Apr 10

Apr 10 Off grid and need to germinate seeds during Dogwood winter?

I live off-grid and don’t have the power for a heat mat to warm the soil to get my seeds to germinate. I needed a cheap way to get a jump start on my garden. I thought about the heat sources I do have that are consistent and those are my lazy, fat cats and me. This will be my third time germinating seeds with body heat and cats; so far, it has worked like a charm.

Here is a little video showing how I did it with some footage of dogwood winter.

I get a small zip lock bag, put in a slip of a wet paper towel and spread the seeds out as much as possible on the moisture. I make a fold in my undershirt, slip the zip lock baggies in to the pouch, pull my over shirt over them and tuck in. I have slept this way twice and you completely forget they are in there. They weren’t disturbed during my sleep and the seeds germinated overnight in one case and on the 2nd day in the other.

(haha, i just noticed in the video I said it’s April 4th, but it’s actually April 10th).

I then carefully planted them by laying the germinated seeds in a start tray of moist soil and sprinkling dirt over the top. Yes you could just plant and wait, but this time of year, some days the house is chilly and it’s not worth the effort to build a fire. Because the house overhangs were calculated to keep the sun out except for in the winter, the sun is only at the window sill. It doesn’t come in quite far enough to reach the shelf with all the starts. Sometimes it’ll take a week or more for the seeds to germinate and we aren’t even sure if they will.

It was critical to get the luffa gourds going early since they have such a long growing season and right after blackberry winter, I want to get them into the ground. They were my first experiment in germinating in my undershirt and under a cat, it worked great!

We had a really cold week during my first experiment and I found there was always a cat laying on or under a blanket. So if I had to go outside, I slid the warm seed pouch under the blanket under the cat and they were oblivious. Here are two incubators reporting for duty. It’s a hard job, but someone has to do it.

Here in zone 6, it’s so tempting to direct sow or plant out tender annuals during spring when days get in the high 70s. Even though my official last frost date is April 20th, I’ve always gotten a frost past that date since I’ve been here. Some old timers told us of the method they use. They said when the dogwoods are in full bloom, you’ll get a frost. It’s called dogwood winter. This year we haven’t gotten a frost yet and it’s not predicted this week even though the dogwoods have started to open. However, it is cold, windy and rainy and not good weather for baby starts.

Then it’ll warm again and we’ll be tempted again. Then the blackberries bloom during blackberry winter and after that it should be safe. Though a few years I have gotten a very mild nip when the wild roses bloom, but not enough to kill the annuals. I’ve been keeping a farm journal and so far, tracking last frost by the blooms has worked better than using the official predicted dates. This year may be the first we don’t get an official frost during the dogwood and blackberry winter, guess the next few weeks will tell.