Grow More Food in Your Organic Garden - Seven Fast Ways

If you want to get your garden seeds off to a good start and grow more vegetables faster, make sure they germinate quickly! Try these fresh organic gardening tips. You can experiment with them in your home.

Why should we pre-germinate the seeds before planting them? That way, we'll know that 100% of the seeds will grow. That's important if we're sowing old seed, which may be slow to germinate, or rare seed that we can't afford to waste. It also saves a lot of wasted time in the garden planting seeds that will never come up.

Of course, if we can start our seeds more quickly, the quicker there'll be food in the garden.

One gardener in a cool climate with a short four month summer needed to get her organic tomatoes off to a fast start. She had the idea of soaking the tomato seeds for 24 hours in a strong infusion of valerian. Simply, she took some valerian blossoms, soaked them and strained off the juice.

She found that the seed drenched in valerian extract sprouted a full week before her other seeds. Of course, she couldn't tell if the soaking or the valerian was responsible. Any pre-soaked seed is likely to sprout faster - in damp conditions - than dry seed. But it would be fun to compare the germination times of seed soaked in plain water versus valerian solution. Or versus any other growth stimulator!

Here are some easy tips we can try, to grow more food in our gardens - more quickly.

Easy-to-try projects in seed germination

Lettuce seed is said to germinate more quickly in warm weather if soaked at 50ºF overnight in bleach (10% available chlorine). Why? It softens the seed coating Would it also work with other slow germinators like parsley?

• Take a strong solution of kelp, nettle or chamomile flowers and steep your seed in it overnight Kelp infusion is also proven fungicide. For example, it helps to deter damping off disease in seedlings. Why not mist your seedlings in a weak solution of kelp to help them through their early days?

Cold tea comes highly recommended too, for early seed germination, and is worth a try. Is it the tannin that spurs their growth? Logically, therefore, oak leaves might make a good substitute.



Find a fast seed starter at a pharmacy

Some folk swear that shop-bought vitamin C or B complex, in solution, does boost seed growth. (But we couldn't call that organic gardening.)

• Aspirin has also been used successfully. Simply dissolve 100mg of crushed aspirin in one pint of water plus a little alcohol like cheap vodka to make sure the aspirin dissolves.

It would be interesting to test if willow bark, infused in water, would have the same effect. Willow contains aspirin. That might appeal to the organic gardener!

Try dilute solutions (1%) of essential oils like marjoram, lavender, mint or rosemary. They can be obtained in health food and aromatherapy stores.

In any case, it's worth investing in essential oils for your garden, as they're a gift to natural pest control. They will drive off most insect pests that are attracted by smell. A clever tip is to steep kitchen paper in essential oils, strap the paper to sticks and post them about your vegetable beds.

Plant physiologists at Hokkaido University in Japan discovered that seeds germinate faster if subjected to intense vibration. The jiggling about of starch cells in the grains causes the release of ethylene, which boosts germination, they suspect. Perhaps one idea would be to keep damp seeds in our pocket when we're out jogging?

Old-time gardeners used to keep big seeds like squash in their pockets, along with their coins. The abrasion weakened the seed coat.

What other gardening delights might we enjoy, even over winter? Simply take a trip around the shelves of pharmacy and health food stores. You might stumble on some elusive elixir, not yet known to horticulture, that might trick your seeds into earlier life - and faster food production in your home garden.


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Dr John Yeoman PhD is chairman of the information
network for natural gardening ideas, the Gardening Guild.
Discover dozens of
ingenious tips to get more
fun, food and profit in your garden with less
cost and work in his practical
book Lazy Secrets for Natural Gardening Success.
Get it for free at:
http://www.gardeningguild.org/lazy