Way past time to update the grow blog. The seedlings did well, for the most part. Or, the ones that did well did very well. I started 144 plants and ended up with about half being extremely vigorous. Which is good because I don't have room for over 100 plants and I'm getting some more from BigBonner. So I have about 78 seedlings which look amazing. This is what they look like today.
Here they are two weeks ago:
Three weeks ago, after moving them from the 72 cell trays:
5 weeks ago under a light stand I bought on Amazon that worked really well. It has one 4ft T5 bulb but it was enough light for two trays. Low wattage, too.
Most of the loss of seedlings came from some weird thing where overnight a healthy seedling would get cut right where the stem meets the root. This happened several times to neighboring plants, so I think it was an insect. In the winter, New England has had an infestation of what we call stink bugs, but they're not really stink bugs. I forgot their real name, but I saw some lurking around the light stand and think they might have gotten some of the plants. A few of them just grew stunted, so I think starting twice as many plants as you need is a good idea. The problem was that it hit some varieties worse than others. I only have one stunted Shirey left. Also, the Kelly Burleys ended up mostly stunted as well. Might be more of a problem with some of the older heirloom types.
I expanded my plots a bit compared to last year. Here is a picture from two weeks ago of my plots before I plowed under the cover crop of red clover I planted last fall.
You can see the area of expansion around the clover. I've expanded the one plot even more since this was taken. I also added another small plot where we grew green beans last year. For full-sized American plants I could probably fit in about 70 plants, but with closer spacing of Orientals, I might be able to approach 100 plants.
It's definitely time to get them into the ground. I roto-tilled the plots yesterday, put down some composted cow manure, aluminum sulfate, blood and bone meal, and general compost. Last fall I put in a lot of composted chicken manure, too. Before roto-tilling, I tested the soil I grew in last year with my electric fertility and pH meter. It has two prong-like sensors that go into the soil. It said the soil was depleted. Tobacco really does rob nutrients from the soil. But after tilling it and mixing everything around the fertility is back up to where it should be. The only problem with the tester is that it doesn't break it down into NPK just an overall average. But I like it because I can test as many times as I want.
I might get the plants in the soil tomorrow, but I have to solve a problem with my chickens. They have found a breach in the perimeter and have been escaping and I have to keep them away from the plants until they are a certain size. I have to go all around the yard and find the hole they're escaping from. Either that or fence in the garden plots, but that will be expensive and a PITA.
