Pre-Cultivation of Cabbage and Onions

This weekend I’ve started the pre-cultivation of some of this years plants. Some of the plans need pre-cultivation due to our cold climate and short summers. Tomatoes and onion seeds are examples.

I’ve picked up a little more planting eqipment simply because it makes the planting process smoother, and clean up afterwards easier.

First new piece of equipment is a good study planting tray. The big green tray with the small shelf pictured. This gives me a little playground where I can make any mess that I want on our glassed-in wooden deck, without having to vacuum up all dirt and spilled soil. Quite neat.

Next up are some planting boxes. Having three cats, these boxes adds an extra barrier of protection when growing these seeds indoors at the windows sills. Cats like to play, climb, and also eat grass-like straws. So hopefully means that I’ll get to have my seedlings to myself.

Also, these boxes provides a good microclimate for my seeds. They keep heat and moisture in, and many of them have adjustable ventilation slits for customizing each box to each type of seed or seedling.

I have yet to pick a favorite planting box, so I picked up a few different ones.

Today I’ve planted yellow onion seeds in my Nelson Garden PlantStart. It has 49 tiny plant cells, so a large capacity on a small space. In each of these sells I’ve planted three small yellow onion seeds. In its early stage of life, yellow onions are super tiny. Planting a few seeds in each cells makes sure that I get many seeds who germinate.

The type of onion I chose this year is Giant Stuttgart, a well-known type that’s excellent for long-term cold storage for this winter.

Once these have germinated, grown to some size and I see how many seeds that seem to make it, they’ll be re-planted into small planting pots.

Today I also started the pre-cultivation of cabbage seeds. I’ve never grow cabbage myself so this is an experiment. But I’m looking forward to make home-made Sauerkraut this fall, so I’ll give it a go.

The type I chose this year is Brunswijker. An old heritage sort that should work well in my colder climate and also is good for winter storage.

I pre-planted these in a Garland Deep Root planting box with 28 cells. Hopefully this leads to 28 cabbage seedling that can be re-planted after germination and a little growth spurt. Should give a lot of cabbage this fall.

A great start, I’d say personally. More pre-cultivation to come in the following days!