sepp holzer doesn't transplant annuals

  I wonder what sepp oholzer does to plant tomatoe seeds ,I try to imagine and come out with building up a bit of a wall or pile of rocks that faces south to make a sun trap where you want to plants the seeds , would it be curved to protect the plants from cold draughts, paul wheaton says if it is white it will serve to reflect more light, htinking in these terms if its  black it will take up more heat would black stones on the the soil heat up the soil or black dust ground slate or somehting. . rocks holdl the heat for longer and so joel hollingsworths mylar would heat he earth more reflecting more sun on it and white rocks would reflet less heat but hold the heat longer maybe the size of th ewall influences its ability oto heat a lot or quite a bit less. . agri rose macaskie.

  This in ht ephoto  is atrick of mine for protecting a plant in winter that might serve as a cloch if you put a hat on it.

rose, what is that made of?

paul wheaton wrote:
Another thread reminded me about this - and I think I didn't mention it here before.
Sepp has a greenhouse.  But the only thing he uses it for is earthworm breeding.
Most people start seeds indoors and then transplant them later.   Sepp never does this.  And he is in the alps of austria.
Can anybody think of any commonly transplanted plant where this would not work?

Planting bare-root trees supposedly eliminates/minimizes transplant shock since there is no mixing of soils. 

hmmm, when I was out tossing the kitchen scraps today I saw my volunteer green leaf lettuce looking so healthy and happy and the ones I sprouted (from the same saved seed) in little pots on the deck are still at the two tiny first leaf stage and flopped over, just SAD(we've been having weeks of rain)...the volunteer obviously came up and launched when temps and a sunbreak was just right, the seed just waiting in the soil to turn on and go to work. Ahem, just like all the other wild annuals...

I do notice a difference in the vigor of volunteers, they're just happier. I have soil that stays wet and takes a long time to warm up, so it's hard to judge the best set out time. The volunteer tomatoes "catch up" to the store bought ones.  I always throw some tomatoes on the ground in the fall to see what will come up. (Still buy the store bought ones tho because I like to try new varieties) I had an awesome big sized volunteer cherry tomato last year.

The most vigorous pumpkin vine I ever saw was from one someone threw on a vacant lot on top of a rotten grass clipping pile. No watering, no care, just the very right spot for it to grow.

SO it makes sense.

I have personally given up on starting seeds in pots. They have a strong tendency to just keel over and die. Also, strange flies always appear in the pots, so I have to keep them outdoors (which defeats the purpose of the pots).

Any volunteer tomatoes I've had in the past never really produced much. It might be because I wait too long to thin them out but I do believe that its my short growing season. I'm gonna try thinning them earlier than usual to see if I can get a decent crop.

Kirk Hutchison wrote:
I have personally given up on starting seeds in pots. They have a strong tendency to just keel over and die. Also, strange flies always appear in the pots, so I have to keep them outdoors (which defeats the purpose of the pots).

You might have a problem with damping off.

Food grade Hydrogen peroxide mixed in with your water works to prevent damping off.

I've never had a problem with it but I have had mold grow in my potted seedlings and the peroxide got rid of it within one to three waterings

Rose even in the harsh climate of Michigan tomatoes will volunteer if they are left to rot on the ground or in the compost pile..happens here all the time..so yeah..if they are thrown about they have a good chance of growing

Travis - how much HP do you mix with how much water?

Ratio please....

Hm...interesting!

I had a tomato volunteer from a pot in which I'd planted a succulent houseplant. I did a bare-root transplant out of necessity, and so far it seems to have worked.

For whatever reason, zero tomato seeds planted directly have resulted in plants. But tomatoes are perennial in my garden, so maybe I shouldn't chime in on the discussion of annuals...

Jami McBride wrote:
Travis - how much HP do you mix with how much water?

Ratio please....

3% hydrogen peroxide with water in a 1:10 ratio. Make sure its food grade because I've heard that the pharmacy hydrogen peroxide can have toxins/heavy metals and other impurities. I bought mine at a place that sells water treatment systems and fill-it-yourself water in bulk. It can also be purchased at some agri supply stores

i'm looking at a few plants that look like they are going to go to seed right now in my garden, cause we are having some horrible heat here that is highly unusual for Michigan ..we have had 4 months of well above normal temps and droughts..

so anyway some of the cole crops that i planted this spring are going to seed, such as chinese cabbages for example.

i plan to let them produce seed and maybe see if some of them will reseed themselves and maybe grow a fall crop??? haven't tried this with chinese cabbages before..but the weather may turn back toward normal cooler temps here (so the weather channel says) so possibly would that work out to where if we let them go to seed they might produce a crop for this fall?

