Alright I ended up only transplanting 18 of 27 cells of the cucumbers and the zucchini tonight, so you’ll see a couple of before and after pictures below. Also you can see that I’m going to give growing potatoes another shot this year (more details to come on the pallet growing bins) hence why those potatoes are under the grow lights.
Yeah I know its totally crazy, only three days ago I planted this flat and already all the cucumbers and the zucchini have germinated. In a couple more days I’ll have to transfer them to a larger growing cup.
The pics for this set came out pretty bad, since I didn’t have the camera flash turned on. So the only light, is the light coming off of the florescent grow lights. From now on for the seedling posts, I’m going to stick with just the calendar date instead of the number of days that the flat has been growing. Things are just starting to get a little bit too confusing for me trying to remember the numbers of days instead of the date.
So here is a quick breakdown of when the two flats were started:
Flat #1: 04/13/2010
Flat #2: 04/21/2010
Amazing what another five days of growing will do, but it looks like I have a mixed bag of results as far as seeds that ended up germinating.
Success:
Aji Limo
El Jefe
1/2 the Bell Peppers
1/3 the Banana style peppers
1/2 the Sage
1/2 the Basil
Failed:
The other 1/2 or 1/3 of all those listed above
all the parsley
all the cilantro
all the oregeno
all the rosemary
I have to say that I’m not 100% sure that the parsley, cilantro, oregeno, and rosemary have failed. Since all those herbs take anywhere from 14 to 21 days to germinate. So before I toss out all the dirt in those flats, I’ll give them another week or so to do their thing.
It’s been a little bit tricky, figuring out how to get the temperature just right on the heating pad. Since when I wrapped the whole flat in a movers blanket, the temperature inside the flat shot up to 95F. So I’m going to test out simulating the heat and light cycle of the sun in the growing area. So last night I set up a make shift growing station with a grow light on a couple of copier boxes, with the heating pad and the grow light both plugged into a timer.
The basil ended up sprouting this past weekend, which was a lot quicker than expected. And when I checked the flat this morning, I started to see some activity on the El Jefe jalapenos and the sage. As it currently stands, it seems like the heating mat is cutting down the germination time almost in half, which is pretty amazing. That is of course, with me assuming that the seeds that I saved from last year are still viable. Which is the big question mark for the garden this year.
OK, the first flat of seed were sown last night. And here is the breakdown of what is going into the first flat of 72 cells:
9 cells – Aji Limo
9 cells – El Jefe Jalapeno
6 cells – Bell Peppers
3 cells – Jalapeno “M”
3 cells – Banana pepper – green color
3 cells – Banana pepper – yellow color
3 cells – Banana pepper – orange color
6 cells – Sage
6 cells – Basil
6 cells – Parsley
6 cells – Cilantro
6 cells – Oregano
6 cells – Rosemary
Talk about quick turnaround time. When I got home from work last night, I had a little cardboard box in my mailbox from Johnny’s. So now I’ve got to lay out my seed starting calendar for the next couple of months. The plan so far is to start all the herbs and pepper seeds (jalapeno, aji limo, bell, etc) this week, and then some time next week I’ll start the seeds for all the tomatoes. And then in about two weeks, I’ll start the cucumbers & zucchini inside as well as sowing some of the seeds that need direct sowing (carrots, beets, lettuce, corn, peas, beans, etc.)
When I reviewed all the seeds that I ordered, I noticed an interesting trend with a large portion of the seeds that I ordered. In that maybe two thirds of the seeds that I ordered, are seeds that need to be directly sow into the ground. So really the only seed starting that I’ll need to do this year are for the herbs, peppers, tomatoes, zucchini and cucumbers.
One little tool that I picked up this year, are two seedling heater mats. We’ll see if they are any help in germinating my seeds, since I keep my house right around 63F, so any extra heat to get the seeds off to a strong start is a bonus in my book.
Well two weekends ago I finally planted all the vegetables and herbs in the garden, I’m only at least a month behind schedule. And it is showing in the size of the plants. Continue reading
This year I’m going to double the size of the garden, so it will be going from 8′ x 16′ to 16′ x16′. The rhubarb is going to take up a lot of space this year. About a 4′ x 8′ section of the garden is already being used up by the rhubarb.
I finished about half of the digging last weekend, and about another quarter this weekend. I ended up using a mattock it dig up all the grass. If I owned or had rented a roto-tiller, this would have been done in a couple of hours. I guess I’m a glutton for punishment.
Once again an idea born of necessity. I’m getting tired of moving plants back and forth from the saw horses to the house. So with some left over plastic sheeting, a piece of scrap wood, a couple of saw horses and 2 chunks of broken cement edging I now have my own ghetto green house.
Moving the plants was annoying. But the more important purpose was to protect the plants from rain storms & drowning in a downpour.
One of these days I’ll have a nice and big professional green house with all the bells & whistles. But for now this plastic sheet green house will have to do.
