Yeah, probably half of my herbs that I brought inside have died off. All of the pepper plants are thriving, except the two small jalapeno... they wilted away to nothing. The parsley, catnip, thyme, and rosemary are all doing very well, but the cilantro, basil, and others have all died. Will be planting a bunch of seedlings this long weekend in the hopes of getting them going again. Until then, I have a ton of herbs frozen in the freezer in little soup containers that are just as tasty as when they were picked fresh.
I started new batches of basil and thyme, we will see if there is enough light to make them happy. Plenty of seeds left for next season in case these don't last and mature. I cleared out an approx 75' wide by 25' deep section along the back fenceline. took me a few years but I did it. the ground remaining is mulchy and full of organic matter. i found someone who would let me rake pinestraw and got to it, now I have the outline and groundcover. Since that will increase acidity I will apply lime and water that in. I bought a ton of seeds for plants going in that flower bed and might need some lights to get a jump on next season. Some I will direct sow because they grow so well and fast, like 4 o'clocks, balsam, and zinnias, but many of the others are plants I want to get some size on first, like that milkweed, butterfly weed, Columbine, blue salvia, bells of Ireland. My yard is going to be buzzing next summer! I still need to remove the hedge stumps by chainsaw and find about 5 more bags of pinestraw, then I can start putting plants in the ground. I think the roundup has satisfactorily soaked in. That hedge is a monster and almost impossible to remove. Spoiler
Cilantro is always going to have a limited life span. You can only cut it so many times before it's just going to go to seed and go to shit on you. The key with cilantro seems to be using it for awhile and constantly having a fresh batch coming.
I bought 1000watt LED grow lights. I don't have my permanent setup yet but wanted to park the seedlings I have so far under it since they were just in the window on the porch. It looks like I opened a portal to another dimension in my office closet.
I'm glad I started so early. I want to get a jump on next season so that I have actual produce rolling in early in the season instead of waiting until September or so for a full crop of peppers. Towards the end of November I planted seeds for Anaheim and Passilla peppers and they are just now big enough to put in separate pots. I just re-potted them today. A tip I read online that really would have helped last season was to plant them in pairs of two. They help support each other and shade each other and typically do a lot better that way. I had one off on the Anaheim pepper so I have one group of three, but I've been trying out the paired system this year. Spoiler I bought a bunch of gardening supplies for next to nothing last summer including this self watering seed starter with plugs. I really like this setup because it makes it really easy to deal with tiny seeds. These will be rainbow coleus. Spoiler
New Year update: The original migration of herbs from outside to inside was a colossal failure. 100% casualty rate. After some investigation I've come to realize there were a few causes: waited too long to transplant... they had already started to die off due to cold weather used same soil they were originally planted in, which led to: bugs in the soil topsoil instead of potting soil, so shitty drainage rotting vegetation over-watered for inside conditions (outside had much warmer weather that evaporated much more water), resulting in rot, compounded due to use of topsoil instead of potting soil. (Didn't know there was a difference before talking to the people at the nursery). So yeah, learned the difference between top, potting, and seeding soils. probably got a bit overzealous with the fertilizer by using what I was using outside... except outside had much higher volume of water due to automation, and was flow-thru instead of retained, like pots are. not sure if the coloured LED lights I have were sufficient for the job required. So yesterday was a "version 2" day. new LED lights that are 6500k (very bright outdoor sunshine, recommended by nursery staff), to supplement the existing lights. new soils (potting and seeding) less watering slight re-wiring of the indoor growing station. We'll see how this goes. FYI, I've unplugged the bottom lights for now seeing as there aren't any plants down there yet. Waiting for a bunch of plastic trays to come in from Amazon before doing the seedlings. You'll also see the bug-zapper that I installed for when the bugs were really bad. Might be hard to see in this pic, but there are both the coloured and white LED's on... it's pretty fucking bright. Only two plants growing so far are catnip I picked up om Saturday.
The new lights are turning out to be a big success. Plants be growing like crazy. In other news, it seems like my seedlings are working as expected. Might not be much, but that's GREEN. From seeds that came in the mail. After only a week. I'm pretty optimistic. So far I've planted thyme, cilantro, catnip, garlic, and rosemary.
It's kind of funny how your whole weekend can be made by having a few small green things pop up out of some dirt. Yesterday morning, they weren't there. This afternoon, there's this. Amazing how fast they're sprouting.
