Tag: seed starting

March 4, 2025 – Maybe This is the Trick?

March 4, 2025 /

I finally got my seeds started. Once again, this is another year of experimentation so I wouldn’t be surprised to get very mixed results. I am thinking that I should probably put more effort into grouping seeds by preferred environment rather than trying to ‘fill up my tray’. The last time I did this, I only got half a tray of germination because I think some seeds sprouted before others. and not everything got ideal circumstances.

One of the reasons I was dragging my feet this year was that I wanted to mark the individual cell. I also wanted my efforts to be cheap or preferably free. In the past I have used tape on the row but then I am afraid to break-up the cells for fear of losing track of what plant is what. I believe that once germinated, I will need to transplant into larger vessels to get these plants to thrive. Do you see the method to my madness?

What I came up with this year was to use some plastic drinking straws that have been around forever. Since I am not selling the straws on eBay, I might as well get some use from them as I have been handling them so long. If I really had my stuff together, I would take advantage of the color code to do something. But in this case, I simply grouped different seeds by color.

What I am ultimately hoping for is a couple plants for each row. I don’t have the space for five tomato plants anyway. If I am lucky and get everything to germinate, then I will attempt to give the plants away. Using that logic, I only planted smaller numbers of certain things like peppers because five habenero plants is too much for anybody. I am pretty sure that I can get my dad to take whatever I don’t want. If nobody wants them then I will still be money ahead than buying starts anyway.

Basically what I started were mostly hot house vegetables. Tomato, bell pepper, jalapeno and habanero. I planted cabbage and collards as well. For herbs, I planted thyme and basil. I picked two tobacco varieties just to see what happens and the rest is purple coneflower or echinacea. I am really hoping that the flowers make it because they will be perennial and I would like to do some mass planting.

This whole effort of starting from seeds was really an attempt to experiment with succession planting. That is to get a second garden going as the season wore on. My problem is that the summer season seems so long and endless that I actually lose interest during the dog days of summer. This is all been an attempt to skillfully growing food in case I ever needed the production.

It is easy to keep focus on the tray when the weather is bad and the daylight is low. As time moves on, there is the feeling that I can start seeds later, I can water the cells later, I am busy with this project or that one. It becomes out of sight, out of mind. This is the whole reason I didn’t even attempt to start seeds last year. I already know my tendency to ignore the garden. As it turns out, there is no way I would have kept one alive when I wasn’t even pretending to try.

There is no doubt that my most successful year gardening was my first. I was coming off of a brutal year on the road and just wanted to be home. My second best year was potentially going to be 2020 when I was home and got plants in the ground but spent all my time remodeling the apartment. For that reason, I don’t believe that successful gardening is as much skill as it is being present.

End Your Programming Routine: I am not holding my breath that this year will be any different than recent years past. That being said, you don’t learn if you don’t try. I am happy that I got started and I am pleased with my markers. If I can manage to be present enough, then maybe I will be on my way to a bumper crop.

January 28, 2025 – Is This Appropriate?

January 28, 2025 /

Last weekend, I actually got all of my seeds out to see what exactly I had and what I might want to start. As I have alluded to previously, I probably will start plenty more than I need with an eye toward keeping one and seeing if I can give away the rest. Maybe more aptly said, hopefully I can get one to live.

To me what actually makes the cut are hot plants. That would be primarily peppers and tomatoes. I did discover that I have no tomato seeds left but I have bell, jalapeno and habanero so good to go there. I will probably spend the $2.50 or maybe go to the library for a free package of tomato seeds before I start.

More than anything, I want to get a thyme plant going so that also made the cut. I will also plant as much Italian basil as I can grow. These can take a pruning and keep on going but I love to get a huge bundle and make pesto for the freezer. It is fast and economic if I substitute walnuts for pine nuts and so much better than jarred without the weird preservative taste.

Finally, from my seed stash, I have a lot of purple coneflower (or echinacea) seeds. I love all the flowers in that group be it Black Eyed Susan or Daisy and other varieties. They are extremely tough and for me they are perennial (unless you dump four inches of soil on the top of the bed like I did). I would like to find a place to do some mass planting in my yard.

A new development came up about a week ago. My son purchased a lot of tobacco seeds as a birthday present. Within the Liberty and Freedom movement, I have heard of people growing tobacco as a form of tax freedom, so this was not revolutionary to me. But, it is probably not a good idea for my son to be promoting my involvement with tobacco.

