Thursday 8 March 2012

Progress

My jalapeño seeds have germinated, yay! The packet that they came in said they could take up to 5 weeks to germinate, but mine only took 8 days. I think that was probably due to the warmth from the light and the heat mat.
Only 1 of them had popped up at first, then I checked on them a few minutes later and I had 6. Hopefully the others will catch up soon.

The box has changed quite a bit since my last post. It's almost completely covered in foil, I have a better light bulb, I've lowered the floor to stop the stretched radishes touching the bulb, and I have a few more seeds in there.
I'm still looking for something more permanent to put them in, but I don't have the money to buy anything decent yet. I do have a more sturdy cardboard box that I might test out, but I want to move away from cardboard. I have a wardrobe thing in the garage that would be perfect, but my sister's claimed it :(

At the moment, the box contains 8 jalapeño seeds, 4 (or 6, I can't remember) habanero seeds, 5 radishes and 2 tomatoes. I planted some new radishes because the stretched ones are a bit weak for obvious reasons, and I want to try growing them properly. Obviously I'll plant a lot more of them later, 5 radishes isn't exactly a great harvest, but I want to get my chillies started first.

The tomatoes are quite amazing (to me, at least), the first one grew even after I knocked the pot over about 5 times, and the second one grew in a pot that I didn't even plant a tomato seed in. I still don't know how that happened, the only thing I can think of is that a seed fell into my compost bag and ended up in a pot when I planted a radish.

Lastly, I've set up a new, temporary growing area in my kitchen. I'm calling it The Plant Hospital, because it was set up to bring some life back to some seriously sick tomatoes and cucumbers that had been hurt by the cold weather today. I know they shouldn't really be outside yet, but I thought they'd appreciate the direct sunlight. Stupid clouds blocked the sun though, and my babies got cold :( They've recovered quite nicely now though, I might keep them in the plant hospital until they're big enough to go outside, they seem to like it more than being on the windowsill.

6 comments:

teganwilson said...

I love it when that first little glimpse of green springs out of the soil :)

WhereohWhere said...

Looks great man, I love the smell of freshly growing plants. Nothing else like it

Anonymous said...

I'm having no luck with planting tomatoes over here.

Daniel said...

What's going wrong? I'm no expert, but I might be able to help.
My tomatoes are coming up beautifully, the one in the picture has doubled in size since I took that picture.

Blake said...

Dang. Seeing this picture, but then seeing the recent progress is unbelievable. Nice job man.

Daniel said...

You should see how much they've grown since the most recent picture :) The chilli plants are just starting to grow flowers and the tomato in that picture is bigger than that pot now, so it's getting repotted in the morning :)

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