A finished soil bag garden that includes three cherry tomato plants is flanked on either side by three Swiss chard. Submitted Photo

SUMMIT TWP — Since Christmastime, employees at Schnur’s Greenhouse have been planting seeds and cuttings so they are big enough for people to plant in their gardens and flower beds in mid-May.

The ground is too cold and the possibility of frost too great to plant before then, but now is a good time to begin planning, said Jim Schnur, owner of the family business that’s been operating since 1889 on what once was a farm.

Testing soil to ensure it is capable of supporting productive vegetable plants is the fist step.

“pH is the biggest problem in soil. That’s always a good way to start,” Schnur said Saturday, March 22.

He recommended using soil testing kits from Penn State Extension.

The tests, which must be purchased, require people take soil samples from several areas of their gardens and send them to Penn State for analysis. The results will include recommendations, such as adding a certain amount of pounds of lime per acre to address low pH. A pH level of 6.5 to 7 is ideal for gardens, he said.

Tomatoes should be planted 2 to 3 feet apart and peppers can go in 1 foot apart, he said.

Weeding and watering become priorities once the garden is planted.

“You can’t just plant it and walk away,” Schnur said.

Gardens should be watered when the soil becomes dry. Plant roots pull water from the ground, and over watering can inhibit growth, he said.

Pulling weeds is time consuming, but necessary, Schnur added.

“Weeds can grow in anything. They can take over a garden pretty quick,” he said.

When gardening was more popular than it is now, it was common to see people pulling weeds in their gardens every evening, and the result was a productive garden, Schnur said.

Interest in gardening has been slowly sliding over the last 10 to 15 years, but spiked for a year during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The year COVID hit everybody planted a garden, but it didn’t last,” Schnur said. “We would sell everything we had in vegetable plants.”

Now, the greenhouse has some leftover tomato and pepper plants every year, he said.

About 2,000 tomato seeds are planted in a single tray. After they start growing, employees separate each plant and plant them individually.

Peppers — including the popular inferno pepper — are handled in similar fashion.

Flowering plants such as geraniums arrive at the greenhouse the week before Christmas as cuttings without roots that employees plant in pots.

All the plants grow in Schnur’s 50,000 square feet of greenhouse space until they are ready for customers in the middle of May.

Once everything is growing, including the hundreds of hanging baskets that are popular gifts for Mother’s Day, the greenhouses look like jungles, he said.