Discover Top Posts Tagged with #garden experiments

My strange experiment is growing seedlings! Fingers crossed for the wildflowers.

#garden #wildflowers #meadow #garden experiments

My field peas have invented a new, larger version of themselves. A rogue plant among the others in the patch.

The ones on the left are the normal size, for comparison.

I'm letting several pods dry on the vine, and I'll plant them separately next year to see if it's genetic/breeds true. I've already got ideas for what to call my new variety if this works out!

#field peas #purple hull peas #garden experiments #vegetable gardening #garden2022 #bloomhaven

Tried an experiment. I got a half bag of standard birdseed from the food pantry this winter (very random but I have chickens so when I saw it I asked if I could have it for them). I was wanting to grow black oil sunflower seeds for the chickens since i had success last year with the grey-striped variety, but it's actually somewhat difficult finding packets of the seed for planting, plus I couldn't afford new seeds this year anyway. So I picked out a bunch of them from the birdseed and decided to do a test germination to see if the seed was viable or if it had been inactivated somehow.

Success! Somewhere between 25-35% germination. I probably should have just fed them to the chickens and started over at a more appropriate time, but I had the pots and the sifted potting soil so I just went ahead and planted them for transplanting later.

I'll have ten seedlings once the last three pots send up seedlings. I did have to move them into one of the cold frames after the seedling popped up because I need the room under the grow lights for the veggies. They'll probably be okay...in any case I have plenty of time to start over if not. These will go in the front yard behind the sidewalk raised bed and I'll start some of the Mammoth Russian sunflowers to go in the raised bed at the back fence later. That bed has been designated for flowers and blackberries this year (the scavenged blackberry bush from the fall made it through the winter!).

So the warm season seedlings (tomato, pepper, eggplant) under the grow lights have gotten to the point where they at least need to be in their own cells if not bigger pots altogether. Some of the tomatoes have twenty sizeable seedlings crammed into the tiny cells of a deep 8 pack. It's a daunting task since I started so many varieties plus I have very limited space under the grow lights. So I've decided to take it slow, set up all the materials and tools, and do 1-2 packs a day. Much more manageable a task that way.

Did the Black Beauty eggplants (10 pots) and the Ashe County Pimento peppers (14 pots) yesterday and they're doing great.

I did an 8 pack of paste tomatoes today (4 varieties, 2 cells each) and put them back in 8 packs but with the strongest seedlings of each variety with 4 cells per variety. The Rosso Sicilian variety had SO MANY good, strong seedlings that it was painful to toss most of them on the compost, but I'm already going to have to give away a lot of seedlings as it is. I figure the two strongest of the four will make it to transplantation—I wish I had more land to grow more tomato plants but eh.

I did have this weird thing happen with the jalapeños a few weeks back where some of the seedlings were coming up pale yellow. At first I thought either they were too wet or that one of the polymer coated fertilizer granules in the sifted potting soil had burst, but then I noticed that two of the cells had normal green seedlings right next to the affected ones. So it's probably a mutation. These are from seed-saved seeds and it's been several generations so it may be time to swap for some "new blood" to keep the gene pool diverse. I did go ahead and snip the mutants since chlorosis isn't a trait I'd like to populate in my pepper plants. But I also thought it was cool enough to share.

I have no idea what these plants are but they are not lavender seedlings. Since I use recycled and recharged potting soil for my seedlings without sterilizing it, sometimes there are these surprises. They look like some type of bedding/hanging basket flower, maybe petunias, so I'm letting them grow up in place of the lavender since there's no sign of them after weeks. I might as well get something out of it after all.

Book recommendation for casual garden-focused reading. It has a conversational style rather than a task/fact oriented one, which makes it a very enjoyable read. But there are some gems of gardening tips/lore sprinkled throughout the text—it's like talking to an experienced gardening elder while hanging out on the porch. So recommended if this sounds like your thing—I checked it out from my library and now I'm combing through it again to pull out those gems for my notes.

#gardening #garden experiments #i figured that you often get some of the millet birdseed sprouting under bird feeders if the squirrels miss it #so why not the sunflower seed #i picked out enough to bait a mouse trap thing for the garage this summer too in an effort to knock down their numbers #so i have plenty saved if the seedlings don't survive the possible snowstorm on Sunday night #i swear i nearly had to put on the ac one day this week...in March! crazy weather #and now i hear that 2027 will be even hotter thanks to el nino coming this summer...yay #i will say that as crowded as a lot of the tomato cells are right now #there are a number of varieties that only have a few seedlings despite sowing a huge number of seed #so it was a good strategy for that old seed #just some of it stayed viable for a lot longer than expected #i am bummed that none of my asian type eggplant came up and i'm out of seed for it #so that means i'll have lots of eggplant “meat”balls and lasagna slices for the freezer but none for stirfry #plant mutations #or it could just be a recessive gene #i actually started way too many jalapeno plants as it is so they're one that will be largely given away #i am a spice weenie mostly and need very few jalapenos to season a dish #book recommendation #the next gardening book i read made me angry especially in comparison to this one #it not only had a mansplaining tone but one of the assertions right off the bat had proven wrong in my direct experience #a case of not considering that things may work differently in different regions/hardiness zones #the recommended book doesn't do that btw

I've got an onion that I bought a while ago, that I saved because it was sprouting and I was like "oooh in gonna try to grow onions from it" so I kept it on the countertop and let the shoots grow. And tonight I separated the shoots and put them in water to hopefully grow roots, and in a couple weeks hopefully I can plant them in the garden!!!!!! I've never tried this before (with onions anyway, I do it all the time with other plants) so I'm very excited and curious

#garden experiments

January 6, and the pea vines are still hanging in there. We’ve got predicted freeze with maybe-snow starting around the 13th, so I’m just going to leave the vines and nature will take care of them finally/soon.

We’ve only bumped up against freezing temps overnight so far here in Seattle, and what’s coming could genuinely be close to freezing during the day and down to about 27˚F overnight and that really should be the end of these vines.

#shelling peas #pea vines #freezing temps #garden experiments #nitrogen fixers

After dark garden experiments! Six testers.... one better work!

#i want my daphne bush back!#garden experiments #what goes on after dark

These are some potatoes we’re growing in bags made from tarps. We also have some growing in plain old garbage bags. One (theoretical) advantage of the tarp bags is a central pocket so we can dig spuds without having to empty the whole bag. I’ll let you know how that goes.

#urban gardening #potato bags #garden experiments