📌 Quick Summary: Starting Direct-Sow Crops Indoors
- 🌿 Dill Transplants: People might laugh at starting dill indoors, but transplanting whole “plugs” (bunches) of dill into the garden gives you a massive head start over direct-seeded dill (which takes forever to germinate in cold spring soil).
- 🥬 Lettuce Colors: Indoor-grown lettuce (under grow lights) will often stay pale green. The same variety transplanted outdoors will quickly develop its true deep red or purple colors due to the UV light from the sun.
- 🌽 Sunflowers & Corn: Starting sunflowers and corn indoors in 16 oz (0.5L) cups allows you to plant them out into raw, unworked ground (like a pile of aged manure on top of sod). They act as a fantastic windbreak for your garden!
But now I am at peace heading back to the city! The dill seeds that I scattered outside right before winter are finally just starting to sprout, but they only have tiny cotyledon leaves. So my indoor transplants are in a much better position to win the race. I only planted 6 little 7 oz (200ml) cups of them, but that’s plenty for our first fresh greens of the season.
I also transplanted some lettuce out into the open garden and some into the greenhouse, and I left the rest indoors under grow lights. It is crazy how different they look! We will be eating the indoor lettuce very soon. The greenhouse lettuce is doing okay, about 2-3 inches (5-7 cm) tall. The outdoor lettuce is still tiny, but the red color on the ‘Lollo Rossa’ variety perfectly matches the catalog description. The greenhouse one is much paler, and the indoor one is almost completely green!
Obviously, I always direct-sow greens into the garden eventually, but you just can’t beat the craving for that super early spring harvest.
Tatunya (Tanya) wrote:
Let the people who are strictly against starting herbs indoors as seedlings laugh all they want.
Tanya, I did the exact same thing this year! I sowed ‘Karlik’ (Dwarf) dill from Gavrish seeds. My parsley turned out exceptionally well too! I am definitely adopting your method of starting them in cups and then planting them out using Ludmila’s onion-planting technique. Timing-wise, do you think I should start them a week or two before the onions next year?
But yes, starting them indoors is absolutely the way to go. I am also going to start Swiss chard and radishes indoors. Someone recently wrote about transplanting radish seedlings… it’s not a taproot like carrots, so why not! (Though I can never seem to get tarragon to grow for some reason).
Ladies, do you guys plant corn and sunflowers? First of all, the thick stalks make fantastic drainage and organic matter for the bottom of raised beds next year. Secondly, they are beautiful and make a great windbreak for the garden! Just remember that sunflower heads track the sun, so plan your planting so that YOU get to see the beautiful faces, not your neighbor!
As for corn, there is such a huge selection of early hybrids right now! I am going to plant corn, sunflowers, and pumpkins straight into raw, unbroken sod on top of some aged manure from last year. I’ll just use a bulb planter (Tornado tool) to punch holes, plant the seedlings, cover them with cut-off bottles, and later I’ll just build a bed around them using grass clippings.
My corn is already huge! I planted 3 seeds per 16 oz (0.5L) cup, and they germinated perfectly. I pre-sprouted them in damp perlite first, just like the pumpkins. I’m using leftover sunflower seeds from the bird feeder because the fancy hybrid seeds never seem to fully ripen in our short season anyway, so I just plant the cheap ones and I don’t feel bad if they fail.
Dusya Kalyazin (Natalia) wrote:
…and then planting them out using Ludmila’s onion-planting technique.
Wait, you mean separating and planting them one by one?! Do you actually have the patience for that… you must have very steady hands! I absolutely cannot do it. 🤦♀️
I just plant them in a big cluster/bunch! You are supposed to sow the seeds a bit sparsely in the cup, but I got carried away and dumped a ton of seed in. 🤭
👨🔬 Editor’s Botanical Note: The “Multi-Sown” Method
If you’ve ever watched British gardening shows (like Charles Dowding’s No-Dig method), you might recognize Tanya’s dill trick! This is known as Multi-Sowing.
Instead of meticulously starting one tiny dill or onion seed per cell, you drop a heavy pinch of seeds into a small nursery pot and let them grow into a thick, tangled “plug.” When it’s time to transplant, you don’t separate them—you plant the entire cluster directly into the garden as one single unit!
This works phenomenally well for herbs (dill, cilantro, basil), scallions, and even beets and radishes. As the cluster grows, the plants naturally push each other outward. It saves a massive amount of space under your indoor grow lights and eliminates the tedious work of transplanting paper-thin seedlings one by one!
