Planting Inside My Vegetable Greenhouse
My vegetable greenhouse is ready for the next season of indoor growing.
We're still growing and harvesting from the outdoor vegetable garden, but with autumn just around the corner attention is also directed toward my vegetable greenhouse and planting its first crops for the coming cold season. Doing this now ensures we will have fresh delicious vegetables right into fall. I constructed this special greenhouse so I could grow organic vegetables in the ground all year long. The structure, which is essentially a cold house, was inspired by writer, Eliot Coleman, an expert in four-season farming. To start, this week my head gardener, Ryan McCallister, planted a collection of vegetable plant plugs that were started and grown in individual cells filled with soil. We are always trying different ways to plant our crops to see which methods work best. He will also plant seeds in this greenhouse in the coming weeks.
Here are some photos - enjoy.
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- We spend a good amount of time preparing the soil before planting. This includes cleaning the beds and adding organic, nutrient-rich compost. Recently, the beds were all topped with a fresh layer of compost.
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- The beds are all turned and raked. In this greenhouse, I like to grow lettuce greens, root vegetables, bunching onions, and brassicas, plus other vegetables I use for my daily green juice and for cooking. These beds do not have bottoms; they are open to the ground, which allows plant roots to go further down for available nutrients. It is a great way to plant. Underneath the boxes, there is about two-feet more soil.
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- Ryan also sprinkles all the beds with a good quality fertilizer.
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- Use a fertilizer specially formulated for growing vegetables. Here, Ryan uses Miracle-Gro® Shake ‘n Feed® Tomato, Fruit & Vegetable Plant Food.
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- There are 16 wooden garden boxes in this structure. They fit the entire length and width of this vegetable greenhouse. Raised bed gardening allows good drainage, prevents soil compaction, and provides protection for those plants that may otherwise get trampled.
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- Inside my main greenhouse head house, which is a separate room that serves as a work center, Ryan sorts out the plant plugs that arrived from Bonnie’s Plants, a leading provider of plants for the vegetable garden, herb garden, and flower garden.
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- Here is one of the clam shell plant plug containers. The principle advantage of using plant plugs is that they arrive ready to plant into the growing soil. They are less expensive than larger potted plants. I prefer to grow vegetables from seed in my greenhouse. I have lots of room to grow many trays of seeds, and we are able to start growing them in winter, but it is always good to test what else is available for gardeners.
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- This delivery contains plants for herbs, brassicas, and a variety of lettuces. Ryan takes a selection of plant plugs into the vegetable greenhouse and plans which ones will be planted.
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- Ryan uses this bed preparation rake from Johnny’s Selected Seeds to create furrows in the soil. Hard plastic red tubes slide onto selected teeth of the rake to mark the rows.
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- The furrows don’t have to be deep. In general, seeds should be planted at a depth of two times the width, or diameter, of the seed. A seed that’s about 1/16-of-an-inch thick should be planted an eighth-of-an-inch deep.
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- These are Swiss chard plant plugs. Swiss chard comes in vibrant colors with stems of red, yellow, rose, gold, and white. Chard has very nutritious leaves making it a popular addition to healthful diets.
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- Here are two healthy individual plants removed from the cells. These plugs are simply smaller versions of the plants seen in the garden nursery.
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- Next, Ryan uses a special seed and seedling spacing ruler to place the plants in the furrow.
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- When the roots of a seedling like this have grown sufficiently, it can be easily transplanted into the garden or into a larger pot.
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- Ryan places all the seedlings first, so he is sure they are all equally spaced in their designated rows.
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- Then, he gently pushes the plants into the soil, carefully tamping down around each one so there is good contact.
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- He plants the seedlings deep enough so that the soil comes to the crown of the plant, or where the leaves extend from the main stem.
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- Once the plants are all in the ground, he places a small identifying marker at one end of the bed.
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- Ryan also plants a bed of dill. Similar to caraway in flavor, dill seed is widely used in northern Europe as an ingredient in pickling seasoning and to flavor breads, cheese, meats and vegetables, especially potatoes and cabbage.
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- He also plants sweet basil, the aromatic annual herb of the mint family, native to tropical Asia and popularly used in Italian and Asian dishes.
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- And here’s a bed of parsley – I like use parsley in my daily green juice.
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- Once planted, everything is given a thorough drink of water. Ryan waters every bed gently so as not to disturb the young seedlings.
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- In several weeks, we’ll have gorgeous, nutritious vegetables to eat, share, and enjoy. There is still lots of time for gardening – I hope you get to spend some time in your green spaces this weekend!
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