Saturday, March 26, 2011

Sharing my germs with the seedlings: not quite the called for inoculant

Yesterday I was sick.  Like cough up a lung, whine to anyone who will listen, feverish sick.  I couldn't get dressed or think of leaving the house.  After a few hours (try 8) of feeling sorry for myself I realized that this was the day to get my veggies sowed.  After all they certainly wouldn't be bothered by my sneezing and coughing virus particles all over them.  Perhaps the virus inoculant would protect them against fungi in a competitive, territorial, "I was here first" kind of way.  Or not.

I pulled out the flats, heating mats, organic seedstarting soil, and the seeds.  I actually thought it would take me an hour or so.  Six hours later I finally finished the last flat.  Partly this is because I was sneezing and blowing and stopping to take Cold Eeze and tylenol.  Partly because I am so very distractible.

I first had to rearrange all my flower seedlings from the 19th.  After much careful planning to assure that each flat had seeds with similar germination times and environment needs, I discovered that planning for germination is an amusing reminder of nature over science.  About half of the seeds germinated in two different flats from different sides.  After flipping the trays around and using a cover over only half of each tray on the 22nd I finally had to come to terms with the fact that I was going to need to cut the flats. Of course no rhyme or reason... one six pack of the same seeds germinated and the other six pack with the same seeds attached to it did not.
So I spent some time cutting the six packs apart from the 72 tray and reorganizing in new containers so those that had not germinated could do so and those who had could get more light.

Then I remembered that I had not planted the pansies and violas that I had stratified on the 19th.  So before I got to the veggies I went ahead and used up one of my plastic flats/peat pellets for the cold seeds. Since I didn't have the heart to throw away the remaining stratified seeds I planted them in Miracle Gro seedstarting mix and peat pots in a reused salad container.  I'm not sure why I am adverse to tossing out the seeds.  You can see the poor collection of plastic containers that I pulled into use so that I wouldn't have to toss the flower seeds on my post on the 19th.

Finally I start preparing for the veggies.  I had 13 different types of peppers, 16 different types of tomatoes, and lots of lettuce varieties.  I managed to get all the peppers in one flat and the tomatoes in the other.  I will need one plant of each variety for my SFG.  I sowed two for each variety with some extras. If need be I can start another flat with more of each.  I used self-watering Burpee's Eco Kits with "plastic" made from corn and deep cells filled with organic peat for the peppers and tomatoes and placed both of them on heating mats.  The lettuce is planted 4/square in SFG and so I sowed 4 cells/variety (head and leaf, arugula, endive, cress, mache and chrysanthamum).  I sowed a few/cell in organic seedstarting mix and APS self-watering greenhouse kits. The seeds are so small that trying to do one per cell is too time intensive.  I'll just have to learn how to snip out the weaker seedlings.  However given my track record in being unable to throw out seeds, we'll see if I can successfully cull down to one seedling/cell.

Top shelf in picture has left to right: flowers, tomatoes, peppers on heat mats Bottom shelf has two 32 cell flats with lettuce, mache, endive, chrysanthemum

No comments:

Post a Comment