Blog

For as long as people have farmed, they’ve kept seeds, and it’s a really useful thing for today’s gardeners to know how to do. From any open-pollinated or heirloom vegetable, herb, or flower in your garden you can gather, dry, and put away seeds to use next year. With each generation, these seeds will become adjusted to how things grow where you are, by natural selection, and so the plants will slowly be more and more at home in your particular climate, soil, and with the bugs and other problems in your own garden. And you’ll save a good amount of money; one tomato plant can make enough good seeds to give to all your neighbours and still have some left for many years to come.

You don’t need any fancy tools or to be a brilliant plant expert to save seeds. Just learn which plants will grow ‘true to type’ from seed, when to pick the seeds, and how to deal with them and store them properly. With that, you can build up your own collection of seeds that will mean you won’t have to buy a lot of ordinary sorts of plants every year.

Which Seeds Are Worth Saving

The big difference when keeping seeds is between open-pollinated types and hybrids. Open-pollinated plants, and all heirlooms are in this group, will give you seeds that grow into plants that are pretty much the same as the original plant. So, if you save seeds from a Brandywine tomato, you’ll get Brandywine tomatoes. Similarly, saving seeds from Kentucky Wonder pole beans will give you more Kentucky Wonder pole beans. Hybrid varieties, which have “F1” on the seed package, are created by crossing two different ‘parent’ plants. Seeds from these F1 hybrids will give you plants that are a surprise and may not be like the original in how big they grow, how they taste, how much they produce or how they resist illness. You’ll get much more predictable results if you only save seeds from open-pollinated and heirloom types.

Saving seeds from plants that pollinate themselves is easiest, as it’s unlikely different types will mix. Tomatoes, peppers, beans, peas, and lettuce are all mostly self-pollinating. This means seeds from these will nearly always grow the same as the parent, even if other types of the same kind of plant are nearby. But, plants that easily cross-pollinate – squash, corn, beets, and most of the brassicas (like cabbage and broccoli) – need to be kept a distance apart or you have to manually pollinate them to stop different types from mixing and getting you something you didn’t intend.

 

Harvesting Seeds at the Right Time

You can’t get seeds to sprout if they aren’t completely grown, and it doesn’t matter how well you keep them. With crops that have dry seeds like beans, peas, lettuce and many flowers, you know they’re ready when the seed holders on the plant are brown, dry and feel like paper. Ideally, leave those holders on the plant until they are starting to split open by themselves, then put them in paper bags or envelopes to collect them. For “wet” seeded things like tomatoes and peppers, you get the seeds from fully ripe fruit, or even fruit that is past its best. In fact, the seeds inside continue to mature after the fruit has its best taste, so letting the fruit get a little too ripe is a good idea.

Processing and Drying Seeds

You don’t need to do much to get seeds from dry things like beans, peas, flowers, and herbs. After the pods are really, really dry you can get the seeds out with your hands, by shaking the pods around in a bag, or by carefully crushing the pods and then tossing the bits between two containers in a light wind to blow away the dry stuff. Seeds from wet plants like tomatoes, cucumbers and squash are a little different; they need a fermentation step to get rid of the jelly-like coating that would stop them from sprouting. You put the seeds and all the gooey stuff around them into a jar with only a little water, cover it loosely and leave it at room temperature for two or three days. In those days, good bacteria break down the jelly and get rid of many diseases that the seeds might be carrying. Once they’ve fermented, the seeds that will grow fall to the bottom and the bits of rubbish and seeds that won’t grow float on top. Then you wash the good seeds, get rid of the water and spread them on a plate or a sieve to dry fully which will take from a week to a fortnight in a warm spot with air moving around.

 

Storing Seeds for Maximum Viability

To keep them in good shape, fully dried seeds need to go in containers that get a complete seal. You could use little glass jars, plastic bags you can close and from which you’ve pushed out as much air as possible, or coin envelopes put inside a bigger container. They then need to be in a place that’s cool, dark and dry. Actually, keeping them in the fridge between 35 and 40 degrees Fahrenheit is best. This can make most seeds live and be able to grow for two or three times as long as if they were at room temperature. A little packet of silica gel desiccant inside each container will soak up any remaining water which might otherwise ruin the seeds over time. And don’t forget to clearly write the name of the variety, when you gathered the seeds, and anything you remember about how the original plant grew on each container – you’ll really appreciate having that information when it’s finally time to plant, perhaps many months later.

Key Takeaway

Keeping seeds from open-pollinated and heirloom plants is a really useful thing to learn to do. It will save you money, protect the variety of genes in plants, and over time give you seeds that work better and better in your own garden. Starting with plants that pollinate themselves – tomatoes, peppers, beans, lettuce – is the simplest. Collect the seeds when the fruits or pods are completely ripe, then get them ready for storing using the right method (drying or a wet process, depending on what you are saving from), making absolutely sure they are fully dried, and putting them in sealed containers in a dark, cool spot. If you do this, you’ll have a good number of seeds that will sprout next year, and for many years to come.

It’s really rewarding and doesn’t cost much to start new plants from bits of stem. One good, healthy original plant can make loads of new plants, all exactly the same as it. They’re clones and will have the same flower colours, how they grow, ability to fight off illness, and the quality of any fruit they produce. Plants grown from seeds can be quite different from the original, and this is especially true for hybrids, but plants grown from stem cuttings will definitely be just like the original in all the ways that made you want to grow it in the first place.

Garden experts point out people have been growing plants from stem cuttings for thousands of years and it’s still how many pretty plants, herbs and shrubs with fruit are grown for sale. You don’t need anything fancy for this to work, just a sharp knife, a clean pot or tray, and some compost or similar to grow in and you can get 70 to 90 out of every 100 of the plants most of us grow to actually root and grow.

