I'm trying the pampas grass again, one more time. The seed is about 9 years old at this point, so I'm not holding out a lot of hope, but there's a chance that an outlier or two may still be viable, so I sewed all the seed off of an entire seed head - probably 200 or 300 seeds. This time, I planted them on top of dirt in one of those coffee cans, and then put about 1/8 or 1/4 inch of peat potting soil on top of them.Then I wet the peat with a mister, and did that every hour or so until it was moistened all the way down to the dirt, and the dirt took the water over for drainage. That process floated some of the seed to the top, so some is buried and some is on the surface, just in case one way works better than the other. The I stretched some saran-wrap across the top to hold in humidity, and tied a string around the neck of the can to hold the plastic wrap on, and set the whole mess under a grow light. Now it's a waiting game.
The tobacco got tall enough that it was scraping the top of the humidity dome in the little greenhouses, so I thinned it out this evening and took out the tallest plants. I transplanted those into a flat of cells, 36 in all. I'll do it again in a week or so, depending on how many plants survive the transplanting. There are still 100 or 200 in the greenhouses, so some of them are just gonna have to die. I can't transplant all of those, and the greenhouse cells have to be thinned out to 1 plant per cell - 24 plants in all. That will give me 60 plants to poke into the ground after the danger of frost is over.
Ditto for the tomatoes - some of them were bumping into the greenhouse tray lid, so I popped the 4 tallest into 3" pots in a flat to wait until I can put them into the ground outdoors. I'll probably have to do the same with some of the sage in a day or two - it's growing faster than i expected it would.
Thyme is about an inch and a half tall, and the basil is about 2" tall now, so it can stay in the greenhouse for the time being. The peppermint is still pretty tiny - maybe half an inch tall, so it's still good, too.
I got some black beans seed today to go with the corn ("Cherokee Wax Beans", which I have doubts are "Cherokee" at all). They are bush beans instead of pole beans, so I'll probably plant them between the corn instead of in the same hole with it.
Only 3 weeks to go until outdoor planting, so I'll have to get on the stick and finish breaking the ground in the next day or two to give the broken dirt time to settle back before it's showtime.
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The tobacco got tall enough that it was scraping the top of the humidity dome in the little greenhouses, so I thinned it out this evening and took out the tallest plants. I transplanted those into a flat of cells, 36 in all. I'll do it again in a week or so, depending on how many plants survive the transplanting. There are still 100 or 200 in the greenhouses, so some of them are just gonna have to die. I can't transplant all of those, and the greenhouse cells have to be thinned out to 1 plant per cell - 24 plants in all. That will give me 60 plants to poke into the ground after the danger of frost is over.
Ditto for the tomatoes - some of them were bumping into the greenhouse tray lid, so I popped the 4 tallest into 3" pots in a flat to wait until I can put them into the ground outdoors. I'll probably have to do the same with some of the sage in a day or two - it's growing faster than i expected it would.
Thyme is about an inch and a half tall, and the basil is about 2" tall now, so it can stay in the greenhouse for the time being. The peppermint is still pretty tiny - maybe half an inch tall, so it's still good, too.
I got some black beans seed today to go with the corn ("Cherokee Wax Beans", which I have doubts are "Cherokee" at all). They are bush beans instead of pole beans, so I'll probably plant them between the corn instead of in the same hole with it.
Only 3 weeks to go until outdoor planting, so I'll have to get on the stick and finish breaking the ground in the next day or two to give the broken dirt time to settle back before it's showtime.
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