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Starting Vegetable Seeds Indoors

First Paragraph:
The easiest way to start any vegetable garden is direct seeding—wait until the weather warms and plant the seeds directly in the garden. Unfortunately, direct seeding is not practical for some crops. For example, tomatoes and peppers cannot be planted until after the last frost and after the soil has warmed. If seeded directly in the garden at that time, tomatoes and peppers require more than 100 days to produce the first fruit. In addition, newly emerged seedlings are very tender and easily killed by insects and disease or shaded by quicker growing weeds. Transplanting hardier young seedlings started indoors (transplants) allows an earlier start in the garden, which results in earlier yields of certain crops and makes better use of limited garden space. If a few simple guidelines are followed, transplants can be grown with a minimum of problems.
Publication Number:
FS787
Author(s):
Peter Nitzsche
Steve Reiners
Publisher:
Rutgers NJAES Cooperative Extension
Date Published:
2/26/2014
Number of pages:
3
Tags:
seeds, seedlings, transplanting, tomatoes, corn, beans,