Seedling Trays Make It So Easy

I found propagation/seedling trays with – most important – no-hole bottom trays.  Without my greenhouse, this spring I lost so many seedlings – overall at least half of what I started – because I simply couldn’t keep the plugs wet.  You can most easily see a tray under the deep-root seedling tray on the right.  These trays allow me to water from the bottom – I only need to make sure there is water in the bottom tray and then the seedlings won’t dry out during the hot day.

After over-paying by 2x+ for 10 of these trays on ebay, I found greenhousemegastore.com.  I have NO affiliate link to these folks – I am mentioning them because their prices are so great and shipping is so reasonable and my problem is SOLVED!  I am soooo thrilled!  You don’t know how great I feel now being able to start hundreds and hundreds of seedlings and knowing that they won’t dry out and die!!!  I have to start my winter broccoli, cabbage and all the other cold weather crops in August.  Without constant bottom watering, nothing would easily survive here in hot, dry Texas.

The deep-root tray on the right has pine tree seedlings in it.  When I find a pine seedling in the wrong place (under a bench, in the garden, in the middle of the yard – where ever the seedling sprouts ) I dig it up and plant it in this tray.  The tray to its left has basil sprouts (the cells with missing plants had sprouts that dried out and died!  So I re-seeded them today and put it in a no-hole bottom tray).  The tray on the very left is a deep foil pan – how I used to start seedlings until I got a hold of these seedling propagation trays.

This is a seedling tray with marigold sprouts.  This is one of my 2 older 72 cell seedling trays (Now, I have plenty of these trays), sitting in one of my new 1020 no-hole trays.  Haven’t had a problem with any seedlings drying out since I got these.  Loving it!

Unimpressive Garlic Harvest

This is my garlic harvest for this season.  Here, garlic is planted around October and harvested the following May.  During our recent move, I lost my heirloom garlic so I just planted garlic from the local grocery store. I don’t know whether this stuff is hard or soft neck, but suspect that it is soft neck.  I bought several bulbs and planted the larger outer cloves.  Although my heirloom garlic was gone, I still wanted to plant garlic.  This stuff seems to have done OK.
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I probably should have harvested it sooner, but since it is just store garlic I didn’t know how it would do so it wasn’t a priority. The bulb at the far left looks way over-mature because a clove has outgrown its paper wrapper.  Also, the soft garlic I grew never had that bump in the stem a few inches above the bulb.   I cut the tops off of these bulbs and will store them and use them as needed and see how well they keep.

 

Female Blossoms, But No Male Blossoms To Pollinate Them

These hybrid 8 Ball Zucchini plants grow fast and strong, but they put out female blossoms first!?  I have had 4 female blossoms so far, but not a single male cucurbit blossom to pollinate them with.  Since I’m not saving seed, ANY male cucurbit blossom would have worked – squash, cucumber or melon.

What a waste.  I decided last season that I didn’t plan to buy anymore 8 Ball seeds because they could be hard to harvest.  Often, the round fruit would form on the bottom of the plant stem so that to harvest it I had to move the stem around a bit.  I don’t like to move the stems – they could snap or bend.  And then when I cut the plant off, if it was under the stem, the plant would usually fall over because the fruit was holding the plant up.  Just too messy.  However, since I still have seeds, I will plant some each year until the seeds are gone.

Swiss Chard

Last October, I planted Luculus Swiss Chard. (The seeds were from 2009 – still germinated very well).   It didn’t grow particularly well thru the very cold winter.  This spring it took off and for the past month or so I have been drying a load or 2 each day.  Swiss chard is a cooler weather plant and I can see some of the plants starting to bolt.  I can see different styles of leaves and have chosen the plants that I want to let go to seed – plants that have very large, wrinkled leaves, shorter stems are preferred.

These are dried swiss chard leaves.  It only takes about 2 to 2 1/2 hours at 110 to 115 degrees to dry a load.  After doing a few loads, I realized that I can lay leaves right up next to each other, touching along leaf edges.  This means that I can pack about a third more in the dryer that I first thought.

These dried leaves are what is left after laying them out before drying – leaves touching – across the sheet.  You can see that 2 leaves actually dried together.  Not a problem – they are totally dried.  These are leaf halves – I rinse them off, lay them flat and slice along each side of the main vein – it doesn’t dry quickly – and dry the leaf material, not the main stem.

These are just a few of the leaf shapes from the same batch of Luculus Swiss Chard seed packet.  Some leaves grow to almost 24″ long.  I like to let them grow large to dry.  Smaller is better for eating raw.  At this point in the season, I am just working on letting the best leaves grow as large as possible before cutting and drying.

I am carefully culling the leaves.  I cut and dry the largest and most wrinkled leaves – a personal preference.  I have picked the plants that I want to allow to go to seed. For those chosen few, I am leaving the small leaves and some larger leaves – cutting off only the largest leaves.   Some of those chosen plants are starting to bolt, as is expected as the days warm.  I will be removing and drying the ‘other’ plants as they start to bolt, eventually leaving only the bolting chard as it goes to seed.  I have never before let swiss chard go to seed so I really don’t know what to expect.

I have already planted squash, tomatoes and peppers around the chard.  They are growing, waiting their turn to expand into the space now occupied by the swiss chard.  This picture shows some of the chosen plants – they have strong, large, wrinkled leaves – just the way I like them.

The little plants in front of the chard are pepper seedlings.  You can’t see from these pics, but all of the chard plants have lots of cut off stems at their base.  Standard instructions usually say to cut all of the chard leaves off a few inches from the ground and let it grow back. I don’t do that – I cut the largest leaves to dry and allow the baby leaves to grow. The chard will be gone when they need that space.  I don’t have all of the room that I would like so I am working on figuring out how to work the planting as I go from spring/summer to fall/winter gardening, and back again.