The first seedling to break soil surface was a drum gourd – one of the two in the middle pot – but then a Crespo Squash, on the right, burst through and exploded out of the soil. It seems like every time I look at the pots, there’s more visible growth.
What I’m really happy about is that not one of the seedlings emerged with the outer shell of the seed stuck on the leaves. Last year, there was more than a few times that I had to very carefully remove the shell, because the seed leaves were being killed off. As careful as I was, sometimes pieces of the leaves would break off, because the shells were so tightly encasing them.
I really like this pre-germinating technique!
The heat mat will need to be unplugged very soon. I won’t move them off right away, as I need to arrange space. I won’t need it until I start more seeds.
This weekend will be 7 weeks before our last average frost date. I will go through some of my seeds to see what I want to start first. The seeds we have left are pretty much all supposed to be started 3-4 weeks before last frost, but if I started all the ones I want to, I’ll run out of space in no time at all – and I will have way too many things that need to be transplanted, all at once. So I plan to stagger them.
I might even start some of these.
Baked Potato SquashMashed Potato squash
I had to go to town today and finally picked up the mail. There were probably in and waiting for a while. Since we have so many varieties of winter squash seeds, we will probably start just a couple of seeds of each. At this point, we’re still after trying out different types to see what we like the most, and will then probably drop it down to one or two varieties.
Who am I kidding. We’ll probably be constantly trying new ones! Just maybe not quite so many different types, all at the same time.
That’s one thing about having the luxury of space like we do. We can spare some to try growing new things we don’t even know if we’ll like, yet.
Okay, it could have been worse, but I had a bit of a disaster this morning.
While trending the seedlings and doing a tray rotation, I topped up the larger cell tray of San Marzano tomatoes with more soil. I’d deliberately half filled the cells to start, and now I’m “potting up” the seedlings this way.
After carefully putting the soil around the seedlings, tamping it down gently, then gently top watering to settle the soil around the stems more and avoid air gaps, I went to put the tray back into the mini greenhouse frame at the window. I had to rotate the peppers and eggplant tray back to the top, as they’re getting too tall to be anywhere else, so the tomatoes needed to go one shelf down. I’ve got the LED lights set up above the lower shelves, but I did move the cables around to get them out of the way.
Well, not enough.
Between getting caught on a cable and the uneven bottom of the tray catching on one of the wire squares on the shelf itself, the entire tray ended up sliding off the far side. There is a gap between the shelf and the wall, because of a baseboard heater (these are never used and the breakers are off. I don’t remember them ever being used when this part of the house was built!). The tray, however, landed against the window sill, rather than sliding all the way down to the floor.
In the process of falling, it knocked one of the onion trays on the shelf below, off in the other direction.
What. A. Mess.
I was able to retrieve the tray, but a lot of the soil – and water! – was all over the window sill, down the wall, and on the carpet below.
The shag carpet.
*sigh*
I think they’ll survive, though.
Once the tomato tray was cleared away, I had to pick up the onions before I could reach anything else. They are in four sections of a vegetable tray, and the roots actually held everything together pretty well, but some soil was lost. The bundles could be popped back into the tray. I think they’ll survive, too.
The mini greenhouse frame had to be cleared of everything else before I could move it and reach the biggest mess. I was able to save some of the spilled soil, but most of it will have to be vacuumed up.
I fixed up the tomato seedlings as best I could, and had to add more soil to a few of them.
For now, I’ve got the trays spread out in various sun spots, though those will be gone soon. We have a fan going in the room for the seedlings all the time, so that will help dry things out faster. Once the mess can be vacuumed, we can put the frame back and return the seedling trays.
It could have been worse.
Well. I suppose it still could be. Let’s see how the seedlings survive over the next little while!
It’s been a quiet, homey sort of day today. Not much to write about.
I head-counted 31 while feeding the outside cats this morning. Then, as I was returning from my morning rounds, I saw Broccoli and Sprout had arrived – they, at least, are very distinctive! – making 33 in total.
I heard back from the Cat Lady about Wolfman. She talked to the vet about his eye, but the vet would not comment either way without seeing Wolfman directly. I was hoping to at least get a ballpark figure on what a removal might cost, if one is needed. So she will let me know the next time she needs to be near our usual half way meeting point to pick up Wolfman and pass on some kibble donations.
