How to Start Your Vegetable Seedlings

Learn how to get your victory garden seeds started early with good advice from old-time gardening guides.

Seedling Window Box

The Where a sunny kitchen window is at disposal for the purpose, some tomato, pepper and egg-plants can easily be started in a box or in boxes placed in front of it, as shown in illustration. Suitable soil is prepared by mixing one-third old well-rotted compost and two-thirds sandy loam or rich garden soil, and of course it should be got in readiness in the autumn before the ground freezes. The boxes are filled with this nearly to the top, and the seeds sowed thinly in shallow furrows. Each variety should be plainly labeled, or the name written on outside of box facing each row. Sift a little sandy loam, leaf mould or pulverized dried peat moss upon the seeds, pat it down gently to firm the seed, then water with hot water from a fine rose sprinkler, and as often afterwards with tepid water as the soil becomes dry, and needs it. Thus treated the young plants should make their appearance in about a week's tune. A few cabbage, cauliflower and lettuce plants may be grown in a similar way, but the box should be set in a colder room, or in a less sunny exposure. The chief aim must be to make the plants strong and stocky by giving each sufficient space, and thin out the surplus at an early stage of development. Tall, over-grown things are not desirable.

From the 1894 book, HOW TO MAKE THE GARDEN PAY

Inexperienced gardeners are apt to think that a rainy day is the only fit time for setting out plants, and will often delay a week or two longer than is necessary waiting for it, and finally plant when the ground is soaked and when they sink to their ankles in the soil. That is the worst time that could possibly be chosen, excepting when the ground is congealed with cold. For it is impossible that the mold, sticky and clammy while wet, can filter among the roots, or remain of suitable texture for them to spread themselves in, permeable to them and equally pervious to the air in every part without anywhere exposing their tender parts to actual contact in chambers of corrosive oxygen. A rainy day is an advantage if the plants are set before the ground has become wet, but the safe and sure way is to go for the plants as soon as the ground is fully prepared, no matter how dry the weather. A pail or bucket should always be taken to carry the plants in, having a little water in the bottom. The roots being set in this will absorb until the plant is so gorged that it will endure a drying air after being set in place. If the ground is very dry, water should be poured in before planting, which is very much better than pouring upon the surface, because of no injurious crust being formed, for a continually open surface during the growing season, to admit of free circulation of air and capillary action from below, is absolutely essential to free profitable growth.

From THE NATIONAL FARMER'S AND HOUSEKEEPER'S CYCLOPAEDIA, 1888

This is part of an article from the book The Kitchen Garden Guide