I reckon I'll chime in - it's more permanent for reference than the shoutbox!
When I was a kid, I hated gardening. Absolutely hated it, but learned all the same because I had to do it. We had a "normal" subsistence garden back then - corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, peppers,potatoes, etc., that sort of thing.I tried peanuts one year, but got nothing out of them. The soil was too much clay, not enough sand, and peanuts like a sandy soil. Mostly it was just stuff for supper, and to be canned.
Now I'm old, and retired. I had to find something to do to keep me off the streets and out of trouble, and there wasn't a "job" any more to take care of that, so I took up gardening. It's low-impact, and I can pretty much do it on my own time. I don't get in a rush to beat the clock any more.
Last year, about all I grew was Sacred Tobacco. Not that I didn't TRY a few other things, but the tobacco was about all that actually came up, so I ran with that. I tried some quinoa, but it never sprouted. Same for the pampas grass. about 4 years ago, I tried some of the pampas grass (I gathered the seed wild when I was living in Kansas City), and it sprouted like gangbusters, but by last year, it looks like most or all of the seed had died, which irritated me - I was looking forward to gathering the stems of the flower stalks to use for arrow shafts. They make good ones - they're tough and light, and mostly straight. I think they'd do as well, and maybe better, than river cane.
Last year, I picked up some of those "jiffy" miniature greenhouses with the peat plugs that you've got to soak in warm water and get them to expand. The tobacco did fine in them, but NONE of the quinoa or pampas grass, or anything else I put in them sprouted. I'm a little leery of them this year, but tried them again for tomatoes, green peppers, and cayenne peppers. So far, ONE bell pepper (out of 10) is sprouting, four beefsteak tomatoes (out of 20 planted) are sprouting, and none of the cayenne (out of 10 planted) so far. That's not doing much to increase my faith in them.
The herbal front is looking a bit brighter. I planted the catnip, thyme, basil, sage, and peppermint in tiny greenhouses that I got from Amazon. They are about 6 inches by 9 inches, and have 4 inch high domes on them with LED grow lights built-in the the domes. The lights are built in to rotating disks at the center of the dome, and you can rotate them 45 degrees to open vents in the domes to ventilate them if needed, and close them to hold the humidity in. The catnip, thyme, basil, and peppermint is sprouting like crazy. The sage, so far, only has two sprouts (and one errant basil sprout that crept into a sage cell), but I wasn't expecting it to do anything until April 15th, so what has already sprouted is early.
Those mini greenhouses have a base, an insert that has 12 cells, the dome and the grow lights. It comes with a USB cable for the grow lights that plug in to a USB outlet, runs through a switch that has timer setting on it, and then splits out to 5 separate cords, one for each set of grow lights. It also came with a heat pad, but I haven't used that. Handy to have if you need it, though! This is the kit I have, but you can get them cheaper, and with more trays, but without the heat pad. I've seen them at Amazon with 10 trays and domes for 20 bucks, but no heat pad.
Grow lights - most grow lights you can get these days are big square or rectangular panels. I don't use those, so I don't know how well they work. Most I've seen pictures of look like they are throwing a purple light. I use LED "bulb" grow lights. This is the latest one I got. Only uses 24 W of power, throws 300 W of light. I have two more of those 24W lights, both a different brand that I can't think of the name of right now, but they look just like the Sansi ones, right down to the same cooling fin housing. I also have 1 15W bulb like that, but it's not in use at the moment. I've only got 3 of the special drop cords I use for them, so the 15 W bulb is waiting for power. The drop cords look like 1/2 inch sisal or hemp rope with a switch in the middle, and are 15 feet long. I hang them from plant-hanger hooks in the ceiling so i can adjust the height as needed. A twist tie at the bottom of the loop formed at the hook keeps them from slipping when I don't want them to slip, but allows them to be adjusted when I do want them to slip.
Last December I popped some hemp seeds into dirt, just to see what would happen. It was "bagseed", not anything I bought from reputable seed suppliers. The seed ain't been created that I'd pay 10 bucks per seed for - so I just saved a couple bagseeds. Out of 12 seeds in the dirt, 6 of them sprouted. I didn't take much care with them, since I was just doing it out of boredom. No greenhouse, no humidity domes, none of that. Just popped them into 3" vacuum formed plastic square pots, like you get plants from a nursery in, filled with a "seed starter" peat mix. Since they sprouted, I let 'em run to see what would happen. The last hemp I grew was over 40 years ago, closer to 50, and only got 11 1/2 inches tall before it went to seed... so it wasn't much worth the effort. I figured these would be the same, but they got to about 4 feet tall before they started blooming. 4 of the 6 turned out to be males, so I cut two of the males down to get under the legal limit - you are allowed 4 hemp plants here, unless you are growing it under license. I used those aforementioned grow lights with them, and they turned out better than i expected.
I'm going to try to make twine out of the hemp fibers from the males I cut down.