As for Wolfman, if we were to go strictly by his behavior, you might miss that there is anything wrong at all. Just a little while ago, I saw him dashing around me, and it does seem like he can still see through that eye. Given what it looked like in the photos I managed to get, that’s surprising. He may simply have gotten used to it. She still sometimes squints with the one eye, but that’s about it. There is no appearance of discomfort, and he’s his usual playful self. He’s even still play fighting with his adopted siblings, which may well be how the eye was injured in the first place!
In other things, I’ve decided to try sprouting the seeds I got soaking yesterday, before potting them. They are now between layers of damp paper towel in a take out container. With large seeds like this, I covered the semi-transparent lid to reduce light exposure, and I did also scarify their outer shells.
While tending the seedlings, I noticed a strange thing with the large tray that has the eggplant and hot peppers. Most of them are getting nice and big, but a few seem to be wilting, and are more stunted. The stunted ones are all on one side of the tray.
I need to look up my old post about starting these. This tray may be the one where I ran out of one brand of seed starting mix, and opened a bag from another brand. Most of the cells in the tray would have a bit of both, but one end would have had only the second brand.
What I didn’t do was mark which side that was!
If this tray is the mixed brand one, then the San Marzano tomato tray is all the second brand. So far, they seem fine. In fact, I’ll be needing to add more mix to top up the cells around their stems soon. I’ll leave them in these cells a while longer, before I thin by transplanting.
Ah, I just went and looked up my old post. Yes, this is the tray with the two different brands of seed starter mix. Considering that I had the tray mostly full before I had to open the second bag, there would be fewer cells with the second mix, only, and the others would have had the first brand in the bottoms, and then just got topped up with the second brand before the seeds were sowed. Which means the smaller number of cells that have stunted seedlings in them would most likely be the ones with the Miracle Grow brand of seed starting mix. I believe the other brand was Jiffy, but I’m not sure.
Dangit. I should have taken better notes! Ah, well.
We have more seedlings that we need, so if some don’t do as well, that’s okay. At long as we have at least a few of each that survive transplanting, we’ll have enough for our needs.
Shuffling the trays around has certainly helped! Check this out.
When I turned the lights on yesterday morning, there was nothing in the tray. When I turned them off in the evening, all the cells on the far right of the photo had seedlings breaking ground. By morning, they were opening their seed leaves, and I could even see one starting to break the surface in the middle row, though it’s not visible in the photo.
That row of seedlings on the right are the Black Cherry, which are new seeds for this year. The middle row are the Chocolate cherry, which are seeds from previous years. The ones on the left, which we got this year as a freebie with our order, are a completely different type of tomato, so I expect those to take longer to germinate, compared to the cherries.
I will wait until there’s more sprouts before I raise the tray off the heat mat. I’ll just put one of the dome lids under it, which will raise the tray about 5 or 6 inches off the mat and closer to the light. I don’t want to unplug the mat until the peppers start germinating, which will take longer.
The tray with the San Marzano seeds has been a bit of a surprise. There weren’t many seeds in the packet, but it turns out that there were more than I thought. There are seedlings in all the cells in the tray, but in the row where I had enough to plant only one seed per cell, there’s extra, and in some of the cells where two seeds had been planted, there are three seedlings! These would have been seeds that had stuck together in the package. Some are so close together, I’ll just cut away one, rather than thin by transplanting, as removing one would damage the other.
What a strange day we are having out there! I just got back from a quick trip into town, but I’ll get to that later.
First, the seedling shuffle!
The San Marzano tomato tray got moved to the other half of the big aquarium greenhouse. You can see there are quite a few more seedlings in there now, too! This side is elevated quite a bit compared to the side with the heat mat, so the seedlings are now quite a bit closer to the lights.
These guys, on the other hand, are quite a bit lower now! I considered putting things under the heat mat to raise them higher, but for now, there is no need. They need the warmth more than the light. Once there is germination, the heat mat will be unplugged, anyhow. At that point, I can either put stuff under the trays to raise them closer to the lights, or put them on the mini greenhouse frame in front of the window. They have better light in the tank, but better air circulation in the window.