Which Plants Root Easily From Cuttings

Basil, mint, rosemary, sage, thyme, oregano – lots of herbs will happily grow roots from pieces of stem in water or in damp soil. As for houseplants, pothos, philodendron, tradescantia, begonia and spider plants are all pretty quick at this, often putting down roots within a week or two. And if you’re looking at shrubs for the garden, hydrangea, forsythia, butterfly bush, elderberry and a great many kinds of roses can be started from stem cuttings when you take them at the right point in the year. Plants with woody stems usually need a bit longer than softer, herbaceous plants to root, perhaps six to eight weeks, but if you do it right, you’ll still have a good chance of success.

 

Taking the Cutting Correctly

How well you cut a piece of the plant to start a new one greatly affects if it will grow roots. Ideally, get your cuttings from a healthy plant with no illnesses during its main growing time (for most plants, that’s from spring into early summer). Each cutting should be between four and six inches long, and taken from a new branch that isn’t overly tough, nor too fragile. Use a sharp, clean knife or blade to make the cut (scissors will squeeze the stem and damage it) just under where a leaf or two comes out of the branch, at that slightly fatter point. That point, the leaf node, is full of root-growing hormones called auxins, so roots are most likely to start there.

Remove all the leaves from the bottom inch or two of the cutting. Leaves that sit in water or are covered with soil will rot and allow disease to get in. The top part of the cutting should keep between two and four good leaves to continue making food from sunlight and power the root growth. And if those leaves are big, halving their size cuts down on how much water the plant loses, but lets them still do their job of photosynthesis. This is especially a good trick for plants with big leaves like hydrangeas and figs.

Water Rooting vs. Soil Rooting

You can successfully grow new plants from cuttings using either water or damp soil, and most of the plants we usually start this way do well with either. With water, you can actually see the roots growing each day, which is interesting and makes you feel confident things are happening. All you need is a clear glass jar with water at room temperature sitting in bright light that isn’t direct sunlight, and you should change the water every three or four days to stop bacteria from building up. Once the roots are an inch or two long, you can put the cutting into a pot of soil.

Growing in soil generally gives you a root system that’s stronger and has a lot more little fibres, and these are more likely to survive when you plant them out in the garden. Push the cuttings one to two inches into moist perlite, vermiculite, or a mix of fifty percent peat and fifty percent perlite – all these are light and hold water but also allow it to drain and get air in. If you dip the end of the cutting in powdered rooting hormone before you put it into the soil, roots will form quicker and you’ll be more sure to get them. Lots of plants that are easy to root will grow roots without it though. To keep the humidity around the cuttings and stop them from drying out as they’re growing roots, cover the pot with a clear plastic bag or lid.

 

After Rooting: Transitioning to Normal Growth

New plants grown from cuttings are quite fragile and need to slowly get used to regular growing conditions. Roots that have formed in water are structured differently from roots that grow in soil, so they require a bit of time to adjust to being in potting mix. For the first couple of weeks after you put them in the mix, consistently keeping the soil damp (but not soggy) will help them through this. If you’ve rooted cuttings in perlite or vermiculite, put them in typical potting soil when the roots are developed enough to keep the perlite or vermiculite together with a gentle pull. For two to three weeks after transplanting any of these new plants, they should be in a place with lots of light, but the sun shouldn’t shine directly on them, and then you can gradually move them to where they’ll get their usual amount of light as their roots settle in.

Key Takeaway

You get plants that are exactly like the original, and it’s free to do this with stem cuttings. To start, get a section of healthy stem four to six inches long, and make your cut just below where a leaf is attached. Remove the leaves from the bottom of the cutting. Then, you can get it to develop roots by putting it in water or damp perlite. How long this takes to happen varies by plant type, but it’s generally between one and eight weeks. Many herbs, indoor plants, and lots of bushes for the garden are perfect for starting this way. You can root in water, which lets you see the roots growing, or in soil, which typically makes roots that are stronger when you move the plant to a pot or the garden.

It looks easy for a seed to start growing: you put one in the ground, give it water, and after a little or longer time, a little green shoot comes up. But a lot of complicated chemical stuff happens under the dirt, and it all needs the right amount of things in the environment to happen. If just one of those things isn’t quite right for the seed, it won’t begin to grow and the gardener will be puzzled by the empty container.

Biologists who study plants say seeds need four things to germinate: water, oxygen, temperature, and light (though not all kinds of seeds need light). Also, each kind of seed has its own specific minimum and maximums for each of these, and that’s why some seeds will sprout with no problems, while others will act like they don’t want to.

Water: The Trigger That Starts Everything

Imbibition, or taking in of water, is the very first physical thing that happens when a seed starts to germinate. A dry seed is pretty much ‘asleep’ in terms of its processes, with all its internal workings stopped. Once it gets water, the tissues fill with moisture, the things that make life happen (enzymes) get going, and the seed’s stored food, starches and proteins, are turned into simple sugars and amino acids to give the embryo the energy to grow. For most seeds, they’ll soak up between fifty and one hundred percent of their weight in water before they actually begin to germinate. If seeds are in soil which is too dry, they won’t get enough water and will stay inactive. But, and this is also important, seeds in soil with too much water may get plenty of water but won’t be able to breathe because of the lack of oxygen, and oxygen is the second essential thing they need.

