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 is to great to plant before then, but it is now is a good time to begin planning, said Jim Schnur, owner of the family business that has been operating since 1889 on what was a farm the family purchased in 1870.

Testing soil to make 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.

He recommended using soil testing kits from the Penn State Extension.

The tests, which must be purchased, require people to take soil samples from several areas of their gardens and send them to Penn State for analysis. The results 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 two to three feet apart and peppers can go in a 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 become dry. Plant roots pull water from the ground, and over watering can inhibit growth, he said.

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

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

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

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

“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 left over 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 peppers, are handled in similar fashion.

Flowering plants like 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.