays, which I will dig out of the garden shed early this year, because I promised myself to give the perennials a couple of extra weeks indoors.
Starting plants indoors presents a few challenges, which is why timing is essential to the success of this endeavor, albeit for the basics, like tomatoes and marigolds, it really doesn’t make much of an impact, since they will pick up and grow fast immediately after being planted outdoors.
Anything beyond that will benefit from selecting the best planting time: too much time indoors and the roots get stunted, the plants start getting weak and leggy and prone to every plant pest and disease known to science. I have often wondered how can a plant get aphids or mildew indoors, from a sterile planting medium that is completely isolated from potential sources of infection, but this is the state of fact, so I’ll take it at face value.
If they spend too little time indoors, they simply die as soon as they are moved outside.
There is a precise equilibrium point where the plants should be ready to be planted; keeping them inside past that point will make them waste energy trying to adjust to conditions that don’t favor them, instead of using it to develop and get well established.
Unfortunately, acting at precisely that time is not exclusively in the gardener’s control. We all watched leggy plants creep out of their case and sprawl around the room, while we waited for the unexpected May freeze to go away, or mourned the precious sprouts that got wiped into oblivion by one more cold night than they were able to tolerate. Given that the sprawling plants, however stunted and chlorotic, have much better chances of survival, I usually err on the side of caution and keep them inside.
The perennials don’t even feature into this equation, because they take so long to germinate, and even longer to develop to the point where they can be safely planted outside, so I’m guessing planting time is right about now.
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