 

Oxygen: The Overlooked Requirement

Seeds that are starting to sprout are alive and like all living things, they need oxygen to breathe (which is to say, to use the energy from their food to start growing roots and stems). If seeds are planted too far down, or in soil that’s been packed tight or is full of water, they won’t get enough oxygen. This either means they won’t sprout at all, or they’ll grow very feeble plants which will run out of energy before they even poke out of the soil. Because of this need for oxygen, mixes for starting seeds are made to be light and full of holes. Perlite, vermiculite, and peat moss are used as they form pockets of air in the soil, guaranteeing the seed has oxygen available, even if the soil is damp.

Temperature: The Speed Controller

How warm the soil is doesn’t change if a seed can start to sprout (as long as the temperature is within a range it likes), but it drastically affects how speedily it will. All types of seeds have a lowest temperature where they won’t begin to grow, a perfect temperature for the quickest sprouting, and a highest temperature where growth is stopped or the seed is destroyed. For example, lettuce, peas, spinach, are all crops that do well with soil as cold as 35 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Tomatoes, peppers, squash on the other hand, need soil at least 60 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit. A very typical reason for seeds to not sprout is when springtime gardeners, keen to get started, put seeds in soil that’s too cold for them.

Why Some Seeds Need Special Treatment to Germinate

Some seeds have developed extra ways to stay asleep (dormant), so they won’t start to grow even when they have enough water, air, and the right temperature. These extra blocks on growth, hard outer coverings, chemicals that stop growth, and needing a period of cold, all developed to stop seeds from sprouting at a bad time in the wild. Seeds with very hard shells, like morning glories, sweet peas and certain beans, can be helped to sprout by scarification: carefully cutting, filing or soaking the shell to let water in. And seeds that need cold stratification (more on this in another article in this series) need several weeks of being cold and wet before something inside them lets them germinate. Knowing if a particular seed has these specific needs – and this information is usually on the seed packet or you can ask the place you bought the seeds – will stop you from being annoyed by waiting for seeds that simply won’t grow in the way you’re trying.

 

The Most Common Reasons Seeds Fail in Home Gardens

Nearly all the time when seeds don’t start to grow, it’s because of one of six things. The soil might be too cold from planting too early, or too soggy which cuts off oxygen and makes the seed rot. Another possibility is that they’re planted too deep, meaning they run out of energy before they get to the sunlight or don’t get enough oxygen. The seeds themselves could be old, and therefore no longer capable of sprouting, or they’ve been badly stored. Incorrect light is also a likely culprit; seeds needing light are buried too far down, or seeds that want darkness are left right on the surface. And finally, sometimes seeds need a special “wake up” process (called stratification or scarification) and you haven’t given them one.

Key Takeaway

For a seed to start growing, it needs four things all at the same time: enough water, a way to get oxygen, a soil temperature that’s right for that kind of seed, and the amount of light it needs. If just one of these is off, the seed won’t grow at all. When seeds don’t sprout in a typical garden, it’s usually because they were planted in the cold ground too soon, have had too much water (and the water has pushed the oxygen away), are under too much soil, or haven’t had any special preparation to wake them up like cooling them (cold stratification) or gently roughening the outer coat (scarification). If you carefully look at each of these things when a seed doesn’t come up, you can figure out what went wrong and won’t have the same problem next time.

Even gardeners who’ve been doing this for a long time will find their patience tried while waiting for seeds to sprout. Quite a few plants won’t show anything growing up from the earth for between two and three weeks, and this makes the person growing them look at nothing but empty soil and worry if they’ve done something incorrectly. However, a lot of frequently grown vegetables, herbs, and flowers will sprout in just three to seven days when they have what they need to grow; and that’s quick enough to actually see them growing within a week of putting the seeds in the ground. Those that sprout quickly are especially useful for anyone just starting to garden because they give you a nice win fairly quickly, for gardening in school where you don’t have much time, and for when you have spaces in a garden that’s already growing and you need to fill them in a hurry.

1. Radishes: 3 to 5 Days

Radishes really are the quickest seeds to start growing. If the soil is damp and the temperature is between 55 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit, they almost always pop up in three or four days. A few gardeners have even said that the very first root of the plant, or radicle, can be seen in only 48 hours! This quickness doesn’t stop with sprouting. Most spring radishes are ready to eat a mere 25 to 30 days after you plant the seed, so they are the fastest thing you can grow from seed to your plate in a vegetable garden.

2. Lettuce: 2 to 5 Days

Lettuce seeds are amazingly quick to start growing when the top of the soil is right. They need light to begin sprouting, so don’t put them under the soil, just lightly press them on top. If the soil is damp and the temperature is between 60 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit, which is what they like best, you’ll see them come up in two to five days. The loose-leaf kinds are the speediest, but Romaine and Butterhead can be a day or two longer.

 

3. Arugula: 3 to 5 Days

Arugula is a salad leaf which springs up very quickly in soil that is cool or fairly warm. You can gather the spicy leaves as microgreens in a mere ten to fourteen days, and enjoy them as proper salad leaves in thirty to forty days. Because arugula is so fast growing from seed, you’ll have a steady stream of it all through spring and autumn if you sow some more every couple of weeks.

4. Cucumbers: 3 to 5 Days

If the ground is warm – 70 degrees Fahrenheit or warmer – cucumber seeds sprout very quickly. Because they’re big, the seeds soak up water fast and a strong, little plant comes up through the dirt in only three to five days. However, germination (sprouting) gets a lot slower if the soil is colder than 60 degrees, so it’s important to make sure the ground is properly warmed up to get them to grow rapidly.

5. Beans: 4 to 7 Days

Bush beans and pole beans both come up pretty fast in warm dirt. Their big seeds are simple to plant at the right depth – one or two inches – they soak up water really well, and they make strong, solid shoots that push their way out of the ground. Beans sprout quickest when the soil is between 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit, but they’ll still sprout if the soil is as cool as 60 degrees.

