We have sproutage! It has been about 10 days since I planted the first seeds directly outside. We’ve only had a couple of warm days, with a lot of cloudy, cool and rainy days, but at long last we have our first sprouts making their appearance. Each of the two types of lettuce only have 1 or 2 sprouts showing so far, and the onions and carrots haven’t sprouted at all yet, but the spinach patch is coming in full!
I also have a flowering shrub on the side of the house that was here when we bought the house that is in full bloom. I have no idea what kind of shrub it is though, so if you know, drop me an email. I picked a few of these for my lovely wife last night, she was quite pleased!
Just a quick ‘tracking’ post to say that I planted my first seeds outdoors for 2009! I planted Paris White and Boston Red Leaf lettuces in Section 1 of Plot #2, and Copra Onions, SweetMax Carrots and a Spinach who’s name I forget in Plot #3. We’ll see how they do!
It has been about a month since my last post where I showed off my seedlings. Now six weeks old, they are growing too fast to keep under my grow light. About a week ago I moved them all into their own pot. As you can see in the photo, I ran out of 4” plastic pots so I had to get creative and recycle some clear plastic containers I had in my hobby shop. These are the only containers I had that were the right size, and the fact they are clear is a bonus. I can actually see the roots growing down and around the soil. It’s pretty cool. It also lets me know when they are about to get root bound so I can up-pot again, which I hope won’t be necessary before they go into the garden. The first photo is of the tomato plants. I grew about 15 plants of each of the two varieties to start with because I wasn’t sure how many would germinate, and then how many would survive my first attempts at up-potting and then hardening off, and then transplanting. I up-potted 5 of each variety into their own 4” pots, and I plant to only plant 3 of each. The other two are buffers incase I screw something up later. I also kept the remaining seedlings in their original pots, roughly 4-6 seedlings per pot, and I have two pots of each. They are sitting in a sunny window without artificial light. This was to see if they would survive, or continue to grow. So far they have maintained just fine. They are not growing, but still appear healthy and green. Based on that, I have just moved all of my big plants in the first photo to that same window sill since I’m out of room under my grow light. They are plenty big enough to be transplanted so I hope I can put them into stasis for the next two weeks until I start hardening them off for transplanting the first week of May.
With more room freed up under the grow light my second round of seedlings should be about to grow better now that they are more optimally located under the lights. With the tomatoes under there the angle was too great for them to really get great light. I can’t remember everything in this round, but it goes something like this: Cucumbers (which i think i planted too early, but i only planted 5 seeds so i have plenty remaining for direct seeding into the garden), Paris White Lettuce, Red Leaf Boston Lettuce, Parsley, Pak Choi, 3 different flowers, and Chives. Still remaining to be direct seeded: More lettuce, spinach, squash both summer and winter, carrots, bingo beans, canoe peas, copra onions, golden sunshine beans, and rutabagas.
