March Seedling Flats
The first two flats of seeds were planted on Monday afternoon, March 17th, 2008 – Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Each standard flat holds 8 individual trays of nine, 1”x1” blocks for a total of 72 seedlings per flat. My latest addition to how I organize my seed trays is the utilization of “Popsicle sticks” (found in bundles of 100 or more at any crafts store) which I use as my markers.
My old system of drawing the flats, then writing in the varieties doesn’t work on the much larger scale of seeds that I currently plant! Last season I learned this the hard way… I moved the flats around and rotated them for sun until, after a few weeks of doing this; I realized I didn’t know which tray was what!
As for 2008, I now use Popsicle sticks with a simple system of letters & numbers written on them. This solves a few problems: First, the longer length of the stick keeps moisture from rising too high, which would blur the information written at the top. Second, the simple letters and numbers written on the sticks are a faster way to label and are correlated with a list (later entered into the computer as seen below) with no hassle of trying to squeeze the names of each variety onto each marker. I also make a point of writing the info 4 times on each stick in case moisture makes the information illegible.
My identifying system is crude, but manageable for my size of operations (at least for now).
For tomatoes, I simply use the letter “T.” There are 13 varieties this year, so my sticks are marked “T1” through “T13.” So far, other types of seeds I plant will have up to 2 letters; Broccoli is “Br1”, Cauliflower is “Ca1”, etc.
Finally, the partial list below has additional information following the identifier; Full variety name, original source (EBG is me!), and a generation number. I began saving seeds in 2007 so the highest number will be a 2.
Flat #1 has only Tomatoes T1 through T8
Flat #2 has Tomatoes T9 through T13 and 3 trays of Purple Cauliflower (27 seeds).
Tomatoes:
T1 Dad’s Compost Cherry Tomato, EBG, 2
T2 Debaro, Johnny’s Seeds, 2
T3 Striped Cavern, Johnny’s Seeds, 2
T4 Valencia, Johnny’s Seeds, 2
T5 Great White, Johnny’s Seeds, 2
T6 Campari, EBG, 1
T7 Black From Tula, Hirt’s Seeds, 1
T8 Early Wonder, Tomato Fest, 1
T9 Earliana, Tomato Fest, 1
T10 Alaska, Tomato Fest, 1
T11 Crazy, Tomato Fest, 1
T12 Ildi, Tomato Fest, 1
T13 Super Snow White, Tomato Fest, 1
Cauliflower:
Ca1 Purple Cauliflower, Hirt’s Seeds, 1
Observations & Notes:
As of 3/17, the upstairs thermostat was set at 62 degrees. During the winter months, the thermostat is set to 55 degrees in the morning before leaving for work. However, now I must maintain a warmer climate for the seedlings with no drastic temperature fluctuations.
The first seedlings to emerge were the on 3/22, CA1 – Purple Cauliflower, after only 5 days!
By 3/25, 24 out of 27 Purple Cauliflowers were up!
On 3/25 (7am), the first tomatoes with 4 out of 9 were up of the T1 – Dad’s Compost Tomato. This is interesting because I saved this seed myself and it demonstrates how eager it wants to germinate. I suppose that’s why it sprung to life on its own from the compost pile in the first place!
Also noted on 3/25 (7am) the second tomato, T6 – Campari has 1 up. This is a funny story… The Campari tomato is one that I saved from store bought large-sized cherry tomatoes. I know the books warn us not to save seed from hybrids, but I love to experiment! The Campari has a fantastic taste, that’s why I’m all for investing 3 or so seasons to stabilize my own unique variety. I’m happy to see that it germinated early.
On 3/28 (8pm) -Very noticeable that most of the two flats are full of seedlings. The past two days were sunny & warm. In fact, my weather station data shows that the outdoor temperature broke 50 degrees for the first time in 2008 on 3/26 at 1:30pm w/ 50.8 degrees. The high capped out at 52.7 at 3pm.
More Flats Started:
On 3/30, two more flats were planted:
2 trays of Russian Sage, 2 trays of Vitex, and 1 tray of Woad – all of these were from Richter’s of Canada.
4 trays of Romanesco – Italian Broccoli
The first tomatoes that were planted are doing great with the exception of 2 varieties so I decided to plant them a second time (only 13 days later). The T11 – Crazy, is the worse off with only 1 out of 9 up. T10 – Alaska isn’t doing that much better with 3 out of 9 up.
Earliana is doing okay with 5 out of 9 up, but if this turns out to be as early as Tomato Fest says it is (about 50 days) I want as much seed produced as possible this season!
1 tray T9 – Earliana, 2 Trays T10 – Alaska, and 2 trays of T11 – Crazy.
I also started Six – 6” pots of various flowers:
3 pots with five seeds each of a Pink Podded Flower - I thought it was a Snapdragon, but my mother says it isn’t. I saved the seeds from the one plant I had, but I’ve crossed fingers because I don’t know if the seeds needed stratification (one of those; oops, I wished I had thought of that 2 months ago...).
2 pots with five seeds each of Jacob’s Ladder, and one pot of 8 seeds of Woad.
What’s Woad? I have no clue. When I saw it online at Richter’s the unusual name got my interest so now I have all of the Woad I could want!
:)
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