I have a deep reverence for tobacco in relation to the historical fiber of this country. Between that and rum, it was a primary motivator the fiber of our cultural heritage. Both of those certainly come with their own baggage related to history as well but the fact remains that the brown gold was an instigator for fortune seekers and the liberty minded.

My view on tobacco is mixed. I do see it as a personal choice. It is definitely muddied by the industrialization of the product. The more fiddling, the more addictive, the more it becomes less of a choice. My personal opinion is that traditional use, say native use came without most of those trappings of crippling addiction and chronic health problems. This would be my same view of recreational marijuana.

Using a different carcinogen, somewhere, somehow a person was exposed to asbestos and that one event was life altering. I am not denying that recreational use of tobacco comes with risks. But I also wont deny that other culture’s relationship with smoking (primarily) has a much smaller chronic effect. That has much to do with diet and exercise and less to do with the habit.

This is not an argument for or against smoking. My own experience has told me that I could never be a day in day out smoker. I suspect that a large part of it is mental but ultimately, I found that I didn’t like how I felt after the initial buzz. It is just not a choice that I want to make.

All that being said, I think I am going to grow some tobacco this year. I would be curious if I could do it and I am sure that it would be a unique skill to know. Even though I have seen it growing in South Carolina and I have been around the processing, I think that there is probably a lot more to know.

There isn’t a ton of information on the seed package but it seems like different varieties are better for certain things. The indications are that certain varieties make better wrappers for cigars. Some make better fillers and so on. Given my limited space, I will probably try and grow something that might work as a pipe tobacco and probably one plant. From what I have seen, they are big plants.

There are a lot of plant sellers at the farmers market. I could definitely see a specialty booth where you are selling a cigar pack of plants with some information on how to process. I could easily see the novelty going for $50. But, that is getting way ahead of myself, it is just an idea of the potential. For this reason, I am going to give it a try.

End Your Programming Routine: I may not get tobacco to grow. I may give it my usual neglect in the ground and never make it to harvest. I also may never harvest or process. I did find myself wondering how much a pipe would cost and I found what seemed like a nice one to me at $75, imported from Italy. In my area, I was in shock that cigarettes cost $10 a pack. You do the math on that.

April 20, 2022 – Seasons back to Normal

April 20, 2022 /

My kids are playing tennis and it is a sport I really know nothing about. What I have learned is that they do not play in the rain. This year, spring has roared back to the glory of being miserable. I would venture to say that a lot of the winter was nicer than it has been since spring break a month ago.

Since One Drive shows me saved pictures every day for the years previous, I am seeing the recent years weather and I can attest that the weather is worse than when I was building in 2020. Things are not all bad, I know that some years we didn’t even hit 60 degrees until June and we have already had a day near 80. Today isn’t all about weather, what I am trying to say is that this weather seems more ‘normal’ than not to me.

These next couple of days seem to get a lot of attention on the getting gardens started. I am nearing the last annual frost date. From what I see, I am likely in the clear but it was below freezing two days ago. If I was ready to get started, then I would be looking to get starts and seeds in the ground soon. I would be remised to not mention the other two 4-20 and Earth Day.

These three dates are all very close together. My friends in college really got into 4-20. That seems to go part in parcel with the Earth Day culture. This is how I associate or keep track of the last frost date. To be completely honest, I didn’t want to simply write about weather and climate and pseudo holidays but to add some filler into the fact that I transplanted my starts in an attempt to get them stronger for when I do plant them.

As I wrote about last week, I had a lot of germination and a lot of subsequent failure. Once I spent the time to actually transplant, I got a much better look at what happened. All five of my tomatoes made it and in fact thrived. Four habanero germinated, two survived, Five jalapeno germinated three survived. Three banana peppers germinated one survived. Four cabbages germinated, three survived. There were other twos and ones, but I only transplanted the possible viables.

This is my continuation of experimentation on seed starting. I know that in years past the roots outgrew the one inch pots so I am hoping that by giving more space I might save some marginal starts. I guess we will see.

End Your Programming Routine: No garden plants do well in cool, dark places. I have seen multiple times when plants get into the ground and the weather warms up that they become vigorous. I suspect it is too cold and not enough light in the basement. I should move them outside but it is really too cold for vigorous growth yet. So, I will keep monitoring and trying little tweaks to see if I can unlock the secrets.

April 13, 2022 – Lessons Under the Light

April 13, 2022 /

Every year I learn something. Given my state of having a place to plant my starts, I am more concerned about identifying the variables then the results thereof. Today, I am going to talk about how my starts are doing.

