Don't Make This BIG MISTAKE Planting Cucumbers, Melons And Squash!

What's growing on, gardeners? It's Thursday, February 15th, and we are slowly coming out of winter here on the southeastern coast of North Carolina, and that means that seed starting season is in full swing. But wait, don't start your cucumber, squash, or melon plants until you watch this video. I'm going to discuss the biggest mistake that growers make when starting these plants, and if you make this mistake, you may find yourself throwing all your plants into the trash. If you're new to the channel, please subscribe and hit the bell to receive new video notifications and check out our Amazon store and spreadshop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden and awesome custom designed apparel and other gear. Your support is greatly appreciated. And that mistake is that growers start all of their warm weather seeds in a big mass planting at roughly the same time. You can't do this. You can't start your cucurbit seeds at the same time that you start your nightshade seeds and other warm weather vegetables. So what is a nightshade? The nightshade family includes tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant, all very popular things that we grow from seed for our annual vegetable garden. Cucurbits, on the other hand, are the gourd family. So your cucurbits include cucumbers, your squashes, like summer and winter squash, like zucchini or butternut, things like pumpkins, gourds, and all of your melons, so cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelon, etc. So because we associate all of these fruiting annual vegetables with summer gardening, a lot of gardeners, particularly new gardeners that haven't grown from seed before, tend to start all of these seeds at the exact same time. And that will lead to disaster in many cases. And here is why. The seeds that you see in my hand right here are my tomato and pepper plants. They are all nightshades. I started these all 11 days ago in my office indoors under grow lights on a seedling heating mat. What you see right here are very typical results when seeds starting indoors. All of these individual peat pellets have two seeds in them. And here I have all of my tomato plants planted. And after 11 days on a seedling heat mat, you'll see that almost every peat pellet has something that has germinated in it. And that is pretty typical because tomatoes usually take 7 to 14 days to germinate in a controlled environment on a seedling heat mat set around about 80 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Now in this tray right here, I have predominantly peppers. This is a row of tomatoes and eggplants, so that is why you see such good germination here. But all the other four rows are peppers. Now peppers like it hotter than tomatoes and they take longer to germinate. So pepper germination is generally 10 to 14 days or longer on a seedling heat mat. So that's why you see the peppers are taking so much longer to germinate. So again, usually one to two weeks for tomatoes and about a week and a half to two and a half weeks for peppers. So again, when starting seedlings indoors, this is pretty much the best case scenario that you can see when starting tomatoes and when starting peppers on a seedling heat mat. Now every year I like to start some tomatoes about two weeks in advance of my main crop, and I like to get them out early in containers before my last frost date to get a jumpstart in the season. And what you see right here are early tomatoes that I started three and a half weeks ago. So putting the two plants side by side, you can get a best case scenario of what you can expect, where on the left you'll see a tomato's progress a week and a half after you sow the seed, and then on the right three and a half weeks after you sow the seed. So again, roughly 11 days versus roughly 25 days. That is the kind of progress that you can assume best case scenario. And then eight weeks later you wind up with this, the perfect tomato transplant that is ready to go out into your garden. Generally speaking, your nightshades like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant will be ready for transplant about eight weeks after you sow that seed, when you do it in a controlled environment indoors with a seedling heat mat and grow lights. And that is what you get right here. That is eight weeks of work. But here's the problem. Cucurbits don't grow like nightshades, whereas your peppers, tomato, and eggplant take a week, two weeks, maybe even longer to germinate, and then another six weeks after that in order to grow into mature transplants. Cucurbits germinate in no time. I planted the seed for this zucchini plant six days ago, and look at it already. That is only six days old. So let's compare the zucchini plant I just sowed the seed six days ago to a dwarf tomato that I sowed three and a half weeks ago. Here's your six day old zucchini plant. It's already starting to develop true leaves in the center. And then here is your three and a half week old Rosella purple dwarf tomato plant. You'll see that in terms of actual vegetative mass, this six day old zucchini plant is about the same as both of these tomato plants that have been in my office for almost a month at this point. So if you plant your nightshades and your cucurbits at the same time, your cucurbits are going to get way too big way too quickly. Whereas a tomato or a pepper or an eggplant takes six to eight weeks to really get to the point where you can transplant them. These cucurbits from the days you plant the seed, they can be in as soon as three weeks. And whereas if I have a cold winter and I have to allow my tomatoes and peppers to sit in my sunroom for another week or two, I won't be able to do that with my cucurbits. After about four weeks, they're going to be way too big for me to maintain. They're going to start vining all over the place. And keep in mind, watermelons and cucumbers are going to be even worse because they're going to creep and crawl all over your floor. So if you start all of these things at the same time, you are probably going to have to throw away all of your zucchini, your other squash, your melons, your cucumbers, et cetera, because they will rapidly outgrow their containers and you just won't have anywhere to place them. But wait, there is another problem. While none of these plants are tolerant of frost or freeze, frost and freeze will kill all of them, your nightshades are much more tolerant of cool nights. That's because your