Tag: seed starting

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.