Seedling Update

Three weeks into my seed starting exercise and as with most gardening exploits, the results are mixed.

All varieties of tomatoes are up and growing extremely well. Shortly, I will start applying periodic wind (via a fan) to help promote strength of the young seedlings.

The broccoli and onions are also growing quite well. I had a bit of an issues with the onions, however. I am using the bottom of gallon milk jugs for my 'pots'. I did not put any drain holes in the bottom and managed to overwater them a couple times. Unfortunately that has led to one of the four pots losing almost all of it's seedlings. Another pot lost about half its seedlings. Lesson learned, be certain to include drain holes in all seedling pots. Be careful not to overwater your seedlings, they are very sensitive to 'drowning'.

I've had mixed success with herbs this year. Most of them have come up, however, I managed to kill off quite a few seedlings with careless watering. Today, I tossed in some additional seed to make up for the losses. In the end I am not as concerned about the herbs as I am the vegetables. We use some oregano and basil in our tomato sauce, but the remaining herbs (cilantro, parsley & chives) have not found a regular use yet.

Lastly, are our poor pepper seeds. I thought my light setup would warm the plantings enough to enable all the varieties of seed to germinate. It seems however, that it was not sufficient for the peppers. After 2-1/2 weeks they still showed no sign of germination (I dug up a few seeds to verify). I have replanted them and moved the trays out of the basement grow area to the solarium. There's still plenty of time for the pepper plants to grow sufficiently for a May transplantation. But it is disappointing that they weren't successful the first time around.