Before that, I thought that I would mention that it is currently snowing. We are 9 days away from the average annual last frost date. Granted, it is not actually freezing, it is 34 degrees but it is worth noting for those itching to get starts into the ground. By all accounts, I think this is going to be one of those later years because we have this forecast for the foreseeable future.

What did I do differently this year? Well, I changed from fluorescent to LED grow lights was the biggest thing. I don’t know if it was coincidence or not but I did have a pretty high germination rate. This year I also rotated the tray every couple of days. I was trying to get more equal light and heat distribution.

My observation is that different plats are growing at different rates. this makes it difficult to have the optimum conditions for all the items in the trays. For instance, initially, I had five of six habanero seeds germinate. Whereas last year, I think that I only had one pepper germinate. These were new seeds, so maybe it was a vitality problem but I don’t think so. Four of six jalapenos germinated and three of six bell peppers germinated and those were the same seeds from last year. So, something of those variables I changed last year worked.

Getting to my point now, even though the peppers germinated, I don think any of them are going to make it. It seems like the grow lights are too intense and are burning the dicots (the two initial leaves that come up with the start). Every day, I am watching them slowly wither from the intensity of the light.

The tomatoes on the other hand are doing better than I have ever seen. They are the reason I had to take the humidity dome of as they were touching the top within two weeks. They are clearly adapted and thriving in the environment. Ideally, with each of these plants I would have the capability to cover and move the light higher or lower to get the best results.

I have thought about the idea that maybe I should upsize the pots that they are in. This is the six week mark for the seedlings and they are probably going to stay potted for the foreseeable future. I feel like six inch is probably the optimum size, so maybe I will try to get this done this weekend. The last couple of years that I have been dragging my feet getting stuff potted, the roots were highly constrained in these little starter cells.

End Your Programming Routine: I am pretty sure that I can get the tomatoes to survive. The rest of them, I will cross my fingers. But, like I said in the beginning I had a pretty poor germination rate over the last couple of years so as much as I want to have a yield, I am focusing on getting stuff started first.

August 18, 2021 – The Struggle is Over, a Root Cause Analysis

August 18, 2021 /

When I stubbed out (titled) this post August 6, I had no way of knowing that I was days away from spending a lot of time talking about life changing events. In fact, I was having a hard time coming up with topics that I wanted to discuss at all that week. Today I thought a little about trying to wind the two stories together and make some cute correlation to my failed garden attempt and life’s struggles. In the end, I decided to keep to the subject matter of my failings rather than go higher level.

Dosen’t everyone want to present their best face on the internet and not talk about their failures? Even I resist the urge to bring it up sometimes but I think it is also real. We all have things that we knew that we could do better even when you were in the midst of failing. To be one hundred percent transparent, not everything failed just the majority of things.

In my career at least I am big on lesson’s learned and root cause analysis. If we study our issues we can then implement changes to at least try and prevent the failures from occurring in the first place. How do you actually do that? I will try to outline the rough procedure below.

What Happened? I started seeds in late February with the intent of getting them in the ground in late April / early May. I had plans to build garden beds in the front yard since I tore them up in the back yard last year. I didn’t end up planting the seedlings in the ground until early July.

Why? My career options changed and with it so did my personal priorities. I needed a conditioned space to work as I was freezing all day long. So I stopped focusing on plants and focused on building my office with my free time.

Why? Lacking any sort of plan, I assessed what spaces I had and determined that I could plant in the flower beds in early May. As I was working the bed, I contracted Covid. Not that I couldn’t physically continue but I took it easier for two weeks and lost momentum. In that same time frame, I had a discussion with my wife about what I was doing and she didn’t agree with how I was proceeding.

Why? She wanted me to build raised beds in the flower beds which I didn’t have the materials to do so nor did I want to spend the time away from my office project. Because there was some doubt as to whether we would need to move, we were hesitant to make some unconventional changes to the yard as well.

Root Cause: I didn’t have a plan in place to plant my seedlings in an appropriate time frame. I planted them too late and they didn’t survive.

Corrective Action: To avoid this in the future, I need to have a project plan on where the milestones are clearly defined. Where are the beds going to be? When do they need to be completed in time to plant? How will the beds be constructed?

End Your Programming Routine: I knew that the chances were low that this would be successful. Given that I had already put energy into starting seeds and keeping them alive, I thought that it was at least worth testing their chances. It wasn’t as if I was ignoring them in the ground, I kept it wet and checked on them daily. The sun was just too intense and the plants were not able to withstand the heat all day.