I look forward to when we can build up a dedicated seed starting area in a cat free zone! Which can’t be the living room, because there’s just not a lot of space. We might have to find a way to use the new part basement. As long as we can keep it warm enough and bright enough. Since bringing Peanut Butter Cup indoors, we closed up the new basement (the old basement isn’t safe for the cats, so it’s always closed to the cats), because we didn’t want to crawling around under stuff down there, right after being spayed. Since then, we just haven’t bothered letting them down there again, and that doesn’t seem to be a problem for them. We might actually be able to reclaim the space as a workshop again. There’s space at one end where we could set up tables or shelfs and hang the shop lights from the ceiling, but once things start melting, the floor there starts getting damp. The weeping tile at that end isn’t doing it’s job anymore, ever since someone left a rain barrel to overflow outside that corner, during a couple of months of heavy rain. When my brother found it, that whole corner was molding, and it took him a long time to get it cleaned. My daughters had been working hard to keep that end cleaned and bleached but, for some reason, cats would ignore the four litter boxes and crap on the floor against that wall. Which cats, we never saw. If we can turn that basement into a cat free zone, that would make a big difference in where we can do things! Come summertime, though, we’d have to start opening the door, as the basements help keep the house cool. We’ve got a hardware cloth door for the old basement door – which is currently being stored by using it as a cat platform in the sun room. We’d have to pick up some lumber and made another one for the new basement door.
Ooooh… If we can keep it a cat free zone, then we can remove the hardware cloth “door” we made for the opening between the two basements. I can’t really call it a doorway, since it’s just an opening that was broken through the old basement wall that’s now an odd shape and size. We’d put in the barricade in such a way that, if we wanted to go from one basemen to the other, we could just unhook the bungee cord holding it in place and slide it to one side.
We didn’t consider just how determined the cats would be, in trying to get through. Not only did we have to barricade it with whatever we could find from the old basement side, to keep them from simply pushing through, we had to use more hardware cloth above opening, to cover a gap between the floor joists and heat ducts above.
The end result is, we basically can’t get from one basement to the other right now, without having to dismantle the whole thing. The old basement is where we have the water taps from when the laundry used to be there. Now, when we need water to mop the floors or whatever, we have to get it from the bathroom in the old part of the house and haul it through pretty much the entire ground floor to get it to the new part basement.
There is a lot of space down that that isn’t being used right now. The only down side it, my knees and stairs do not get along, but I’d learn to live with it!
Things to think about, and set up for next year, perhaps.
In other things…
As I write this, we’ve warmed up to -10C/14F, with a “feels like” of -9C/16F. However, it is also bright and sunny. Which means that anything dark out there is warming up more, and things are starting to melt around them. Things are both freezing and melting, at the same time!
It also means the snow is starting to soften.
When I got back from town, I drove the truck into the yard to unload, since I was not about to carry those water jugs across the icy path. The snow drift the truck had no problem climbing over yesterday was still manageable, but the truck did have a harder time of it, since the tires started sinking this time. Then, while backing up in the yard so I could turn to the gate and leave, I felt the back end of the truck suddenly sink, and I almost got stuck. It looks like the frozen “lake” of water behind the garage extends quite a bit further under the snow than I thought. The tires broke through the snow covered ice. The “lake” is deep enough that our recent cold hasn’t been enough to freeze it solid, so there is still liquid water under there that the truck is heavy enough to break through to.
Which means I may not be able to drive the truck up to the house again for a while! At least not without digging out a couple of spots, first. We’re supposed to stay in this general temperature range for at least a few days.
No matter. As long as I can get to the house when it’s time to unload our stock up shopping, and that’s more than a week from now.
On a completely different note…
Do you have any idea how hard it is to type while a cat insists in laying across your wrists and rolling?
When I saw all those long range forecasts saying we’d be getting consistent highs above freezing, I knew things would likely be different, but… really?
This is what it was like when I did my morning rounds; -18C/~0F, with a wind chill of -26C/-15F! That’s January temperatures!
This time of year, we all tend to be tired of the cold and snow – even after as mild a winter as we had this year – but to have such warm weather melting everything all through February, and a forecast saying it would continue, to the complete opposite is downright depressing!