6. Squash and Zucchini: 4 to 6 Days

Squash, zucchini, pumpkins and gourds (they’re all in the cucurbit family!) will sprout quickly when the soil is warm. Their big, flat seeds are really simple to hold and get in the ground, and the first leaves that come up, the seed leaves, are surprisingly big so you see something happening right away. If the soil is 70 degrees Fahrenheit or warmer, you’ll get them growing at their fastest.

 

7. Sunflowers: 5 to 7 Days

Because they’re big, simple for little hands, and sprout fast in warm earth, sunflower seeds are what many kids use for their first garden. Once they do come up, the little plants are amazingly large for something you’d grow to eat, having thick stalks and wide leaves which you can really see right away. For best results, sunflower seeds should be planted in soil that’s between 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

8. Turnips: 3 to 5 Days

Turnip seeds are really quick to start growing – of all root vegetables, they’re right up there with the speediest, popping through the soil in three, four or five days when the ground is cool or fairly mild (that’s between 50 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit). Because they come up so fast, turnips are perfect for filling in any gaps in your garden, both in the spring or for a fall crop.

9. Basil: 5 to 7 Days

When the soil is comfortably warm, between 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit, basil seeds will sprout in five to seven days. These seeds are very tiny, so you just need to lightly cover them with dirt, or even just gently press them onto the top of the soil. Warmth is the most important thing for getting them to grow; below 65 degrees they’ll be much slower to start, and under 50 degrees they might not grow at all.

10. Marigolds: 5 to 7 Days

Marigold seeds are really easy and speedy to get growing, and that’s why they’re a fantastic flower for people just starting out or for doing things with kids at school. Once they are growing, the little plants are strong, aren’t too fussy about things being just right, and start to flower six to eight weeks after the seed has sprouted. So you get from seed to a lovely bloom in under two months!

Key Takeaway

You can expect radishes, lettuce, arugula, cucumbers, beans, squash, sunflowers, turnips, basil, and marigolds to come up within a week if they have what they need. For all these seeds to sprout quickly, soil temperature is the most important thing. Plants that do best in cooler weather will come up most quickly in soil between 55 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit, and those for warmer weather need 70 or even warmer. Choosing seeds like these for your first try gives new gardeners a quick win, and in a garden you already have going, they fill things in rapidly.

Actually getting seeds going isn’t hard, yet the amount of advice you’ll find on the internet (and a lot of it that doesn’t agree, is old news, or isn’t based on any real proof) causes lots of gardeners to do things that are way too complicated or actually make starting seeds harder. Some popular seed starting ideas seem to make sense, but experiments by people who study plants have shown them to be wrong. And others are still followed just because they’ve been said so many times that to challenge them would be almost a kind of sin in the gardening world. If you can figure out what these incorrect beliefs are and stop believing them, starting seeds gets easier, and you’ll get plants growing with less work and less money spent.

Myth 1: Seeds Must Be Started in Special Seed Starting Containers

Garden centers have a lot of fancy stuff for starting seeds: things like peat pellets, pots that break down, trays that water plants themselves, and complicated, stepped plant-growing systems. However, they actually aren’t required. Experts who study plants have shown that seeds sprout just as happily in old yogurt containers, egg boxes, leftover food containers, or really, any clean holder with holes in the base for water to drain. The pot itself doesn’t really affect whether a seed will begin to grow. Instead, it’s what the seed is planted in (the growing medium), how wet it is, and the warmth that are important. A lot of newcomers get put off and don’t continue with seeds because they spend a lot of money on special containers before even finding out if they even like starting seeds.

 

Myth 2: Seedlings Need Warmth at All Times

Heat mats are really good for getting seeds to sprout quickly, yet people often forget to switch them off once the seedlings are actually growing. Vegetable seedlings like temperatures of 60 to 70 degrees during the day and 55 to 60 at night. That’s a lot cooler than the 75 to 85 degrees the soil needs to sprout in the first place. If you keep heating the soil after the plants have emerged, they get long and spindly as they rush to grow in the heat. For stronger, bushier plants, get rid of the heat mat on the day the little seedlings pop through the soil, or at the very latest, within 24 to 48 hours.

Myth 3: Starting Seeds Earlier Produces Earlier Harvests

Lots of gardeners think if they begin seeds indoors six to eight weeks before the last frost, they’ll get a similar amount of extra time in the growing season. However, what actually happens is seedlings that are started too far ahead of time get too big, their roots get all tangled up in the pot, and the plants are weakened by the time the weather outside is good enough for them to go in the ground. A big plant with lots of roots that are packed together will usually need longer to get going after you plant it than a younger, smaller one that’s planted at the right time, which actually cancels out the benefit of the early beginning. The best time to start your seeds, to get plants to the perfect transplant size when the weather outside is right, is on the dates suggested on the seed packet or in your local planting calendar.

Myth 4: Seedlings Should Be Watered Every Day

Watering seedlings every single day very quickly leads to damping off and root rot. Instead, you should water when the top of the compost starts to feel dry. This might be daily when it’s warm and dry and you’re using small pots, or it might be every two or three days if it’s cooler and the pots are bigger. A good method is to put the pots in a tray with a little water in and let the water soak up into the soil through the holes in the bottom; this fully wets the plant, but doesn’t get the surface of the soil and the bottom of the stems wet – and it’s on those parts that things that cause fungal problems build up.

