We are getting close to the typical average last frost date at March 3rd. So now is the time to start some cucumber, squash or melon seeds indoors.

Starting Mix

First, you need some seed starting mix. You can use ready-made mixes, or you can make your own by using potting soil mix you have on hand. Since I always have some potting soil mix on hand for use in containers or up potting starts, I use that. I suggest screening it through a ¼ inch hardware cloth sieve to take out any larger pieces which might block the seeds from poking through the mix.

Once the soil is hydrated, add it to the seed trays. Since cucumber, squash, and melon seeds are larger seeds, they are planted at about twice their size or roughly ½ inch depth.

Next, place your starter tray on a rack or designated place, covering it with a humidity dome. If you have plant-start heating mats, they can be very helpful by warming the soil, but are not absolutely necessary. It is customary to “bottom” water seeds, so add water to the tray your seeds are in. The soil should be moist enough from the initial wetting process described above, thus only a little water should be needed in the tray. Add water only when soil dries out slightly. After about 15 minutes, if any water remains in the tray, drain it. The humidity dome should stay on until the seedlings begin to show.

Seedlings

The Armenian cucumber seeds in these photos germinated over five days from February 17^th through the 22^nd with the humidity dome being removed on February 22^nd.

At this point the seedlings should be placed under grow lights slightly above their height. Adjust the height of the light as the seedlings grow. If the grow lights are too high, the seedlings will likely become “leggy,” because they are stretching to reach more light. This will cause them to be weaker due to the main stem being too long and thin, and likely top heavy. The first set of leaves on the seedlings are the cotyledon leaves. The next set of leaves you will see are the first true leaves and the cotyledon leaves will likely drop off.

Preparing Plants for the Garden

Once the true leaves begin to form and the plants grow more, you can either “up pot,” meaning transferring them to a larger single plant pot such as a 3- or 4-inch-wide pot, or you can begin the “hardening off” process to prepare the plant for their eventual final place in your garden.

Hardening off is the process of acclimating the new seedling to the outdoors. This starts by moving them outdoors the first day for perhaps 2 hours. This continues daily, increasing amount of time of outdoor exposure each day for about 1 week. By then your new starts should be able to handle being transplanted into your outdoor garden.

If you prefer not to jump start your growing season by starting seeds indoors, cucumbers, squash, and melon seeds can be started in the ground in late March. Just be sure to check the long-range weather forecast to see if any possible freezing temperatures might happen.

Tim Long has been a UC Master Gardener in Stanislaus County since 2020. All photos are by the author.

Part one of Planting Peppers from Seed covered planting your pepper seeds and caring for them. After several weeks the seedlings should be outgrowing the trays they were started in. So now is the time to prepare your green “babies” to venture outside to the real world!

Potting the Seedlings

Plant each seedling into individual larger containers with potting soil to give them plenty of room to grow larger. Any type of pot with a drainage hole will do. Continue to keep them warm and watered from the bottom, with adequate light each day, along with the oscillating fan discussed in part one. Keep them in the pots for at least a week.

Pepper plants dislike cold, so they could die if moved outside into your garden too early. It is best to wait until all chances of frost are gone and the soil has warmed up. In our area that is usually between the end-of-March and early April.

“Hardening Off” is an Important Step!

The seedlings are used to an indoor environment where there is no rain, wind, or direct sunlight, so they need to be toughened up prior to transplanting them to your garden outside. This is called “hardening off” and is a crucial step that cannot be skipped if you want to have healthy, producing pepper plants.

Hardening off requires moving the plants back and forth from outside and inside, so is a bit of work and time-consuming, but this will ensure your pepper plants will thrive when transplanted to your garden.

The hardening process can begin when daytime temperatures are consistently above 60°F and 7 – 14 days prior to the day you plan to transplant the seedlings to your garden:

1. During the first couple days move the pots outside to a sheltered, shady spot such as a covered patio. Choose a mild weather day that is not windy or has a storm forecast. Leave them outside for two hours and bring them back inside under the grow lights. Over the next few days, gradually increase the time the plants spend outside in the protected area.
2. Move plants out from the sheltered area. Again, start at just a couple hours per day, then over five – seven days gradually increase the length of time your plants are exposed to the sun. Do this during the morning or evening hours since afternoon sunlight could burn them. Gentle rain and light winds during this time will help the plants get used to the elements but move them back to protected shelter as needed if extreme weather occurs.
3. The plants will dry out faster outside, so check regularly and water as needed, which could be more than once a day. They can get slightly dry, but do not let them dry out to the point of wilt.
4. Once your seedlings have been outdoors all day and the temperatures are consistently above 50°F at night, you can leave them outdoors during nighttime as well. But they will still need to be protected from high winds and storms.

Planting in the Garden!

After about ten days to two weeks, plant the peppers in full sun where they get at least 6-8 hours sunlight each day, in an area with good air circulation and where they are not shaded by other plants. Pepper plants stay relatively compact and do not need a lot of room to grow, so plan to space your seedlings about 12 – 24 inches apart in your garden, depending on how large they are expected to grow. Plant them slightly deeper than they were in the pot, about ½ inch lower.

Do not overfertilize. Peppers are light feeders but will benefit from a regular feeding of a well-balanced organic fertilizer. Avoid high nitrogen fertilizers.