Last year, I used coffee cans for planters for the tobacco. We get coffee in those plastic coffee cans that are about a gallon or so. I just saved several up and drilled 5 drain holes in the bottoms of them - one in the center and 4 spaced equidistant around the edge. They worked pretty well to hold the tobacco until I could get it in the ground... which i did too late in the season. This is how we learn, i reckon. trial and error. I transplanted the tobacco out of the starter plugs into 3 inch pots, and later into the coffee cans. What I learned from that is to only transplant them ONCE before popping them in the ground for real. I also learned you can just pull those suckers up by the stem and transplant them a little deeper than they were before, and they'll make new roots to replace the ones that were ripped off when they were pulled up. I learned that because originally, I was just going to thin them out, but then got the bright idea to replant the culls and see if they could survive. They did. Very well.
The tobacco I grow isn't regular cigarette or cigar tobacco, it's "native tobacco" or "sacred tobacco.". The Muskogee tribe calls it "little tobacco", because it doesn't get as big as commercial tobacco. Mine got between 25 and 30 inches tall when it started blooming Regular tobacco gets 5 or 6 feet tall, and has pink blossoms. The blooms on the native tobacco are a greenish-yellow instead. it has anywhere from 3 to 20 times the nicotine of commercial tobacco, averaging about 9 times as much.
Some folks in the Anishinaabe tribe told me to start it in the week before the March full moon, or else later "when The Thunderers arrive", but this year both fell at the same time - I heard The Thunderers about midway in the week before the first full moon in March, so I figured that was the time and sewed the tobacco early on March 5th (the full moon was the 7th). I planted two of those mini-greenhouses with it, 24 cells, and it's going like gangbusters, already filled the dome. I'll have to thin it out soon, and I figure to get at least 48 plants, maybe 72 if I'm lucky and careful. It takes a lot. I only grew 24 of them last year, and got practically no tobacco - maybe a couple ounces dried, when I should have got a couple ounces per plant. I did, however, get about 16 grams or so of seed. I've sent some of that seed out to other folks that wanted to try it, and still have a bunch of it. Tobacco has about 3500 seeds per gram.
I did test sprout some of that seed, and it seems to have a higher germination rate than the original seed I started with (I got about 4 grams of them, so about 14,000 seeds or so). This year, for my own grow, I used the original seed (supposedly "thousand year old seed" grown from seeds found in a clay pot at an archaeological dig, but I think that's a bullshit story to sell seed. it looks like the Cherokee tobacco to me). That was to keep the strain pure, as last year I grew both the ancient tobacco and Midewiwin tobacco, so the seed produced may have up to 4% cross-pollination.
I'm rambling, and this is long... so I'll shut up for now.
.
When I was a kid, I hated gardening. Absolutely hated it, but learned all the same because I had to do it. We had a "normal" subsistence garden back then - corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, peppers,potatoes, etc., that sort of thing.I tried peanuts one year, but got nothing out of them. The soil was too much clay, not enough sand, and peanuts like a sandy soil. Mostly it was just stuff for supper, and to be canned.
Now I'm old, and retired. I had to find something to do to keep me off the streets and out of trouble, and there wasn't a "job" any more to take care of that, so I took up gardening. It's low-impact, and I can pretty much do it on my own time. I don't get in a rush to beat the clock any more.
Last year, about all I grew was Sacred Tobacco. Not that I didn't TRY a few other things, but the tobacco was about all that actually came up, so I ran with that. I tried some quinoa, but it never sprouted. Same for the pampas grass. about 4 years ago, I tried some of the pampas grass (I gathered the seed wild when I was living in Kansas City), and it sprouted like gangbusters, but by last year, it looks like most or all of the seed had died, which irritated me - I was looking forward to gathering the stems of the flower stalks to use for arrow shafts. They make good ones - they're tough and light, and mostly straight. I think they'd do as well, and maybe better, than river cane.
Last year, I picked up some of those "jiffy" miniature greenhouses with the peat plugs that you've got to soak in warm water and get them to expand. The tobacco did fine in them, but NONE of the quinoa or pampas grass, or anything else I put in them sprouted. I'm a little leery of them this year, but tried them again for tomatoes, green peppers, and cayenne peppers. So far, ONE bell pepper (out of 10) is sprouting, four beefsteak tomatoes (out of 20 planted) are sprouting, and none of the cayenne (out of 10 planted) so far. That's not doing much to increase my faith in them.
The herbal front is looking a bit brighter. I planted the catnip, thyme, basil, sage, and peppermint in tiny greenhouses that I got from Amazon. They are about 6 inches by 9 inches, and have 4 inch high domes on them with LED grow lights built-in the the domes. The lights are built in to rotating disks at the center of the dome, and you can rotate them 45 degrees to open vents in the domes to ventilate them if needed, and close them to hold the humidity in. The catnip, thyme, basil, and peppermint is sprouting like crazy. The sage, so far, only has two sprouts (and one errant basil sprout that crept into a sage cell), but I wasn't expecting it to do anything until April 15th, so what has already sprouted is early.
