Growing Your Own Garden Transplants

MILAM COUNTY, Texas (KBTX) – It’s looking like spring has sprung, and that means that both farmers and home gardeners alike are busy planting.

“A lot of places you can’t get exactly the varieties that you want. If you go to the store, there’s a brand name that says cauliflower. You have no idea what variety it is. Maybe it was built for your area, maybe it wasn’t, but I realized that I was having some crop failures or maybe not getting what I’d hoped to get,” Milam County gardener John Jones said.

Jones grows his own transplants for his big garden on his Milam County ranch.

“You want to have varietals that go back to you. You want to have a garden that’s right for you. And you know for me, it is having a vegetable that has a long holding ability so you can give it away. I’m not into cherry tomatoes. I like big tomatoes. Why? Less picking, more tomatoes,” Jones said.

Every one of Jones’ varietals is selected for a reason.

“And so when we start these in little trays if you look, these are some little peppers that come from some of the islands. They haven’t germinated yet. We put holes in here. We’ll drop the seeds in,” Jones said. “And some like this, JJ secret is a variety that I’ve been refining for about six years, and it makes a big giant tomato, but I can’t share my secret there.”

Jones said that having the greenhouse to grow his own transplants allows him to have a surplus on hand.

“We’ve been hailed out a lot of years so I always keep a lot of extra plants in case we get hail,” Jones said.

The sprinklers in the greenhouse are set to water the seedlings twice a day.

“It’s 100% self-reliant. I come out on the weekends and mess with it. I usually put a little plant food on here, on top of these plants on the weekends,” Jones said.

Jones said his garden is more than a hobby.

“Education for me. It’s a nice way for someone like myself to take my mind off of work or what I do for my career and come out here and learn,” Jones said.