Plant the peppers near flowers. While peppers can self-pollinate with wind, attracting pollinators can ensure their flowers are fertilized. Avoid using pesticides or synthetic fertilizers since peppers are for human consumption, and pesticides can be harmful to beneficial insects.

Peppers are slow to mature, so depending on the pepper variety, when you planted them in your garden, and the weather, you should be able to reap the rewards of your labor between July and September! Enjoy!

 Author: Denise Godbout-Avant, UC Master Gardener since 2020

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*Three months after you attend one of our classes, you receive an email survey with questions about the class topic. Its purpose is to find out how much you've learned and apply the information in your home garden, and is not related to the survey above.

With the cooler, damp weather due to the recent atmospheric storm and fog, you may have observed mushrooms popping up in your lawn, garden, or neighborhood. Mushrooms have a mixed reputation as being beautiful, delicious, deadly, magical, and mysterious. It is estimated there 140,000 species of wild mushrooms worldwide, with about 3,000 of these being edible.

What are Mushrooms?

Mushrooms, also known as toadstools, are the visible reproductive body of a fungus which produces spores. Mushrooms seem to magically appear and then quickly disappear. The fruiting body you see releases its spores to be spread by air currents, with the mushroom then drying up. When spores land in a satisfactory location they will germinate, sending out long filaments called hyphae.

Mushrooms don't have chlorophyll like plants. Most are saprophytes, meaning they break down and get their nutrition from metabolizing decaying, non-living organic matter like plants, wood, fallen leaves, and sometimes even dead animals or insects. As decomposers, they play a crucial role in the ecosystem, recycling and enriching organic matter.

The standard visible morphology of a mushroom is a stipe (stem) topped by a cap with gills on the underside, but mushrooms come in a variety of sizes, shapes, colors and uses. The common mushroom is the cultivated white button mushroom we see in stores. Other shapes include puffball, stinkhorn, morel, bolete, shelf, truffles, bird's nests, orange peel, and agarics. Colors vary from white, black, brown, yellow, and occasionally orange and reds. Sizes range from microscopic to 5 feet in diameter!

Many mushrooms also have an underground filament called mycelium (plural: mycelia). You can sometimes see mycelia when turning over a rotting log or by digging underneath a cluster of mushrooms. The mycelia will look like a stringy mat of white fibers in and around plant and tree roots.

Many mycorrhizal mushrooms have a symbiotic (mutually beneficial) relationship with the roots of trees and plants. The mycelia extend the range of the plant's roots providing them with extra nutrients and moisture. In exchange, the trees and plants provide the fungi simple sugars produced through photosynthesis. Specific host trees and plants will partner with specific species of mushrooms, which allow both to thrive. A classic example is relationship between truffles and oak trees.

History & Uses

The terms “mushroom” and “toadstool” go back centuries. Much of their mystery is due to their association with poisonings and accidental deaths. They were thought to be special and supernatural by many cultures including Egyptians and Romans who associated them with their rulers and gods. Chinese and Japanese cultures have utilized mushrooms for medicinal purposes for thousands of years. Hallucinogenic mushroom species have a history of use among Indigenous people of Mesoamerica for religious purposes and healing from pre-Columbian times. People today correlate hallucinogenic mushrooms with the hippie period in the 1960s. Edible mushroom species have been found in 13,000-year-old archaeological sites in Chile. Truffles have been collected as far back as 1600 BC.

Edible Mushrooms

Mushrooms that aren't toxic are quite healthy and tasty. They have large amounts of protein, potassium and polysaccharides which can contribute to a healthy immune system.

Poisonous mushrooms can be very hard to identify in the wild, so unless you have been taught how to classify mushrooms by an expert, it is recommended you buy from a reliable grocery store. Mycologists identify mushrooms by observing their morphology, getting spore prints, microscopic study, and with mushroom keys, though applying DNA technology is becoming common. 

You can also grow your own mushrooms at home – kits are available online and at some plant nurseries.

Mushrooms in Your Garden and Lawn

Mushrooms are a sign that you have healthy soil in your yard. However, some mushrooms can cause lawn management issues, may be considered unsightly, or potentially harmful to pets and children:

• Common mushrooms in gardens include inky caps, stinkhorns, puffballs, or bird's nests.
• A “fairy ring” of mushrooms is an arc of mushrooms around a circle of darker green lawn, often in shady areas. They get their name from an ancient belief that fairies danced in these circles around the mushrooms.
• Mushrooms in lawns often develop from buried scraps such as pieces of wood or dead tree roots.
• A cluster of honey-colored mushrooms may appear at the base of a tree in the fall. These don't usually appear unless the host tree is dying.
• New lawns require frequent irrigation until established, thus creating a perfect setting for mushrooms, which is why they often appear in freshly planted lawns.

Remember, the mushrooms you see are the fruiting bodies that produce spores. Thus, removing them will not kill the underground mycelia from which they are growing, unless you pick them prior to their release of spores. However, you can try to reduce the number of mushrooms you have by decreasing the amount and frequency of watering your lawn and let the grass dry in between. For more information in dealing with mushrooms in your lawn, visit the UC IPM website at  http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn74100.html

Whether you see mushrooms in the forest, in your lawn or neighborhood, I hope you can appreciate and enjoy these unique, complex, beautiful, valuable, diverse, and magical organisms!

-This article was originally published on December 6, 2021.

Denise Godbout-Avant has been a UCCE Stanislaus County Master Gardener since July 2020.