Potting up
21 May 2021 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeSpent the evening doing some potting-up, since all the plant pots were thoroughly loose and damp with rain.
I have decanted my three definite cherry tomatoes from the second six-pack into a large pot on their own, two by simple virtue of cutting off the two end cells and surrounding these with earth, and one by actually uprooting it and inserting it around the edge of the former, which causes more root disturbance but gives it much more scope to grow deeper sooner. So we shall see if it makes any difference.
Two of the end cells (coincidence?) didn't germinate any tomato seedlings at all, and the fourth didn't look so healthy -- it had shown signs of flopping yesterday and didn't stand up well to today's weather -- so I ruthlessly sacrificed it. In those remaining four empty cells I have sprinkled yet more of the countless little black seeds of the yellow poppy, so that this time I shall definitely know that whatever grows there, in reasonably sterile compost (save for whatever weed seeds may have blown onto it in the last couple of days) is in fact a yellow poppy. I'm not holding my breath!
Oddly enough, something that looks very much like a tomato has germinated belatedly in the middle of the seedlings that turned out to be dill. I really wouldn't have thought I could accidentally have dropped something the size of a tomato seed in there and not noticed -- quite apart from the fact that the dill was planted out the morning before I'd even received the cherry tomato seed packet, so it couldn't possibly have slipped in there during the process! But I suppose it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that it might have got dropped there that afternoon when I was scattering the remainder of the packet around the 'towel seeds' nearby...
I have split up the pot that had two chrysanthemums in it -- the ones that survived being dropped on their heads, and are now very bushy little plants outgrowing their mutual confinement. Of the two surviving mesembryanthemum seedlings that collapsed from the cold, one appears to have turned the corner, and is perking upright and putting out a pair of cushiony true leaves that are beginning to grow larger than its seed-leaves. The other, tiny one got more or less buried when I tried to prop up the bigger of the two, and I didn't expect to see it again -- but it is still alive and seems to have grown a little, although I have lost over a month's growth since the original disaster.
I have pulled out one of my three biggest chilli seedlings with a ruthless hand to make more space for the other two in that pot; since it was such a fine healthy plant I couldn't bear to throw it away, but have heeled it in alongside the other 'surplus' ones, which it now dwarfs. Those seedlings have scarcely grown at all, possibly due to low overnight temperatures, but more likely due to competition from the vigorous corn-chamomile that self-seeded in that pot alongside the old tomatoes last autumn, and/or the fact that it was the 'spent' compost from last year, with few remaining nutrients and full of roots. It does, however, offer greater potential root depth, assuming the entire pot isn't already occupied... The corn-chamomile is on the point of flowering, although it has been on the point of doing so for a couple of weeks and hasn't manged to bring the buds to anything yet!
The other two chilli seedlings that I put into a separate large yoghurt pot earlier have put on growth, but not so much as those first few, despite also having been brought in. They were slower to germinate and hence possibly a bit weaker to start off with, and are looking a bit pale and starved despite having been out of doors. It's hard to feed anything when it keeps raining, as my only way of doing so is by watering the pots with liquid feed :-(
I also removed one of the three marigold seedlings that were growing together in a rather small pot, and put it by itself in a bigger one. Interestingly, a few tiny marigolds have now started coming up from seed that I'd scattered months ago in various pots to no result, and they started appearing at about the same time as the towel-tomatoes sprang to life, presumably triggered by the same seasonal-detection mechanisms.
I have decanted my three definite cherry tomatoes from the second six-pack into a large pot on their own, two by simple virtue of cutting off the two end cells and surrounding these with earth, and one by actually uprooting it and inserting it around the edge of the former, which causes more root disturbance but gives it much more scope to grow deeper sooner. So we shall see if it makes any difference.
Two of the end cells (coincidence?) didn't germinate any tomato seedlings at all, and the fourth didn't look so healthy -- it had shown signs of flopping yesterday and didn't stand up well to today's weather -- so I ruthlessly sacrificed it. In those remaining four empty cells I have sprinkled yet more of the countless little black seeds of the yellow poppy, so that this time I shall definitely know that whatever grows there, in reasonably sterile compost (save for whatever weed seeds may have blown onto it in the last couple of days) is in fact a yellow poppy. I'm not holding my breath!
Oddly enough, something that looks very much like a tomato has germinated belatedly in the middle of the seedlings that turned out to be dill. I really wouldn't have thought I could accidentally have dropped something the size of a tomato seed in there and not noticed -- quite apart from the fact that the dill was planted out the morning before I'd even received the cherry tomato seed packet, so it couldn't possibly have slipped in there during the process! But I suppose it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that it might have got dropped there that afternoon when I was scattering the remainder of the packet around the 'towel seeds' nearby...
I have split up the pot that had two chrysanthemums in it -- the ones that survived being dropped on their heads, and are now very bushy little plants outgrowing their mutual confinement. Of the two surviving mesembryanthemum seedlings that collapsed from the cold, one appears to have turned the corner, and is perking upright and putting out a pair of cushiony true leaves that are beginning to grow larger than its seed-leaves. The other, tiny one got more or less buried when I tried to prop up the bigger of the two, and I didn't expect to see it again -- but it is still alive and seems to have grown a little, although I have lost over a month's growth since the original disaster.
I have pulled out one of my three biggest chilli seedlings with a ruthless hand to make more space for the other two in that pot; since it was such a fine healthy plant I couldn't bear to throw it away, but have heeled it in alongside the other 'surplus' ones, which it now dwarfs. Those seedlings have scarcely grown at all, possibly due to low overnight temperatures, but more likely due to competition from the vigorous corn-chamomile that self-seeded in that pot alongside the old tomatoes last autumn, and/or the fact that it was the 'spent' compost from last year, with few remaining nutrients and full of roots. It does, however, offer greater potential root depth, assuming the entire pot isn't already occupied... The corn-chamomile is on the point of flowering, although it has been on the point of doing so for a couple of weeks and hasn't manged to bring the buds to anything yet!
The other two chilli seedlings that I put into a separate large yoghurt pot earlier have put on growth, but not so much as those first few, despite also having been brought in. They were slower to germinate and hence possibly a bit weaker to start off with, and are looking a bit pale and starved despite having been out of doors. It's hard to feed anything when it keeps raining, as my only way of doing so is by watering the pots with liquid feed :-(
I also removed one of the three marigold seedlings that were growing together in a rather small pot, and put it by itself in a bigger one. Interestingly, a few tiny marigolds have now started coming up from seed that I'd scattered months ago in various pots to no result, and they started appearing at about the same time as the towel-tomatoes sprang to life, presumably triggered by the same seasonal-detection mechanisms.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-23 09:16 pm (UTC)