Tiny Seedlings

I'm still mourning the loss of so many tomato seedlings, but am trying to make myself feel better thinking about all the other vegetables that are direct sown and growing in the garden.  April was a very rainy and cold month here in Indiana, so the seedlings, with the exception of sugar snap peas, haven't had much of a chance to put on decent growth.  But at least the seedlings are still alive, and just waiting for those sunny days to put on some serious growth. I just know it!

In the mean time, these are some of the tiniest babes in the garden.  So little, yet with so much potential!

Dill

Red Russian Kale

Spinach

Scallop (Patty Pan) Zucchini

Germinating Cantaloupe Seeds

Do you ever test-germinate your seeds to see how good they are?

We bought a cantaloupe from a local farmer's market a few weeks ago, and I saved the seeds.  I put the slimy gooey seeds into a bowl, filled it with water, discarded all the ones that floated to the top and just kept the ones that stayed at the bottom of the bowl.  Then I dried them on some newspaper.  Even after discarding the floaty seeds, I probably still have well over a hundred seeds.  I'm definitely not going to plant all of them and I'm sure they will go "bad" in a few years, long before I get around to ever using them all up, either personally or through seed trading.  But before I considered allocating garden space to these seeds and/or trading them away, I wanted to make sure that these seeds were good.

So I placed about a dozen seeds on a sheet of wet paper towel, loosely wrapped them up and put the whole thing in a ziploc bag.  I left the ziploc part open for ventilation, and placed the bag in my grow box.  About five days later, this is what they looked like:

Every single one of the seeds germinated!  Not only that, the roots were really starting to develop, with some of them growing through the double-ply paper towel and coming out on the bottom.  Since I don't know the variety of the parent cantaloupe, I probably won't plant very many of them.  But it's good to know that these seeds are good!

Before you ask, no, I did not save these seedlings, because our indoor grow box is definitely not big enough to grow melons in over the winter.  It's always difficult throwing perfectly good seedlings away, but they served their experimental purpose, and went to go rest (permanently) in the compost pile.

Have a happy Friday everyone, and stay tuned for a Lupe update this weekend!

Growing Rosemary from Seed

When we were at Menards this spring to purchase seeds for our first vegetable garden, we used both logic (let's get bush varieties of some vegetables because we don't have any trellises yet) and whim (oh, look at the pretty picture on this seed envelope!) to select our seeds.  When it came to rosemary, I think it was Keith who said something to the effect of "rosemary would be good to have around, for cooking chicken and stuff."  So we bought a packet of rosemary seeds.

The seed packet instruction said to sow the seeds indoors 10-12 weeks before the average last frost date.  Well, it was already May, well past the last frost, but that shouldn't make a difference if I'm sowing seeds indoors, right?  So I sowed my seeds in little cups, and waited for them to germinate.  I waited, waited and then waited some more.

I don't actually remember how long it took before the first sign of life popped up from those seeds, but it took a really long time, at least 3-4 weeks.  And germination was sporadic.  As in, although some seeds started germinating at 3-4 weeks, the other seeds didn't germinate for at least 2 months.  The rest of them just didn't make it.  Later, I learned that even good rosemary seed stocks only have about 30 percent germination rates at best.  My seeds were probably very average, then, instead of very subpar that I accused them of being at the time.

June 25, 2010 (at 6 weeks)

After the seedlings got their second set of leaves, I transplanted them to bigger containers, anticipating that they would need the extra space.  Ha, if only I knew then what I know now.  At the rate that these seedlings have been growing, they probably could have stayed in their baby containers for the first year.

I scoured the internet to see what we were doing wrong with them and why they weren't growing faster.  Then I learned that rosemary is notoriously difficult to germinate and to grow from seed, and most websites talking about growing rosemary recommended growing them from cuttings or nursery plants.  All this just made me and Keith even more determined (read: stubborn) to keep growing our rosemary seedlings. 

August 8, 2010 (at 12 weeks)

As small as these seedlings were, they just gave off the most incredibly strong (and pleasant) rosemary aroma every time I touched their teeny leaves.  It's just pure torture waiting for them to grow big enough to harvest!

August 21, 2010 (at 14 weeks)

It's been almost four months now, and some of the seedlings have finally started putting on some noticeable growth.  I think the largest seedlings have almost doubled their height in the last month.  I say doubled, but it's still not that much when you're talking about seedlings that are only one to two inches tall.  We did learn one thing: water them very little.  When we kept the soil looking visibly moist, the seedlings seemed to be at a standstill.  When we cut back and only watered a little bit once a week or less, to a point where the soil looked very dry on top, the seedlings finally started to grow.

September 5, 2010 (at 16 weeks)

The rosemary seedlings were moved into our indoor grow box after we built it in July, and that's where they have been this whole time.  I meant to take them outside when they grew to a "decent size" but I don't think they are there yet.  At this rate, they will probably spend all winter in the grow box.  Even when these seedlings reach a decent size, I won't plant them in the ground because I don't think they can survive the winters in Indiana.  But hopefully we can transplant them into a good sized container someday, so we can have rosemary year-round.  

You know, for chicken and stuff.

*** Rosemary Update on April 13, 2011***

Saving and Germinating Parsley Seeds

I have been collecting parsley seeds for the last few weeks.  I grew both flat leaf and curly parsley from seed in 2009.  They grew all summer/fall last year and overwintered in the garden.  This year, the same plants grew for a bit in the spring and then bolted quickly.  The flowers were pretty and attracted lots of beneficial insects (see the last picture in this post) and now they are giving me seeds.  I even made a parsley seed bouquet, inspired by the Ottawa Gardener.

I sowed some seeds two weekends ago to test their germination rates.  After 9 days, over 90 percent of the parsley seeds had already germinated.  Not bad, eh?  Here are a couple of pictures.

Since both flat leaf and curly parsley grew and flowered so close to each other, I could not distinguish between the two varieties when I collected the seeds.  I also don't know if they cross-pollinated.  It will be interesting to see what kind of parsley grows from these seeds.

If you're thinking of growing some parsley next year (or even this year indoors) and need some seeds, I have plenty to share, as long as you're not picky between flat leaf or curly parsley!