It's been getting warmer here, MUCH warmer. All the snow in front of our house has melted, but there's still a depressing amount in the back yard on top of my garden. I did get my first peek at the dirt of the garden yesterday though. I feel a bit silly, but I was so happy to see that little bit of rich black earth.
I noticed something about the seedlings that I think is a bit strange and I can't quite explain. It's something I read about on another blog (Lights In My Basement) and thought to myself "No way. There's no reason that would happen...right?" Yeah. Turns out my gut instinct was way off on this one.
I started all my tomatoes at the same time. The same day, planted them all in one go.
They germinated quickly, and grew well. I noted in my last post that the Bloody Butcher seeds germinated the best, but the Cherry tomatoes were the hardiest looking, and that I had up-potted a few of each variety. Admittedly, at the time I did pick the strongest looking starts...but I don't know that that can entirely be the cause of what happened after I up-potted some.
The plants I moved into bigger pots are now easily double the size of the others...easily. They look stronger and healthier, have thick leaves, and lots of little hairs on the main stems. The starts that had to sit in the tiny cells stayed much smaller. I thought maybe it was because they had less room to root, but I up-potted another bunch of them the other day and their roots weren't more than one little tap root and a few off shoots. They weren't anywhere near reaching the edges of the pots.
Basically I have no idea why...but it does make me consider planting the next bunch of starts (the gourds, cucumber, zucchini, ect) right into my bigger pots (which may or may not be cheap white plastic cups...*cough* If I reuse them it's environmentally friendly, right?).
I have been bottom-watering all the starts as much as possible, the exception being anything very tiny or just repotted.
Despite the wild success of the tomato starts I'm equally thrilled with the other plants I've got going so far. The peppers, bell and jalapeno, are coming along nicely, and three of the 4 habanero seeds came up. I even up-potted the best looking of the habanero starts. I'll probably up-pot one more and then either offer the others to friends or toss them.
I'm really excited about the celery starts. they're still tiny tiny tiny...If I do them again next year I'll plant them MUCH earlier as I don't know if they'll be ready to transplant into the garden by the time the garden is ready for them. I have three and they're all doing pretty good. One is noticeably bigger than the other two, so we'll see how they all progress. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!
The last thing I'll add is the salad mix is doing OK. I'm not crazy about it, I thought they would be growing better, but they're turning a bit leggy. I may end up just buying lettuce starts.. :( I'm not giving up on them yet and I'll definitely be doing an early planting straight into the garden as soon as I can work with it. I didn't have much luck with that last year, but maybe I'll try and cloche them to give them a bit of a boost.
Until next time ;)
Pictures to come - Post written April 10, 2014 (I should do another update pretty soon, and I've dawdled on this one long enough I thought I should date it for an accurate timeline ;) )
No comments:
Post a Comment