Colorado has been “home” for almost seven years now, and sometimes it’s hard to tell if I’ve finally acclimated to the weather here or if the past two winters have been milder than the first ones I endured after three years in central Texas and a stint in Southeast Asia. (Reviewing average temperatures since 2012 suggests there hasn’t been a drastic difference over the years, so I’m going with personal adaptation.)
Like most areas of the U.S., March is a turbulent month here, weather-wise. The difference between Englewood, Colorado, and most other places I’ve gardened, though, lies in altitude.
I grew up with plenty of spring rain in Alabama, the moody skies, moisture, and gradually warming temperatures a perfect combination for seed germination. Englewood’s location 5,371 feet above sea level makes a marked difference for gardening because when weather moves through, it’s often rolling down from the Rockies and makes snow more likely than rain.
Also, the arid, high-altitude region means day and night temperatures can fluctuate as much as 40 degrees in a matter of hours. Not exactly the easiest growing conditions for the early spring crops that flourish in other climates and certainly not the ideal outdoor seed starting conditions for warm weather crops like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant, to say nothing of most of the flowers I cherish.
Here's a snapshot of our current Colorado spring:
Patient cold climate gardeners like those in Englewood’s plant hardiness zone 5b can wait until late April to start some cold hardy vegetable seeds outdoors or until mid- or late May to transplant small garden store starts in their gardens to reduce the risk that their baby plants will suffer or perish from frostbite.
I’m not the most patient cold-climate gardener. I like the idea of starting seeds indoors so that I can be part of a plant’s entire life cycle. Fortunate for me, Cameron’s thoughtful online research allowed us to successfully start a variety of tomato plants and onions indoors last year with a grow light setup in our basement.
If you’re lucky enough to have space near a south-facing window in your home, then you may not need grow light assistance to start seeds. Our house is small, and our toddler and pets are curious. Combine these factors, and it’s much easier to get growing in a controlled basement corner.
While there is no shortage of options for grow-your-own-indoor-plant supplies in the Denver-metro area (cue Colorado stoner joke now), as new parents with zero time to peruse local grow light businesses, we purchased a stack-n-grow light system from Gardeners Supply Company, an online store that allowed us to order what we needed without leaving the house.
Within the week, our grow light system arrived, and it was not only easy to assemble, but its adjustable lighting worked incredibly well because we could move the lights further from the seed trays after the seeds sprouted and then became full-size starts, eliminating my concern that the lighting would scorch their delicate seedling leaves.
In addition to the grow light system, we purchased a seed starting kit that included self-watering trays with humidity domes and seed start soil, as well as heat mats to help the warm weather seeds that need a 70-90 degree F climate to germinate.
If you read my most recent post, you know the Middleton and Turner family have ambitious vegetable and flower gardening plans this year. A good portion of the seeds we purchased will be directly sown in our prepared garden beds and containers when the weather cooperates (and with a little help from the new cold frame garden structure Cameron finished over the weekend. More on that in the next post.)
But with the much shorter growing season in our area of Colorado, we decided to start our pepper and eggplant seeds, as well as a few flower varieties, indoors since they need to begin growing anywhere from 10 to 12 weeks before the last frost date.
After prepping the seed trays (this includes sanitizing the trays and filling them with appropriate levels of moistened soil) and ensuring our grow lights functioned properly, we read the seed packet planting directions carefully and set about sowing the seeds.
Because we don’t have much free time these days, not only has the self-watering capillary mats been a lifesaver as we start seeds, but Cameron purchased a digital programmable timer so that we can ensure that the seeds get the closest approximation to light and dark hours as possible.
Prep work done, all we needed to do was bide our time to see what, if any, seeds would germinate. Within a week, we had at least one seedling sprout from each cell we sowed.
This weekend we’ll not only be gearing up to start tomato seeds, we’ll also be thinning these seedlings to give the strongest ones more space to grow before moving them into larger transplant containers. If you’re new to seed germination and are up for a low-key plant science project, check out this helpful Spruce article about common mistakes to avoid when starting seeds indoors and get growing.