 

Myth 5: A Sunny Window Provides Enough Light for Seedlings

Mature houseplants are usually fine with light from a south-facing window, but starting plants from seed (seedlings) almost never get enough brightness or for a long enough period from a window. This is particularly true late in the winter and early spring, when most seeds are started inside. At this time of year, the days aren’t very long and the sun isn’t very high in the sky. Consequently, a window sill receives a lot less light energy than it does in the middle of summer. Seedlings that only get light from a window will nearly always become tall, flimsy and stretch toward the light, a problem called ‘legginess’. A simple LED grow light, placed two to four inches above the seedlings and on for fourteen to sixteen hours each day, will create much stronger, bushier plants. And this isn’t expensive, in fact it will likely pay for itself during just one seed starting period.

Key Takeaway

You don’t need fancy pots, all the time warmth, planting the seeds super early, water every single day, or a spot right in the sun to get seeds going. Using things you’ve already got for containers is just as good as buying new ones. Once the seeds have sprouted, you can get rid of the heat mat. In fact, plants from seeds sown when they are supposed to be planted will be stronger than those pushed to start too soon. Instead of a fixed daily routine, just water when the soil actually needs it; this stops plants getting illnesses. And a normal grow light will always give you sturdier, smaller plants for the garden, much better than even the sunniest of windows.

Gardeners often refer to compost as “black gold,” and with good reason. It’s what happens when you change food leftovers, bits from the garden, and other natural stuff into a lovely dark, crumbly addition to your soil. Once it’s finished, compost makes the soil itself better, provides nutrients to plants slowly, helps sandy soil hold water, improves drainage in heavier clay soil, and supports the helpful little creatures in the earth that are vital to keeping soil healthy for a long time. However a lot of people who could compost don’t begin, as they believe it’s tricky, unpleasant smelling or will take too long. In truth, once you grasp the main ideas, composting isn’t much work at all.

Soil experts are keen to point out that you don’t need to follow a strict set of instructions for composting. It’s a natural breakdown of things, and it’ll happen with or without our help. If you simply leave a heap of natural materials in the garden, it will eventually turn into compost, even if you do nothing with it. We can just make that happen much faster, from years to months, by giving the organisms that do the breaking down exactly what they need to work at their best.

The Two Ingredients: Browns and Greens

Your compost heap will do best with two types of stuff in it: things with lots of carbon, called “browns” and things with lots of nitrogen, called “greens”. Browns are things like dried leaves, straw, shredded cardboard, newspaper, wood chips, and dead, dry plant stems. For greens, you can use freshly cut grass, bits of fruit and vegetables from the kitchen, coffee grounds, fresh garden waste, and manure from animals like chickens, horses, rabbits, or cows (but definitely not from dogs or cats). You should have about three times as much ‘brown’ material as ‘green’ when you mix it up. This 3 to 1 proportion gives the bacteria that are breaking everything down the right amount of carbon and nitrogen so they can work efficiently and the pile won’t smell bad like they sometimes do if they’re not looked after properly.

 

Building the Pile

You can have a compost pile in a lot of different ways, from a basic heap just sitting in a yard corner, to something you buy like a rotating tumbler or a three-sectioned system. For a pile to get hot enough inside to break down stuff really well, it needs to be about three feet in all directions. If it’s smaller, it won’t get and stay at those hotter temperatures (130 to 160 degrees Fahrenheit) which speed up the rotting and get rid of weed seeds and anything causing plant disease.

When you’re making the pile, build it up with layers on top of each other. First a six inch layer of ‘browns’, then a two inch layer of ‘greens’, and keep repeating this until it’s as high as you want it. Wet each layer as you add it. Once it’s done, the whole pile should be damp all the way through, like a sponge squeezed of water. Also, beginning your pile on the earth, rather than on something like concrete or plastic, allows worms and good bugs in the soil to move up into the pile from below.

Managing the Pile: Turning and Moisture

If you just leave a compost pile alone, which is sometimes called “cold composting” or letting it happen on its own, it will eventually become good compost, though you’re looking at a wait of possibly a year or even two. However, if you turn it with a garden fork every two to four weeks you will speed things up a lot because this gets oxygen to the bacteria that need it for breaking everything down. In fact, with regular turning, you can have usable compost in only two to four months when the weather is warm. You also need to check how wet the pile is from time to time. If it’s dry, add water. If it is too soggy and smells bad, mix in lots of browns, like leaves or cardboard, to soak up the extra water and get the oxygen-loving bacteria working again.

What Not to Compost

You shouldn’t put some things in your home compost bin as they’ll bring in animals, smell bad or include germs. Things like meat, fish, dairy and cooked food that has fats or sauces on it will get rats and smell really potent as they rot. Similarly, poo from dogs and cats can have nasty bugs and germs that won’t die in a normal compost heap. If your compost doesn’t reliably get over 140°F, don’t add plants that are sick; at that heat most of what’s making the plant ill will be destroyed. And if you don’t have a very hot compost pile, leave out weeds that have made seeds, because those seeds are likely to live through the composting process and then be distributed to your garden.

 

How to Know When Compost Is Finished

Good compost is a dark brown or black color, easily falls apart in pieces, and has an earthy scent like you’d find in a forest. You shouldn’t be able to pick out what things originally went into it, so you won’t see whole leaves, bits of food, or plant stalks. If you can still tell what things are, it needs a bit longer to finish, or needs to be turned over more. Once it’s ready, you can spread it over your garden beds in a layer one or two inches thick, dig it into the hole when you’re planting, add it to the soil you use for pots, or make compost tea to water your plants with. And because it’s compost, not artificial plant food, it won’t harm your plants and you can use a lot of it safely.