Those mini greenhouses have a base, an insert that has 12 cells, the dome and the grow lights. It comes with a USB cable for the grow lights that plug in to a USB outlet, runs through a switch that has timer setting on it, and then splits out to 5 separate cords, one for each set of grow lights. It also came with a heat pad, but I haven't used that. Handy to have if you need it, though! This is the kit I have, but you can get them cheaper, and with more trays, but without the heat pad. I've seen them at Amazon with 10 trays and domes for 20 bucks, but no heat pad.
Grow lights - most grow lights you can get these days are big square or rectangular panels. I don't use those, so I don't know how well they work. Most I've seen pictures of look like they are throwing a purple light. I use LED "bulb" grow lights. This is the latest one I got. Only uses 24 W of power, throws 300 W of light. I have two more of those 24W lights, both a different brand that I can't think of the name of right now, but they look just like the Sansi ones, right down to the same cooling fin housing. I also have 1 15W bulb like that, but it's not in use at the moment. I've only got 3 of the special drop cords I use for them, so the 15 W bulb is waiting for power. The drop cords look like 1/2 inch sisal or hemp rope with a switch in the middle, and are 15 feet long. I hang them from plant-hanger hooks in the ceiling so i can adjust the height as needed. A twist tie at the bottom of the loop formed at the hook keeps them from slipping when I don't want them to slip, but allows them to be adjusted when I do want them to slip.
Last December I popped some hemp seeds into dirt, just to see what would happen. It was "bagseed", not anything I bought from reputable seed suppliers. The seed ain't been created that I'd pay 10 bucks per seed for - so I just saved a couple bagseeds. Out of 12 seeds in the dirt, 6 of them sprouted. I didn't take much care with them, since I was just doing it out of boredom. No greenhouse, no humidity domes, none of that. Just popped them into 3" vacuum formed plastic square pots, like you get plants from a nursery in, filled with a "seed starter" peat mix. Since they sprouted, I let 'em run to see what would happen. The last hemp I grew was over 40 years ago, closer to 50, and only got 11 1/2 inches tall before it went to seed... so it wasn't much worth the effort. I figured these would be the same, but they got to about 4 feet tall before they started blooming. 4 of the 6 turned out to be males, so I cut two of the males down to get under the legal limit - you are allowed 4 hemp plants here, unless you are growing it under license. I used those aforementioned grow lights with them, and they turned out better than i expected.
I'm going to try to make twine out of the hemp fibers from the males I cut down.
Last year, I used coffee cans for planters for the tobacco. We get coffee in those plastic coffee cans that are about a gallon or so. I just saved several up and drilled 5 drain holes in the bottoms of them - one in the center and 4 spaced equidistant around the edge. They worked pretty well to hold the tobacco until I could get it in the ground... which i did too late in the season. This is how we learn, i reckon. trial and error. I transplanted the tobacco out of the starter plugs into 3 inch pots, and later into the coffee cans. What I learned from that is to only transplant them ONCE before popping them in the ground for real. I also learned you can just pull those suckers up by the stem and transplant them a little deeper than they were before, and they'll make new roots to replace the ones that were ripped off when they were pulled up. I learned that because originally, I was just going to thin them out, but then got the bright idea to replant the culls and see if they could survive. They did. Very well.
The tobacco I grow isn't regular cigarette or cigar tobacco, it's "native tobacco" or "sacred tobacco.". The Muskogee tribe calls it "little tobacco", because it doesn't get as big as commercial tobacco. Mine got between 25 and 30 inches tall when it started blooming Regular tobacco gets 5 or 6 feet tall, and has pink blossoms. The blooms on the native tobacco are a greenish-yellow instead. it has anywhere from 3 to 20 times the nicotine of commercial tobacco, averaging about 9 times as much.
Some folks in the Anishinaabe tribe told me to start it in the week before the March full moon, or else later "when The Thunderers arrive", but this year both fell at the same time - I heard The Thunderers about midway in the week before the first full moon in March, so I figured that was the time and sewed the tobacco early on March 5th (the full moon was the 7th). I planted two of those mini-greenhouses with it, 24 cells, and it's going like gangbusters, already filled the dome. I'll have to thin it out soon, and I figure to get at least 48 plants, maybe 72 if I'm lucky and careful. It takes a lot. I only grew 24 of them last year, and got practically no tobacco - maybe a couple ounces dried, when I should have got a couple ounces per plant. I did, however, get about 16 grams or so of seed. I've sent some of that seed out to other folks that wanted to try it, and still have a bunch of it. Tobacco has about 3500 seeds per gram.
I did test sprout some of that seed, and it seems to have a higher germination rate than the original seed I started with (I got about 4 grams of them, so about 14,000 seeds or so). This year, for my own grow, I used the original seed (supposedly "thousand year old seed" grown from seeds found in a clay pot at an archaeological dig, but I think that's a bullshit story to sell seed. it looks like the Cherokee tobacco to me). That was to keep the strain pure, as last year I grew both the ancient tobacco and Midewiwin tobacco, so the seed produced may have up to 4% cross-pollination.
I'm rambling, and this is long... so I'll shut up for now.
.