The yard cats don’t seem to mind it, though!
I actually got to pet Broccoli this morning! I snuck a pet as she walked in front of me, after taking this picture, and she actually stopped eating to enjoy shoulder scritches for a little while. So far, that’s still as much as she will allow. Junk Pile, who’s licking her chops enthusiastically here, had been eating with her back to me, and I was able to rest my hand on her back. Just for about half a second, before she realized what was happening and got all startled, then moved to where she is in the photo. Altogether, I think I counted maybe 23 cats, but they were running around so much, I’m just not sure!
Yesterday, I made a quick garden tour video for the first day of spring. While I was recording inside the big aquarium greenhouse, I didn’t see that we had new tomato sprouts until I uploaded the video to my desktop. This morning there are more, and the ones that the video picked up are already much larger. So far, it’s just the middle row, plus one in another row, that are germinating.
The other seed trays, however, show no activity. These are the ones in the new seed starting trays with their grow lights, and are set above the heat vent. I think it might still be too cold for them, though. I think what I’ll do, is shift the San Marzano tomatoes off the heat mat, to the other side of the tank. The new trays, with the peppers and other tomatoes, can go on the heat mat, along with the Butterfly Flower tray. I’ll remove the domes on the new trays, since they won’t be needed in the aquarium greenhouse. That will free up the LED grow lights to put over the bin with bell peppers and thyme, to give them a bit of a boost.
I took this picture after turning on the LED grow lights, but before turning on the bright shop lights. The LED lights are only along one edge of the shelf above, and I had them over the peppers for a while, but I’ve since rotated the tray, so the eggplants can be under the grow lights for a while.
It’s getting to be time to thin out those eggplants, and a couple more peppers. Thinning out is always so hard for me. I keep wanting to thin by transplanting, since I don’t want to “waste” any seedlings. The thing is, we don’t need that many! We could probably do fine with maybe 3 or 4 of each plant, including the peppers. We certainly don’t have enough space for all of them!
In the big aquarium greenhouse, all three cups with the Sweet Chocolate peppers now have seedlings in them, though it’ll be a while before they’re at the stage that they need to be thinned. With the Purple Beauty peppers, the one cup now has 4 seeds germinating; one cup had 4 seeds planted in it, the other had 3 seeds – the last of our Purple Beauty seeds. The second cup has nothing germinating it, so for that variety, when it comes time to thin them, I will thin by transplanting. I’d like to have at least two surviving plants and, right now, there are four seedlings, so we’ll see how that works out. For now, I’m leaving them in the aquarium, but I’ve moved the red onions out and under the lights at the window. We’re not going to have many of those to transplant, compared to the yellow onions and the shallots.
I spent some time looking for replacement bulbs for one of our tank light fixtures. The one with a burnt out bulb holds 2 bulbs that are T5HO. Looking at the various hardware store website, I can find the bulbs, but at sizes ranging form 12 to 18 inches. We need 48 inch bulbs. The one place that had them, they were sold out.
I did, however, find replacement bulbs on the Veseys website. These are the bulbs they use in their grow light set ups. The price for a pair of fluorescent bulbs is quite affordable. They also have LED alternative bulbs that fit the same fixtures, which last much longer and use less power, but are more than triple the price. I’ll be sticking with the fluorescents!
I checked the other light fixture we have over the tank, and it uses a single T8 bulb. That bulb is still fine, but it’ll be a good idea to get some spares of that one, too.
In the next couple of weeks, we’ll need to start our next batches of seeds. Time to go over them and make some decisions.
Speaking of seeds, I’m considering making another seed order. I’d had an order with my T&T Seeds shopping cart when my computer died. By the time I logged back on to place an order it was, of course, no longer there. My daughter had requested a couple of squash to try and I remembered one of them. Talking to my daughter later, she asked about the second one I’d completely forgotten about. When looking for replacement bulbs on the Veseys site, I couldn’t resist looking at seeds, and realized they also have the type of squash my daughter was interested in. In fact, there are two similar ones. So now I’m thinking of getting those, too.
We already have SO many squash seeds right now, though, including a winter squash surprise mix. We don’t need more seeds!