Key Takeaway

Composting happens naturally and needs just a few things: about three times as much carbon-rich “brown” material as nitrogen-rich “green” material, plenty of water, and air. If your compost heap is at least three feet wide, three feet long and three feet high, and you turn it frequently, you’ll get usable compost in two to four months. Leave it to happen by itself and it will take a year or two. Don’t put in meat, dairy, animal poo or anything from plants that are sick – otherwise it will smell and could be unsafe. Once it’s done, the compost is the best thing a gardener can add to their garden soil.

It’s like taking medication with no idea of what’s wrong with you when you put fertilizer, lime, sulfur or compost onto your garden soil before discovering what’s in the soil already. It might help, it might not do a thing, or it could actually make things worse. A really good soil test from your county extension office (and they’re in every state in the US and don’t cost much, between $10 and $25 usually) will tell you exactly how acidic or alkaline your soil is (the pH), the amounts of plant foods it has, how much decayed stuff it contains, and what kind of particles it’s made of. This lets gardeners improve the soil with specific, affordable treatments instead of just guessing.

In fact, people who work for agricultural extension services always say that getting a soil test is the single best thing a home gardener can do for better results. But, surprisingly, polls show under 15 percent of home gardeners have ever sent a soil sample to a lab to be looked at. Instead they judge by how the soil looks, use general fertilizer instructions or get advice that might not be right for their own particular soil.

What a Standard Soil Test Measures

When you get a typical soil test done through a county extension service, it will tell you how acidic or alkaline your soil is (the pH), how much of the main plant foods (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) are in it, and how much of other important nutrients are present. These other nutrients include calcium, magnesium, sulfur, iron, manganese, zinc, copper, boron. The percentage of organic material in the soil is included, as is the breakdown of how much sand, silt and clay it contains. Plus, a lot of places doing the testing will also give you the cation exchange capacity or CEC, and that’s how well your soil can hold onto nutrients and give them to plants, so it’s a really good way to get an idea of how good your soil is for growing things.

 

Why Soil pH Matters More Than Most Gardeners Realize

Soil pH is probably the single most important thing your soil test will tell you. It’s what decides how well plants can actually use the goodness already in the soil. You can have lots of phosphorus, iron, and all the other things plants need, but if the pH is too high or too low, plants will still be short of nutrients. The pH being way on the acid side or the alkaline side chemically changes the nutrients into forms roots simply can’t take up. Most vegetables do best in soil that’s a little on the acid side to right at neutral (a pH of 6.0 to 7.0). Blueberries, azaleas, and rhododendrons, though, are much happier in strongly acid soil (4.5 to 5.5). Once you know your soil’s pH, you can add exactly the amount of lime to make it more alkaline or elemental sulfur to make it more acidic. It’s much better to be precise; adding too much of either will cause even more issues than what you started with.

How to Collect a Proper Soil Sample

How good your soil test is rests completely on how good the sample you send in is. Agricultural extension labs suggest getting eight to twelve little samples from all over the garden you’re testing, digging down six to eight inches after getting rid of any mulch or bits of stuff on top. Then you should mix those little samples very well in a clean container that isn’t metal (a plastic bucket is perfect), and send a portion that’s a good representation of the mix to the lab in their bag or box. Don’t get samples from anywhere you’ve put fertilizer, lime, or other additions to the soil lately; those will throw the test off. You should test your soil every three or four years at least, or whenever you start a brand new garden.

What to Do With the Results

Typically, extension lab reports will tell you exactly what to add to your garden: how much lime, sulfur, or fertilizer to use for every 100 or 1,000 square feet to fix whatever is lacking in the soil. If you follow these suggestions perfectly, you won’t use too little (and therefore waste the money you spent on the soil test), or use too much (which can harm the life in your soil and cause plants to get too many nutrients). And if a soil test says you’ve already got plenty of something, you can easily leave it out of your feeding routine, which is good for your wallet and keeps excess fertilizer from washing away and polluting the environment.

 

Key Takeaway

Getting your soil professionally tested by a lab at your local cooperative extension office is fairly cheap, somewhere between $10 and $25, and it gives you a really accurate breakdown of your soil’s pH, how many nutrients it has, and how much organic matter is in it. This specific information means you can make changes to your soil that are exactly what it needs instead of simply taking a shot in the dark. Of all the things they measure, pH is the most important – it’s what decides if the nutrients are actually usable for plants, and it doesn’t matter how much fertilizer you add if the pH isn’t right. And if you take a good sample from several spots in your garden, and then do what the lab tells you to do to improve it, you’ll see much better growth than you would using just any old plant food.

Any one gardening technique that stopped weeds, saved water, kept the soil at a good temperature, stopped soil from washing away, lessened plant illness and provided food for the life in the soil all at once and with very little work after you’ve done it, would be something all sensible gardeners would do. Mulching is that technique. However, even though gardeners who have been doing it a long time know it’s crucial, most people growing vegetables at home either don’t mulch at all, or don’t use enough to do any good. This difference between how great mulching is and how few people actually do it is a huge, overlooked chance to improve growing food in your garden.

How Mulch Suppresses Weeds

If you put a three or four inch layer of natural mulch on the soil, it stops sunlight from getting to weed seeds lying on top of the soil and this stops most of them from starting to grow. Any weed seeds that actually do manage to start growing through the mulch become pale and flimsy and are very easy to pull out. University studies (done by many agricultural departments) show that with enough depth of mulch, you get seventy to ninety percent fewer weeds coming up than if the soil was uncovered. So for people gardening at home, this means a huge cut in the time you spend getting rid of weeds, and what was usually a weekly job can become a quick, five minute check every now and then.