I have a bit of another problem, and that is identifying self seeding greens. I have tons of these self seeded little things all over my garden from last year's compost pile..i don't know what they are, probably some of my neighbors salad trimmings that went to seed, look like members of the radish or cole family but i've been pulling a lot of them out and leaving a few to manture..I remember in Fukokas One STraw Revolution he said that his greens reverted back to more of a wild state..which is fine with me if they don't turn too bitter to actually be able to eat them..as i eat a lot of "weeds"..wild greens here anyway..but i'm just not sure what to do about self seeders when i'm not sure what they are???

I would actually LOVE to have my food forests come up on their own without having to plant them every year..at least maybe 80 % of the stuff self seeded, i know some things will likely have to be hand planted yearly..but have any of you had your lettuces and cabbage familiiy plants self seed and come up on their own year after year? and if so, did you notice the same type of changes that Fukoku mentions his had, getting stronger, and more bitter, more like the wild plants..

Okay, here is where I get hated...  In the tropics almost everything self seeds, except those plants that are bi-annual (for example, never seen a carrot produce seed here) With tomatoes, just don't harvest the bad ones, they will fall and sprout up the next group - just about the right timing too.

Lima Beans sprout in the pods if you don't get to them quick enough - so you just take them and stuff them in the ground and start again - though the original vine doesn't seem to ever die - it just keeps growing. I have seen stems on a lima bean 2 inches in diameter - looks more like a grape vine

With okra, I just pick a couple of the best plants to be seed plants - and let them go to seeds. Bok choy, will go to seed, works well. Broccoli is a bit scary - I had plants all over the place at one time.

Tropical Spinach just grows and grows - and the best peppers grow inside a ground cover of tropical spinach. No pest seem to be able to get through the tropical spinach ground cover. When it gets too extreme, I just cut a bunch and throw it to the sheep - they love it.

Passion fruit self seeds like crazy, so does Papaya. The Tucans love papaya, and they throw the seeds all over - 9 months later, you have fruit.

It takes a bit to stop fighting the tropics and start enjoying it - my first few seasons were dismal failures - but now I harvest a lot of veggies and fruit daily. I do have seeds also, to start new varieties and types.

Oh, and amaranth looks like it is going to be the new weed in the garden.

Paul Wheaton, I have only just seen that you asked what my cloche is made of. I dont know. There is a plastics shop fairly close to here in the middle of Madrid, it is always a bit disapointing and pretty expensive and i ended up buying two sheets of this stiffish plastic of unknown variety, i don't remember what for, maybe i thought i could use them for solar ovens. You can't buy turkey roasting bags here and they are a requisite of a lot of solar ovens so i was looking for a substitute. Turkey roasting  bags are made from nylon I believe, solarcookingnut puts them on top of her box ovens instead of glass which is more unwieldy and breakable. 
  I cut the sheet of plastic in half, rolled it into a tube shape and put some wire round it to hold it in a tube shape. You can see the wire slightly below the middle of the tube. I thought i could cut out a piece of plastic to balance on top of the tube but did not get round to it and was not sure enough about the plants liking plastic to really go puttign on a lid too. i have had plants curly up and look really ill with too much plastic round them. It has worked to break the frost without a top.
      As the garden is at a thouand feet there are late frosts it is usually the late ones that do for any delicate plants i buy.
      Maybe you are asking what the offending plant is, that is neither natural to the place nor a vegetable and you are a pretty macho, no decorative plants, i like the uselfull, man. I have a weekness for things that catch my eye for decorative reasons.
      I have used  this easy to make cloche for tomatoes which i planted out a bit early. With it  they survived the cold other things didn't survive and are in flower and that even though they are in part shade  I shall have the earliest tomatoes in the village.  They were grown on my balcony so they were transplanted tomatoes, still my first successes at vegetable growing, so all considered something.
    The tomatoe seeds i put in straight out onto the garden have not come up , still considering my lousey record at growing anything from seed except trees, that is in no way invalidates anything Sepp might do.  I have early lettuces to, in the protection of the plum trees which should cut the cold a bit but my neighbors will beat me in the end and have a truly great amount of tomatoes and vegetables. agri rose macaskie.

Fred, thanks, I wish I was able to have things grow here like in the tropics..but alas, my temps drop to 20 to 30 below zero fairly regularly  in the winter time so i have to generally just keep the seed in the house and sow them in the spring..but I would like to try to get more things to self sow on their own ..save me a lot of planting and saving seeds. However, i'm not really sure how to identify some of the seedlings to know what is what. I guess what i can do is one of two things..taste or allow to mature and see what it becomes..but when you get a couple thousand seedlings of things and they all look quite similar ..say the cole crops..then you aren't sure if they are something you should eat as greens or something you should allow to mature...since so many look so much alike.

i suppose if i eat the greens and they don't make me sick, they are ok to eat as greens..and i really doubt if any of the family members of items that i allow to go to seed would really make anyone sick or be dangerous. But occasionally there are plants that the leaves are dangerous or other parts..I'm not really all that concerned about that, but what they really are and should be growing up to be..cause some greens are best eaten small, but if they are going to grow up to make a better adult plant i should leave them.

allmyself sowers will get all mixed up in my gardens..none will likely be isolated from each other..so i might end up with some pretty off the wall vegetables in the second and third ggenerations.

