Growing seedlings can be a real challenge when you don’t have a designated seedling area. Seedlings require lots of space, but the space should be sunny during the spring, and partly sunny during the summer. When you don’t own a greenhouse, growing seedlings require lots of pot moving and position changing.

In my garden, since it is a forest garden, choosing the right seedling spot is a real problem. During the spring there are only two spots in the whole yard where seedlings want to grow. Only the balcony and the spot in the front yard are warm enough to provide daily temperatures around 20°C (68°F), the rest of the garden, due to all the shade, warms up much slower.

During the summer things change and the front yard and balcony become the least hospitable environment for the seedlings. Temperatures reach over 35°C (95°F) and although the seedlings like warmth, this is just too warm for them, the soil dries up too quickly, which leads to soil hardening and eventually wilting of the seedlings.

This is why I move my seedlings around the yard constantly. In April seedlings are on the balcony,  during May they are in the front and side yard and now in June, they are moving to the least sunny part-basement entrance aka the back yard.

The basement entrance is mostly shaded, the sun is here only until noon, and afternoons provide much-needed shade and fairly normal temperatures. So that’s exactly what I’ve done with all my seedlings. I’ve moved them to the back yard.

Recently I’ve used my sowing station to start more seedlings and now I’ve used it again to repot the brassicas which I’ve sown in May. This summer seedlings will be transplanted to the garden in early July.

I’ve also moved the big brassica plants. The sideyard is getting too warm for them and they will be better off in the shade. The shade will make them grow more leaves, and they were meant for leafy production. Lettuce, which was in the seedling spot, was moved next to the big brassicas.

The new order of seedlings was immediately tested with the storm which we had last Thursday. The seedlings were not affected by the storm, the corner position protected them and even though the lettuce/onion bed was quite damaged the seedlings were just fine.

I guess this will be the spot for the summer seedlings from now on. They should be fine here if we don’t get hail. Nothing will help us against hail.