Introducing 'Grow & Tell,' IPR's guide to gardening with the seasons

Grow & Tell is a new segment you’ll hear on IPR from now through the fall harvest.

I'm Dylan Kulik, I manage an educational farm at Interlochen Center for the Arts, and I teach people how to grow their own food.

I'll take you step-by-step through gardening in your backyard or on your windowsill, with tips and plants suited for northern Michigan.

This season, we'll focus in on two crops I love: tomatoes, our annual, and bee balm, our perennial.

Picture this: Red, ripe tomatoes in the heat of summertime. You've grown them from seed and now you're ready to harvest. You bite into one. It's juicy, it is sweet, it's warm — this is what we're going for.

Bee balm is our perennial plant. It's native in this zone, which means it belongs here — it can succeed without that much human intervention. There are so many things about bee balm that I love.

Number one: its beautiful purple blossoms on tall stems with plumage that almost looks like a peacock. It's extremely popular amongst the pollinators and other beneficial insects. You can also use this plant in your kitchen: It has a sort of herbal value that's akin to oregano or thyme. And you can also propagate this plant very, very easily.

It's not too late to get started for this season! And you can give your plants a leg up by starting them inside.

What you'll need:

• soil mix
• seeds
• cups
• water

Step 1: Choose your mix

Not all soil is created equally. If you're planning on starting seeds, you're going to want to buy either potting mix or seed starting mix. This is really light, fluffy soil that is going to hold water and also have a lot of air exchange, breathability to your seeds.

Step 2: Add water

Potting mix is like a battery. We're going to charge up this battery with a ton of moisture at the beginning of the seed starting process so the seeds have a ton of access to moisture as they need it.

I like to make sure there's no dry corners or inconsistent areas of dryness hiding in the corner of your bucket of soil. You want it saturated, then you'll squeeze out the excess before packing the soil into a cup.

Step 3: Make your cups

I've had success a plastic fast food cup. If you want to challenge yourself to go plastic-free, you can find aluminum cups to start your seeds in and then save for reuse. Whatever you choose, just make sure you poke holes, so your seeds have drainage out of the bottom.

Use your hand or a spade to scoop soil into your cup of choice. I like to make sure that the corners are nice and tucked in, so that the soil is all pretty much uniform when you've packed that cup.

Step 4: Dibbles

Make a small indentation in the soil with your fingers.

For tomatoes, we're aiming for two indentations per cup about a quarter-inch deep. Having two is like a nice insurance program: if one of your seeds doesn't germinate, you have the other one in the same cup to potentially germinate. We ultimately want one plant per cup. Pop one seed into each indentation.

For the bee balm, we're actually going to kind of sow them on the surface of the cup, then rough up the soil so that the seeds all evenly coated with a nice blanket of moist potting mix. You can buy bee balm seeds or collect them from flower heads in the fall.

Step 5: Warm, label and wait

Put your cups on a heat mat (you can find these online or at a local hardware or garden store), or in a warm, sunny part of your home, like on top of your fridge or near the furnace.

I've had a lot of success germinating tomatoes at regular air temperature. For me, that's the high 60s. But if you can get it slightly warmer, that will probably lead to a better germination outcome.

I also like to put a humidity dome on top of the cups. This isn't necessary, but I've found that it helps, especially with bee balm, because those seeds are sown right at the surface, they might dry out faster than other seeds. You can fashion your own humidity dome out of some plastic.

And last but not least, label your cups so you know what you planted and when. This will come in handy later.

Next time, we'll talk about companion plants — plants that play well in the garden with tomatoes, bee balm and other things you might be growing this season.

Until then, happy gardening!

Trevor Reed composed Grow & Tell's theme music.