nightshades are subtropical, so they are somewhat tolerant of chilly nights. While they don't like it really cold, if it dips into the low 40s or upper 30s for a few hours at night, as long as they don't get frosted and it doesn't dip below freezing, they will generally be okay. They may turn a little purple and get some nutrient deficiencies, but once the temperatures warm back up, they will survive and they will pull through. So while your tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and your other nightshades are not cold tolerant, they are somewhat cool tolerant. Your cucurbits, on the other hand, are not tolerant of cool temperatures at all. They can be killed by frequent temperatures in the 40s. They really need to be planted out into your garden when it's 50 degrees or warmer. If it's going to be colder than 50, I strongly recommend that you actually cover your cucumbers, your zucchini, your squashes, your melons, and other things. They are distinctly tropical, they do not like cool nights, and they can't tolerate it like your nightshades can. So for me, I plant my nightshades, like my tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant, out into my garden as soon as I am sure that all of the frosts and freezes are done for the year. And if it gets a little chilly at night, no big deal. They may grow a little slow in the beginning, but they will eventually catch up and they'll do well. My cucurbits, on the other hand, my cucumbers, my zucchini, my squash, my melons, I don't plant them until three weeks after my last frost and freeze date, because I need the nights to come up sufficiently warm, and I want them to average at least 50 degrees at night, because they cannot tolerate the cool temperatures like the nightshades can. So what happens if I plant my nightshades and cucurbits at the exact same time? Well, let's do the math. It's going to take my nightshades about six to eight weeks to be strong enough transplants to transplant them out into my garden, and my cucurbits are only going to take about three to four weeks. So if I start them at the same time, my cucurbits are already being started about three to four weeks too early. Then, if we get into the fact that I don't want my cucurbits out into the garden until about three weeks after I plant out my nightshades, well, that really means that if I start all my seeds at the same time, I will be starting my cucumbers and zucchini and melons six to seven weeks too early. That is how big of a difference in time it takes to start these seedlings. So if you're new to seed starting, or you struggle to nail the timing, this is generally what I recommend. If you are growing your tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant from seed, you shouldn't sow the seeds indoors until about six to eight weeks before your last frost date. That way, once they become mature enough transplants, you can plant them out into your garden immediately, but it still gives you roughly a two-week buffer or so in case this is going to be a bad cool spring and you have to hold them for another week or two before you can get them out into your yard and garden. Now your cucurbits, on the other hand, I generally don't start them until a week before my last frost date. That way, they will be ready for transplant about three weeks after my last frost date because I want that soil to warm up and I want the nights to break out of the upper 30s, low 40s. I want to get them into the 50s at night consistently and the 70s during the day. So again, start your tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and any other night shades six to eight weeks before your last frost date, and you can start your cucumbers and your zucchini and melons and other cucurbits about one week before your last frost date. That will, generally speaking, give you the proper timing. And of course, there are some exceptions to this rule. If you are growing underneath row covers or you have a way to protect your plants and they get artificially warmer during the day and they get warmer during the night, your rules can change a little bit. If you live in zone 10 or somewhere where you almost never see frost or freeze, the rules may be a little bit different for you, but for people like me and the overwhelming majority of people in the United States and on earth in general that have to deal with frost and freezes, this is the best timeline that I can give you. And of course, make sure you experiment with these dates because each individual climactic zone is going to fluctuate a little bit. So keep a journal, write down every single year where you start your seeds, and after a couple of seasons you'll get better at timing things and you should be able to figure out when it's generally best to start your seed. Also keep in mind that sometimes you can have an early spring, sometimes you can have a late spring, so you never know what the you can. You may be off by a week or two, that's not a big deal. What we're trying to do here is avoid having to throw away seedlings because they get so big we can't keep them alive indoors anymore. And finally, let's have a moment of silence for this zucchini plant right here. I started this seed just to make this video and teach this lesson and I have no way of keeping this plant alive for the next two months, so please do not let this plant die in vain and heed this warning. And that right there is the biggest mistake that gardeners make when growing cucurbits from seed. So everybody, I sure hope you found this video helpful. If you did, please make sure to hit that like button, subscribe to the channel, and please ring that notification bell so you're notified when I release more videos like these. If you're curious about any of the products that I use in real life in my garden, I have them all linked down below in my Amazon storefront in the video description, so expand the video description, click on the Amazon link, and you'll see everything I use in real life. And while you're down there, check out my spreadshot for custom merch if you want to support the channel. Thank you all so much for watching, and I hope to see all of you again on the next video. Oh, is somebody hungry? Oh, I think it's time to feed Dale breakfast. He'd let it be known. Okay, buddy, let's get your hungries. All right, Dale, we're almost out of homemade food, so I had to give you some dry food, and judging by your excitement this morning, you're not really going to mind all that much. All right, buddy, enjoy your breakfast.