A Rookie Gardening Mistake Is Sure To Delay Your Harvest For These Plants

The idea of growing your own food from seeds can be exciting — so exciting that new gardeners sometimes skip an important step required to bring their crops to harvest. The result is that, once the first fall frost is looming, certain plants will still not yet have grown to maturity. This error happens when beginning gardeners overlook the need to start seeds indoors. 

The rookie mistake is understandable since some seeds do better when sown directly into the garden, including some cool-season crops like carrots, beets, and peas, as well as certain warm-season growers, such as squash, cucumbers, and beans. On the other hand, there are plants you should start sowing in late winter or early spring indoors because they need a head start; otherwise the harvest of these plants will be delayed, or even missed out on entirely. By reading seed packets, you can learn how and when to direct sow seeds in your garden and which to start indoors. But in their eagerness to get started, not all gardeners take the time to read those instructions, causing them to miss out on this crucial part of the growing process.

Gardeners should consider starting many popular warm-season crops indoors, such as tomatoes, hot peppers, bell peppers, and eggplants. But there are also some cool-season crops that tend to grow poorly in the garden unless started early indoors, because they're sensitive to hot summers and need to mature before then. It can be a mistake to direct sow Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and celery.

Unfortunately, these plants aren't all started from seed indoors at the same time. Those valuable recommendations that some gardeners miss on their seed packets list the exact number of weeks before the last spring frost that seeds need to be started. For instance, you can grow juicy tomatoes from seed five to six weeks before the last average frost, while peppers and eggplants require nine weeks, Brussels sprouts and cabbage need 10 to 11 weeks, and celery needs 12 to 13 weeks.

Seedlings grown indoors are sensitive to cold weather, so transplanting to the garden is delayed until after the last frost of spring — and after the seedlings are first hardened off. Skipping hardening off is another mistake newbies make. Instead, seedlings grown indoors should be gradually introduced to the outdoors by increasing their time spent in sun, wind, and rain little by little over a week to a week and a half.