Back in February, I presented the initial effects at the the contemporary machine Brian evolved for this 12 months's garden seedlings: starting the seeds in a layer of commercial potting blend on pinnacle of a layer of sterilized lawn soil. Now, six weeks later, all of the seeds for the lawn had been commenced and had as a minimum 3 weeks to broaden, and the first of them have just made the transition from starter discipline to lawn. So at this element, I expect I can appropriately say the outcomes are in on our new device, and lo, it is good. Just check the ones beauties:
That's all our leeks inside the the front, organized to be set out next week. Behind them, at the left, is the parsley we transplanted the day gone by, searching larger and healthier than it's ever been before on the time of transplanting. Way within the lower again is the broccolini, which we've in no way grown before, so we can't examine it to our seedlings from previous years; what I can say is that by the time we planted them the previous day, they have been overflowing their starter tubes and getting snarled with each different. Next 12 months, if we broaden broccolini again, I suppose we are going to have to begin it a bit later to preserve the seedlings down to a conceivable length.
The rest of the seedlings?Marigolds, Brussels sprouts, and tomatoes?Still have some time to move earlier than transplanting. In concept, they'll be all presupposed to be planted as soon as the final frost date has exceeded, a while around mid-May. Considering how massive and healthful they are looking already, but, they is probably in chance of outgrowing their tubes via then. Take a better have a look at the tomatoes: already they will be larger and fuller than any others we have were given ever produced, and that they nonetheless have over a month to transport. We can't actually set them out early and danger dropping them to frost, however if they get too much larger, we may additionally want to transplant them into larger bins?That's just what we were trying to keep away from doing with the useful resource of mixing the seed-starting mix with lawn soil inside the first place.
Perhaps next year, knowing how the seedlings thrive in this soil, we may need to start them in bigger containers at the outset. That would give us larger plants for transplanting, but it would also create a serious shortage of space in ourDIY seed-starting tray. I'm not sure it would be possible to fit eight tomatoes in big pots in there along with all the other seedlings we have now in the tubes. It might be easier just to start the tomatoes a bit later, so they won't get too big before the last frost hits. We won't have great big, flourishing plants to set out in May, but we won't have to revamp our entire seed-starting system, either.
The success of this new starting mix opens up another possibility for next year as well: It may be time to take another crack at starting pepper plants from seed. This year, we decided to give up on the idea and justbuy our pepper plants at the Rutgers plant sale, since we'd had such dismal results with home-started plants in the past. But now that we've seen what this potting medium can do, perhaps it's worth buying just one packet of seed and starting a few—assuming we can find the room for them—to see how they fare. If they don't thrive even in this miracle soil, we'll still have the option of buying plants, but I think it's worth at least an attempt. Of course, then we have to figure out some way of cramming those plants into the starter tray, as well. So we may end up needing to redesign the system in any case.
That's the way it always seems to go with gardening: each time you clear up one trouble, a brand new one pops up in its area. But at the least getting the seeds off to a healthy start is one piece of the puzzle we've were given observed.