Today is turning out to be an unpleasant day, so here is a picture of green growing things, instead!
The eggplants and hot peppers are just starting to show their true leaves. With just their seed leaves, they all look pretty identical. The only real difference is the stem colour on the peppers.
They are so pretty! A real boost to the mood. Especially on days like today.
For me, I think the shoveling I did finally caught up to me. Not in muscle pain or stiffness – I’m pretty used to that every morning. No, it hit me in the innards.
Upon my third run to the bathroom, I was definitely reconsidering going to the city today for our first stock up shop. That would mean about an hour plus of driving, with only one place en route with access to public washrooms, before reaching the city. As it was, I had to get the girls to take care of feeding the outside cats.
Then I checked the weather.
Wind chills of -31C?? Blowing snow advisory?
Then I checked my highway conditions groups. Some people even posted video they took, as passengers, while on the highway.
Nope. Not going to the city today!
I even got a message from my SIL saying she hoped I was staying home. I’d told her I was going to Costco today, which is relatively short drive from their place, asking if she were up to meeting for lunch. She already had plans to do ice fishing on one of the lakes, so that was a no go.
She canceled her fishing trip. Yes, it would have been in a fishing shack, but – aside from the drive itself – the exposure to winds on the lake ice was just not worth the risk for maybe a fish or two.
So today is a day to hunker down, stay warm, and out of that wind!
I have just enough time for a quick post, before heading to my mother’s.
Check it out…
I had actually forgotten that I had a whole 9 seeds left from last year’s package of Cheyenne peppers until I saw this, this morning. The last two cells in the tray have two seeds each, and all four are now germinating. What makes for a 100% germination rate on seeds from last year. Which is awesome!
Unfortunately, the Red Wethersfield onions are not doing as well. Since putting them in the big aquarium greenhouse, there have been more sprouts and they are definitely getting bigger and greener, but there aren’t all that many of them. The conditions in that little aquarium greenhouse may have killed off some of the seeds. That tank isn’t as warm as the big one – even without using the heat mat, one of the light fixtures adds a bit of warmth – but onions like cooler temperatures, so that’s not likely the problem. I’d say it’s the light on that tank. It’s definitely dimmer, even from when we used it last year, and the light is more blue than red.
So for now, at least, we’ve got just one usable aquarium greenhouse for seed starting.
I’m really thrilled at how well everything else is doing, though!
While checking on the seedling this morning, have to say, I am very impressed with our germination rates!
It’s hard to judge the percentage with the onion seeds, since I don’t know exactly how many were sown in each section of their growing trays, but I know exactly how many seeds were planted in the big tray.
With the Classic Eggplant in the middle, there were just enough seeds left from last year to plant two to a cell. We have a 100% germination rate!
The Cheyenne peppers, in the row closest to the window, had just enough seeds left from last year for one per cell. Five are up, and one is just breaking ground, so we’ve got 6 out of 7 germinating.
The Little Finger Eggplant are a mix of old and new seeds. The cell on the bottom left has 3 new seeds planted in it. The other six cells have 2 seeds from last year, plus one from this year, in them. All but one seed has germinated – and that one might still emerge soon.
I’m rather impressed by this!
Of course, we don’t need anywhere near that many eggplants. We’ll thin them to one per cell. I’ll have to resist thinning by transplanting. I hate “wasting” a seedling! Still, even if we’re just down to 7 of each type of eggplant, that’s more than enough, even if they don’t all survive transplanting in the spring. With eggplant, we’re still working out if these are something we will want to plant regularly or not. The first time we grew the Little Finger eggplant, one plant barely managed to fruit, but even those little eggplants were enjoyed. Last year, none of them grew much after transplanting. Last year, we had only one Classic Eggplant seedling survive and it did remarkably well, though we ran out of growing season and had only a couple small eggplants to try out.
As for the Cheyenne peppers, if we have only one surviving transplant, that would probably be enough for our needs; the one that was able to produce peppers last year had lots on it, though we had to harvest them while still green. Hopefully, by starting them early like this, they’ll have time to mature on the plant.
We shall see how they do over the weeks again, but I do like what I’m seeing so far!
The Re-Farmer 