Seed Starting Schedule

This is one of my favorite garden chores. Starting seeds in a coldframe or enclosure is the true beginning of a gardening year. This year we have built a nice 10′ x 10′ enclosure and just now getting shelving installed. We will be starting lots of tomatoes, peppers and melons.

Spring seed starting schedule. Not shown are fall crop replanting.

Have planted (Jan 21) a few tomatoes for a grafting test. The diameter of grafted tomatoes must match well for the graft to take. So I have planted Colosus root stock and along with Brandywine and Striped German.  If any grow more quickly then they will be planted later than the rest of the grafting stock. After 21 days, grafting can begin, so vigorous growth varieties will be slightly younger (18 days maybe). This will help keep all stems nearly the same diameter. Here is a link to Johnny Seed describing the process of tomato grafting.

I am planning on a small test for tomato grafting. Will focus on heirloom varieties (Brandywine – 25 plants and 2 German Striped for easy comparison ). They usually have the least yield compared to hybrids. I am expecting a 50% mortality rate on the grafts too, so I will plant extra heirloom fruit stock than shown above.