Seed Starting and Cuttings
If you need help with your garden, you can contact Montgomery County Master Gardeners, or call 301-590-9650. Our Grow It Eat It website can provide you with valuable information about vegetable gardening. The Home and Garden Information Center also has a hotline that you can call, as well as a website that contains lots of valuable information including fact sheets. Here's an excellent web site devoted to seed starting information.
This chart will provide you with the optimum time for planting your seeds indoors or outdoors.
If you're transplanting vegetables seedlings to your garden in Maryland, this chart will provide you with the optimum time period for transplanting, e.g. tomatoes should be transplanted between 5/21 and 6/25, assuming your last frost free date is 5/14. The chart offers transplant dates for 45 vegetables.
You can purchase ready made light stands here.
My favorite companies for purchasing seeds include the following:
Pinetree Seeds (Small quanities just right for the home gardener at reasonable prices)
Dave's Garden lists 3600 mailorder garden companies including over 300 that sell vegetable seeds.
Cornell University determined that Country Fair cucumber, a pickling cucumber was much more resistant to bacterial wilt, a disease that kills cucumber vines. Country Fair is carried by Jung Seeds, as well as other companies.
Damping off is a lethal disease that often afflicts those of us who start seeds indoors. Once you have this disease, your plants are finished. The only thing you can do is prevent the disease before it hits your seedlings. Root Shield can help to prevent this disease. Good air circulation also helps to prevent the disease.
Walls of water
Floating row cover
Walls of Water and Floating Row Covers are available at Pinetree Seeds.
Tomato Spirals are available at Amazon and Gardeners Supply. If you need to tie your tomatoes up, the easiest product to use is double sided velcro, which is available here.