 

Water Conservation and Temperature Regulation

If you put a three or four inch layer of natural mulch on the soil, it stops sunlight from getting to weed seeds lying on top of the soil and this stops most of them from starting to grow. Any weed seeds that actually do manage to start growing through the mulch become pale and flimsy and are very easy to pull out. University studies (done by many agricultural departments) show that with enough depth of mulch, you get seventy to ninety percent fewer weeds coming up than if the soil was uncovered. So for people gardening at home, this means a huge cut in the time you spend getting rid of weeds, and what was usually a weekly job can become a quick, five minute check every now and then.

Choosing the Right Mulch Material

For a vegetable garden, straw is the usual choice for mulch (and it’s not like hay, which has weed seeds in it!). It’s cheap, you can get it almost anywhere, it’s simple to spread, and it does all the good things we’ve talked about. Most people can get shredded leaves for nothing and they’re fantastic as mulch, but they break down quicker than straw, so you might need to add more during the season. Wood chips are good on paths and with plants that come back every year, but don’t put them in the soil with annual vegetables; as they rot, they’ll hold onto nitrogen for a while. If you have a lawn you don’t treat with anything, you can use the cut grass as mulch, but only in thin layers of an inch or two at a time. If the layer is too thick it will flatten and get gooey, and won’t let air in. Finally, pine needles are brilliant for plants like blueberries and strawberries that like acidic soil.

When and How to Apply Mulch

Once your soil has warmed up in the spring, generally about two or three weeks after you’ve planted things like tomatoes or peppers, you should put down mulch and keep it there all season. If you mulch over still-cold soil, it will take longer for the ground to warm up and your plants won’t grow as quickly. For most natural mulches, it should be three or four inches thick, but move it one or two inches away from the actual plant stem so the stem doesn’t get too damp and start to rot. Throughout the summer as the mulch breaks down, you can add more to keep that useful three or four inch layer. Then at the end of the growing season you can dig the mulch that’s partially broken down into the soil, or just leave it on top of the soil to protect it during the winter and continue to improve the soil during the months when nothing is growing.

 

Key Takeaway

Putting down a 3 or 4 inch thick layer of mulch made from natural materials really gets rid of most of the weeds (between 70 and 90 percent of them, in fact), lessens how often you have to water by a quarter to half, keeps the soil at a better temperature, stops dirt that has diseases on it from splashing onto plants, and as it breaks down, it provides food for all the living things in the soil. For most home vegetable patches, the best mulches to use are straw, broken up leaves, or wood chips (wood chips are great for paths). If you put the mulch on after the soil has warmed up in the springtime, and make sure there’s enough of it all season, the advantages build on each other, meaning you’ll do less work in the garden overall and your plants will be healthier and give you more to harvest.

People really don’t understand fertilizer when they garden at home. Loads of gardeners think the way to get better growth is to use more fertilizer, and experts who study soil say this is actually one of the worst things a beginner can do to their plants. Putting on too much fertilizer can actually scorch the roots, mess up the good bugs and organisms in the soil, lead to plants getting the wrong amount of nutrients (which can look like they aren’t getting enough of something), and pollute the water under the ground as the extra nutrients wash away. If you know what people commonly get wrong with fertilizer, and how to easily fix those things, you can feed your plants well without accidentally hurting them.

1. Applying Fertilizer Without a Soil Test

A very common and basic error when using fertilizer is putting plant food on without first knowing what’s already in your soil. In fact, in most gardens that have been around for a bit, there’s usually plenty or even too much of at least a few nutrients. When you add more of something that is already plentiful, you’re just throwing money away and could even cause a build-up of that nutrient. This excess can show up as problems which look a lot like the plant lacking that nutrient, and that might lead you to add even more in a really damaging repeat of the process. A soil test from your local agricultural extension office, costing between fifteen and twenty-five dollars, will remove all the uncertainty, spelling out precisely which nutrients your garden requires and how much of each.

2. Over-Applying Nitrogen

Plants thrive and get that rich green color from nitrogen, and it’s what people tend to use too much of. When you add way too much nitrogen, it makes leaves and stems grow quickly, but then the roots, flowers and developing fruit suffer. For example, tomato plants with lots of nitrogen will have lovely, dark green leaves but won’t actually make many tomatoes. Similarly, carrots and beets will have a lot of growth on top of the ground, but the roots themselves will be small, split or covered in hairs. It’s a lot more successful to give each kind of plant only the amount of nitrogen it needs at each stage of its life, instead of piling a large amount on when you first put it in the ground.

 

3. Fertilizing at the Wrong Time

When you put fertilizer on at the right time as your plants are growing, it works much better. A lot of fertilizer in late fall, as most plants are going to sleep for the winter, is thrown away as the good stuff drains from the dirt before the next spring. And, if plants are suffering from a lot of heat in the middle of summer, fertilizing them then can hurt their roots which are already weak. For many vegetable patches, a normal amount at the point of planting is best, then a little extra added to the side of them once they’re beginning to make flowers or fruit, because that’s when they need the most nourishment.

4. Placing Fertilizer Too Close to Plant Stems

If you get fertilizer that’s very strong right on the plant’s stem or the roots that are near the surface, it’s going to cause a chemical burn. This burn looks like the area touching the fertilizer is turning brown, flopping over, or the plant part is simply dying. When using granular fertilizer, sprinkle it in a circle around where the leaves stop, at the plant’s ‘drip line’, and don’t heap it up against the stem. With liquid feed, be sure to mix it with water to the strength the instructions say and put it on soil that is already damp. Don’t use it on dry soil, as that makes the food too strong in one place and is more likely to burn the roots.

