Starting from Seeds, Germinating, Nurturing

The deep freeze is on in Mississauga, Ontario. The other day it was minus fifteen Celsius (in the daytime!), but with the wind-chill factor it felt like minus twenty-seven. This is more like Winnipeg, than a suburb of Toronto.

For the past week I’ve been planting and nurturing seeds. As you know, I grow over 400 carnations each grow and bloom cycle in the basement recreation room of my suburban house.

I use a Drip Irrigation Hydroponic system under six 600W High Pressure Sodium light fixtures and I recently harvested my prize-winning blooms, which were delivered to select stores in the area. I’m glad to report that they sold very quickly.

This is more of a hobby-grow operation for me, since my divorce settlement left me not rich, but comfortable. I have always fantasized about growing flowers—specifically Sims carnations, the long-stemmed, single bloom variety. What better way to recover from a divorce, than to make one of your major dreams a reality?

In addition to pure, filtered water, I nourish my carnations with a basic nutrient and some supplements from a Canadian company, Advanced Nutrients. They are very helpful and their technical advice line is very reachable.

I grow my plants in rockwool slabs, but my germinating seeds need special care. Using a chopstick, I very carefully make two holes in the centres of 400 rockwool cubes. I insert two carnation seeds of different varieties, chosen for their color or disease resistance or novel appearance.

The reason for two seeds, instead of one, is in case one does not germinate, there is always a back-up. If both germinate, I only keep the stronger one and discard the other.

Germinating seeds need light above all—as much as possible. I use special grow-lite fluorescent tubes that I hang just a few inches above the rockwool cubes. Some growers keep the lights on for 18 hours a day--I keep them on for 24 hours. I find that it doesn’t hurt my seeds to have an abundance of light.

I keep my growing cubes in plastic trays with transparent plastic covers to keep the moisture in. I water the cubes in the morning and let them dry out by nightfall. You have to take the cover off for about an hour at night, in order to allow the moisture to evaporate, before the chill of night sets in.

Temperature is a very big consideration. If you’ve ever been to an agricultural show where a whole bunch of eggs are hatching, you know that they do it under heat lamps to maintain an incubator-like temperature.

So I set my oil-based rads at full blast and also hang a number of heat lamps above the trays. Even with so many sources of heat, the temperature in the trays never goes above 55º to 60º F, or 10º to 14º Celsius. You want to make your seeds comfortable, you don’t want to bake them.

If you’re germinating in hydro, small rockwool cubes are a good idea. If you’re growing in soil, small peat pots should be used. Some growers say the smaller the better. It doesn’t hurt to have your seedlings root bound. That goes for transplanting, too.

When you get the first set of true leaves, it’s time to transplant. By this time I have dipped my seedlings into their basic fertilizer, Micro and Grow, and after the transplant I treat them with Advanced Nutrients No Shock and Jump Start, two excellent products designed to minimize the stress of being moved and give a grow boost to your tiny plants.

I generally take the root-bound rockwool cubes and cut openings for each one in my rockwool slabs, which are two to three inches thick. It’s better to have thicker slabs, in my experience, since they retain moisture better.

Somewhere along the line, I also tend to treat my seedlings with Scorpion Juice in order to impart induced systemic resistance to many pathogens and pests.

The rockwool slabs rest in large, three by six foot trays that are situated under the lights and the drippers of my hydroponic system slowly soak the nutrients, along with root colonizers, supplements, and additives, into my grow medium. The trays are at a slight slant, so the excess nutrient solution goes to one end and is retrieved and recycled back into my reservoir.

My seeds are germinating as we speak. This time I’m trying a deeper tray for my rockwool cubes designed to retain moisture a little bit longer. You don’t want too much excess moisture, since this is the time for that dreaded seedling disease, Damping Off. Mold or Mildew can also form in the atmosphere in the tray is too humid.

I have a friend in British Columbia and she told me that her crocuses and daffodils are starting to break through the surface of the soil in her garden. Seems they have balmy temperature out there. I’m afraid Ontario will stay wintery cold for quite a bit longer.

But indoors, in my very own basement garden, seeds are starting to sprout shoots and new life is beginning. I find seed germination a very exciting time and it always gives me new hope for the future.

It is magic, if you think about it. How does the old adage go? From tiny seeds, mighty trees grow, or some such. All the color, beauty, fragrance, and design of my carnation flowers are contained in every little seed.

I read on the Internet about terminator seeds and the global fight to stop the multinationals from foisting yet another greed-motivated disaster on us. These seeds are genetically engineered to be infertile. If allowed to spread, they would in effect make it impossible for small farmers to harvest and store their own seeds for the next planting season.

These giant corporations want to patent the very basic life patterns of seeds, so that they can profit from selling them to you each year. The case of Monsanto vs. a courageous Canadian prairie farmer was covered in the media a couple of years ago and it made me very angry.