The downside to growing in the tropics is I haven't yet figured out when the pull the plug on some veggies - they just grow and grow and grow and grow. I have one squash plant (who knows what variety - seeds given to me by a neighbor) that must cover 400 square feet! I just let it ramble where it will which is over beds, in paths, into the pasture, etc. Anytime it gets too frisky, I drop some dirt on a vine and let it root, and remove the old section.

Finding squash is an adventure some days - let's see, is it in the corn, the lima beans, watermelon, .....

If you pick it young, it is like summer squash, lose track, it is like winter squash and can get as big as a Hubbard.

Learning how work with the tropical nature instead of trying to force it to behave the way I expect has been a challenge - but I am getting there. One thing I really am loving is there is no planting season, nor harvest season. So, when I go out to grab something, I just bring some seeds with me, find a hole, and plant.

Since we have a furniture factor, I never lack organic material - and I often trade sawdust for manure.

One issue in the tropics is cool weather crops, peas, radishes, beets, swiss chard, etc. I have never had problems growing these things before - radishes grow, but better to think of them as horseradish when you try to eat one! The greens are good though.

  Fred Morgan if you live in the tropics what do you think of Haiti being turned into a desert? Doesnt it make you want to wander out there and take a look and right things again. If you live and grow in the tropics doesn't that make you better able to sum up the situation, than i would be say, so you could feel that you could sort it out. It might be rude to suggest Haitans can't but it is much harder to sort things out without money. 
    When i went to Jamaica had a five day holiday there, full of jet lag and a desire to know jamaicans while i was stuck in the hotel, it was hard to  get the family out and as i could not go out i was absolutely chattering with frustration, i was suprised to find some bits of the landscape englishified. Some bits looked like the outskirts of london and some other bits like rich english persons park land, a few trees and pasture lands. Did the english try to make it into a second England? Have the problems in such places been looked at and sorted after acrueing a lot of crazy ideas over the centuries.
what I have been hearing about farming in England makes me begin to think tha teven in that wet little island we have been ruining the soil.

  You hear everywhere of land use tactics that are likely to end up being bad for locals because the land is used for big money crops and so not available for the locals to use to feed themselves with or equally important, to earn money for themselves with. I have heard there are famines were there is enough produce but no one has any money so they cant get their hands on it.  The revolutionaries before the civil war here wanted  the redistribution of lands that belonged to big land owners, the priminister wilson got it by a inheritance tax that force their hinheriters to sell the land gradual so less painfull but effective .  Now are the big land owners companies instead of dukes and such, something that culturaly hardley exists for us so we don't try to control the evils they might suppose .
    In kenya they took away peoples land to grow crops that suited the english wangari mattai.  Should there be sugar cane in Jamaica is it economically viable for the populaqtion or does it serve some other persons ends, the village big wigs in Africa sell the mopane worms that before were part of the diet of the villagers, they can be dried or canned. They earn money, the villagers get less well fed.. Will the palm oiul in indonesia help the indonesians or us.
  A thorough study of land use in Haiti and the exposure of how multinationals profit instead of Haitians, if that is the case, should have been done while it was news. 
      This might be a topic but it is the sort of topic that should be kept in the public eye. In Jamaica Marsans  the multinatioanl hotel chain did not want us to go out and spend our money outside the hotel. They reduced the profit to jamaicans as much as possible, they said it was dangerous  to go out, they even chased us across the hall protesting when we tried to get out. How much of that sort of thing goes on with multinational companies that are working in poor places, that they help themselves not the poor country to an outrageouse extent, you are meant to look after your profits a bit a suppose it just becomes scandalouse when theat bit is such anawfull lot and so does for others.

  Farming companies  need to be put on the line like petrol companies do, multinatioanls need to be put on the line people seem to be hardley aware that just as there are different countries there are these big entities that are out there, neither belonging, in the sense that they obey the laws of one place, to one place or the other, rules unto themselves and now that BP is on the line it might be a good time to talk of all this. agri rose macaskie

paul wheaton wrote:Can anybody think of any commonly transplanted plant where this would not work?

I wonder if celery is an example. It takes so long to germinate and grow the first couple inches that with direct sowing it seems like weeds would always beat it up.

Regarding tomatoes, I have more years than not that the volunteers do better than the transplants (but not always) so it doesn't seem that weird to me that with a little more skill than I have, it would work out better all the time.