5. Ignoring Organic Matter in Favor of Synthetic Fertilizer

Plants can use the particular nutrients in artificial fertilizer right away, but these don’t do anything for how the soil is put together, its ability to hold water, the range of life in the soil, or how good it will be for growing things over the years. When it comes to artificial fertilizer, soil experts say you’re ‘feeding the plant’ – in contrast to things like compost, old manure, and plants grown specifically to improve the soil, which ‘feed the soil’ itself. A garden that gets only artificial feed each year will frequently end up with soil in bad condition, meaning it will become packed down, water won’t go into it easily, and the number of microbes will fall, and eventually it won’t grow as much, even if you continue to use the fertilizer.

6. Using the Same Fertilizer for Every Plant

You won’t get the best from your plants by using just one fertilizer for everything, as different crops really do have quite different needs when it comes to food. For lots of leaves, leafy greens want a good amount of nitrogen. Tomatoes, peppers – they prefer a middle amount of nitrogen but much more phosphorus and potassium, which help them flower and make fruit. Root crops don’t need much nitrogen at all, but do well with a good dose of phosphorus to build up those roots. And blueberries are a special case: they need a fertilizer that makes the soil more acidic, and that would harm most other kinds of vegetables. You’ll see a definite improvement in how well things grow if you pick a fertilizer for what you are growing, or at the very least, change how much fertilizer you use depending on what type of crop it is.

 

Key Takeaway

You can easily fix the usual problems with fertilizer. These include putting it on without knowing what your soil actually needs, giving plants too much nitrogen, not fertilizing at the right time, not getting the fertilizer in the best spot, forgetting to include things like compost, and using the same fertilizer for everything in your garden. If you begin with a soil test, build your soil’s richness with organic material, and then only add specific artificial fertilizer exactly when and where plants have a shortage of a particular nutrient, you’ll get stronger plants, a better crop, and better soil overall. Heavy, random fertilizing doesn’t do as good a job.

Knowing if your garden soil is mainly sand, silt, or clay is helpful for all gardeners. This is because it has a big effect on how often you’ll need to water, how well the soil drains, what you should add to it to improve it, and which plants will grow well. Soil texture can be tested by professionals at agricultural extension labs, but you can get a pretty good idea of what you have yourself with only a clean glass jar, water and some earth from the garden. Soil experts (who use what they call the sedimentation method) use this easy jar technique to divide the soil into its different parts by how heavy they are, and it shows you the makeup of your soil.

How the Jar Test Works

Larger and heavier bits of stuff in water drop to the bottom more quickly than little, light bits do. Sand grains (being between 0.05 and 2.0 millimeters across) are the biggest and heaviest, silt (from 0.002 to 0.05 millimeters) is in the middle, and clay (less than 0.002 millimeters) is the smallest and lightest of the three. If you shake a soil sample with water and then leave it to sit for 24 to 48 hours, these three types of particles will divide into separate layers you can see in the jar. Sand will be at the bottom, silt will be in the middle, and clay will float on top.

 

Step-by-Step Instructions

To start, get a soil sample from your garden that’s typical of the area. Take about a cup of soil from six to eight inches down, and get rid of any stones, roots, or large bits of decaying leaves and plants. Pour this soil into a clear glass jar (a mason jar is ideal) to about one-third of the way up. Then almost fill the jar with water, leaving a space of about an inch at the top. Put in a tablespoon of liquid dish soap (this helps to separate the soil into its parts) and close the lid very firmly. Now shake the jar really well for three to five minutes. You need to get all of the soil floating in the water, and the result should be a fairly even, chocolate milk colored liquid with nothing stuck in clumps.

Put the jar on a flat, undisturbed surface. After one or two minutes, make a mark on the outside of the jar where the soil settles. That’s the sand. Leave it for two hours, and then mark the soil level again. The stuff that’s fallen on top of the sand to this second mark is the silt. Then, for another 24-48 hours, let the water get relatively clear. On top of the silt, a thin layer will appear; this is the clay. After 48 hours, the water above the clay might still look a little cloudy. This is fine, and it’s from the very smallest clay bits and substances from broken down plants and leaves.

Reading the Results

With a ruler, find the overall height of all the stuff that has sunk to the bottom and the height of each layer on its own. Then work out what percentage each part makes up. For example, if all the settled material is three inches deep and the sand part of it is one inch, then sand is about 33 percent of the total. Most garden soil isn’t at one of the three completely different types of texture. Loam, which is the best kind of soil for gardening, is approximately 40 percent sand, 40 percent silt, and 20 percent clay. Soil with a lot of sand (over 60 percent) lets water go through it rapidly, but doesn’t hold onto water or plant food very well. Clay soil (more than 40 percent clay) is good at keeping water and nutrients, but doesn’t let water drain and gets easily squashed. Once you have a general idea of the soil texture, gardeners can choose the right things to improve it. Compost (which is rotting plant matter) is useful for both sandy and clay soils. Sand will only help clay that is very very heavy. And, perlite or vermiculite can improve how well things in pots drain.

 

Key Takeaway

You can get a pretty good idea of whether your garden soil is mostly sand, mostly silt, or mostly clay for nothing and with very little effort. If you shake a bit of your soil in water and then let it sit undisturbed for a day or two, you’ll see distinct layers. The sand will be on the bottom, silt in the middle, and clay at the top and you can measure how thick each layer is to roughly work out the percentages of each. Knowing this helps you decide how often to water, what to mix into the soil to make it better, and how to manage how well it drains. Most vegetables do best in loam, which is about 40% sand, 40% silt, and 20% clay. And, really, you can improve the quality of any soil by regularly adding organic matter.