Seed Update #2

Long time no see! Please excuse the fact that I fell off the blogging bandwagon for a few weeks. School started back up for me which sucks up a pretty good chunk of my free time, but I have a few posts planned for this week. Today I am going to show you some photos of how my plants are looking. Some of them are doing wonderfully, others have gotten off to a slow start, and some of them I am having trouble with. My next post (scheduled for Thursday) will be about container gardening. FINALLY! I wanted to get that post up much earlier, but better late than never, right? In that post I will go over what containers to use, which plants will work best, how to get started, and what we are growing in containers this year.

our tomatoes 3 weeks ago - 3/12

largest and smallest, both yellow cherry - 4/1

We planted our seeds about a month ago and we have about a month before we can plant anything outside. This excludes broccoli which was the only cold weather starter we did - more on that in a minute. So far the tomatoes are doing wonderfully...I could not be happier! They are not leggy, stalks seem strong, and they have plenty of leaves by this point. They are also growing at a crazy pace. The photo on top was three weeks ago and the next photo is from today. Huge difference! The second photo also shows my largest and smallest tomato plant - they are the same variety they just sprouted at different times. 

basil and cilantro 

Our herbs are also doing well. The oregano is still in the seed flat because it is quite small, but the basil and cilantro have been repotted and are looking good.

still quite a bit left in the seed flat

The next photo is what we have left in our seed flat. We have all the peppers - as soon as the smallest ones get a bit bigger we will repot them to the larger pots. Then there are three okra plants - they took a very long time to germinate and the three holes are from the okra that germinated first and have already been repotted to the larger pots. Then there are four oregano plants - they are verrrry slow growing so they may just stay in the seed flat for the next month. And then there are the strawberries - they will likely stay in the seed flat for another month as well since they are so small.

tiny tomatillo seedlings

And lastly - what I have not had much success growing. The ground cherries and tomatillos are giving me problems. They took quite some time to germinate and when they did only one or two plants out of twelve sprouted. Then they grew very slowly, and at some point the tomatillo leaves started shriveling for unknown reasons...basically they looked awful. So I decided to start over. We only have 4 weeks until we can plant, so assuming they grow they will be much smaller when we plant them, but they should catch up. I have a (heated) plant light on them to keep them warm and that seems to help a lot as I've had six tomatillos sprout. No ground cherries yet, but maybe they will pop up soon.

I have also started "hardening off" the broccoli. This basically means that I am getting it used to outdoor conditions before plopping it in the garden so they don't get stressed out. Sounds silly, but a stressed plant will not grow as well and is more susceptible to pests and disease. Broccoli seems to be a much pickier plant - it wilts in no time if it gets a bit dry, whereas tomatoes can can handle that much better. I sat them outside in the shade and I had to prop two of the taller (read: leggier) plants up against a pot because any bit of wind made them flop over. I will plant them a bit deeper to help avoid this when they go in the garden. They lasted about 30 minutes and then started to wilt so I brought them back in. I should be able to put them out for longer and longer each day until they are okay with being outside.

Overall I am really happy with how things are growing, especially as I have never done this! It's a lot of fun and not too much upkeep, and I have no desire to go back to buying starters. I am getting a bit tired of watering them all the time but that's the most annoying part of gardening and I'm used to it anyway...so I will likely survive. Can't wait to get them planted. Four weeks and counting! As always thanks for reading and feel free to sound off in the comments if you have any questions.




-Kelly