This one might be a little “too little, too late.” But, if it applies to you, you knew it was too late long before you saw this post! And that’s cucurbits in the indoor grow room!
Cucurbit is a fancy gardener’s way of broadly discussing squash, pumpkins, gourds, cucumbers, zucchini and many melons. It encompasses roughly 1,000 species. One of their defining characteristics is, generally speaking, being a rather large seed.
When you see a large seed, that tells you the plant will get large, fast. In the terms of when you sow such things, that means as close to last frost as is reasonable for your area. In warmer climates, these are often treated as direct sows. In our subarctic climate, though, we’re sowing indoors a mere four to five weeks to last frost.
Cucurbits are not the only suspect here. Sunflowers are another example. Beans another. Corn, same. There are others. Big seed = big and fast plant. We’re obviously glossing over the insane diversity of genetics here, only discussing the context of common garden grown plants. We’re not advising on a papaya seed.
For us, this also means a significant change to our general growing practice. We forget the seeding tray and germinate directly in their final, desired container. Our choice are 3.5 inch pots, again because these plants will get substantial, quick.
For our bush beans this year, we opted to try out some 72 cell seeding trays we’ve had around for years. We sowed these last weekend, and will soon bring you pics. The gist is, indoor sowing bush beans is a strat we implemented last year to amazing success and will continue.
And, don’t get us wrong. We’ve been there. We’ve sowed zucchini two+ months to last frost and been harvesting when its time to transplant into the garden. That’s also when we learned transplanting extremely large plants is difficult and potentially devastating. It’s a practice best avoided.
We know some of you intentionally (or unintentionally) “wing it” when it comes to your sowing schedules. We’re just saying there’s a method to our madness here by using sowing schedules. If you know, you know! See less