My (way too early) efforts really paid off. I have all my pepper seedlings started plus some flowers for the bed I prepared. In fact I started the chameleon marigolds and agastache so early that they have big fat buds ready to pop open already. My coleus is starting to get stripey. 4 types of peppers in my cold frame and a second wave of things sprouting inside under my grow light-- san marzano, purple cherokee, and mortgage lifter tomatoes, 2 types of cucumbers, and eggplant. When it is warmer I will be direct sowing melons and a ton of flowers that I can't prepare early like purple coneflowers and 4 o'clocks. This is a cold frame that my dad gave to me that I repaired and wrapped in 6mil visqueen. We had a week of hard freezes with temps down to the single digits and this setup covered in a couple giant sheets plus a heat lamp saved my operation. Some of the pepper seedlings on the end got a little crispy on the edges but the damage was minor and they will recover.
lucky you... I'd need something a bit more structural, with insulation and a heater to do the same up here... for now, I have to be content with little green shoots in a laundry room.
I actually started to redesign the shelves in the shed so that I could line up seedlings with my grow lamp, but it is so drafty in there that I would have had to insulate the whole building. A space heater would not be sufficient because of how drafty it is. It was not ideal, but I had to sprout them in a closet of the house because the temperature was just too this season. Plus, lot of seeds won't germinate below a certain temp. That is part of the reason I have waited until now to work on the tomatoes and the eggplant. They really need it to be a little warmer, and even in that closet it got down to freezing on the coldest nights. I can insulate the actual seedlings once they get a little size on them outside in that cold frame. I don't think that we will have any more cold temperatures like before. I think the lowest it's going to go as maybe 36 degrees Fahrenheit. There has been a lot of talk in our household about moving because of job-related things. Some of the places are so cold. I'm starting to realize how lucky I am to have such a long warm season considering what my hobbies are. It would be a major adjustment on how I do things if we lived somewhere else.
I feel ya. My tomatoes are starting to pop and every single asian celosia seed I planted is coming up. Germinating seeds is really pretty satisfying. More have popped since taking this pic just yesterday.
It has been a few years since I have had a garden, life has just been precluding it until this grow season. As an avid seed starter, I got pretty amped to get it going, and started my seeds a little too early. Now, I can defend that for the tomato seeds that I started, because I had a bunch of older heirloom seed that might or might not pop, and so I needed time to try and germinate some like 10 year old seed. If it started, great, bigger plants to take out in April is ideal. If they didn't pop, I knew that I would need more time to replant, from new seed. Not a lot of the very old seed popped, leading to my desire to see little plants emerging from the dead cells where nothing germinated. I shuffled through my seed on hand, and saw some nice heirloom slicing cucumbers. I impulsively planted that seed, which ALL popped, leading me to a bunch of RAPIDLY growing cucumber plants that live inside.......but want to start climbing soon. A full two months before I can put them out in the ground. I am thinking about creativie indoor solutions, but gifting several seems wise, too. So, as of now, I am sitting on 20+ cucumber plants, maybe 30 little tomato plants (mixed: roma, beefsteak, and an heirloom red/gold) and about a dozen happy little golden squash plants. I have a dozen red bell and a dozen jalapeno germinating now, and an 18 flat of marigolds trying to make from some very old self harvested seed. I still strongly believe in ringing my outside garden with marigolds, it really does do wonders. No more seeds for me! It's time to do my early weather stuff outside anyway, onions and spinach and broccoli and such.....hopefully that will keep me out of mischief!
I did the same thing last year with some frisbee hibiscus seeds that my aunt gathered from her Garden in 1999. They did come up but I started them at the wrong time of the season so they didn't have a chance to get any size on them before it start to get cold again. Once the ground temp is a little bit warmer I'm going to direct sow everything that I have. I have very fond memories of huge 8 to 10 inch frisbee hibiscus lining her front sidewalk and I can't wait to have my own. Seeds are amazing.
It seems that my laundry room is a bit chilly, so I bought a couple of small lizard lounging infra-red heat lamps... I guess they are a bit stronger than I initially thought, and a few of my seedlings fell over from being blasted. Luckily they recovered as if nothing happened, and I now have the lights providing some indirect heat now.
Y'all probably have a long enough growing season that it isn't as important... but Perennial Hibiscus is one area where I side with the newer patented Proven Winner varieties. They turn into monsters quickly, have a much stronger structure earlier, and support a ton of the big ol' dinner plate size blooms. Up here the seed varieties (Luna, Disco, etc) are okay but they get started so late and fill in more slowly so that the overall performance isn't nearly as grand. Even after a couple of years down the road when they have established a good root system they just aren't as nice. Granted, there is a satisfaction in starting from seed.
The coleus got even bigger so it was time to move them to the ground. They look so tiny but will fill out soon. I have another batch started inside to fill this area in front of the fence in. I am leaving about 18"-2' along the fences for maintenance and because I am planting flowering vines for a privacy fence. I think it is time for the thyme to be planted as well.
I am super jealous that you can plant this early, bewildered! I am waiting until early March for the onions and cold stuff, and at least mid April for warm weather stuff. Your baby plants all look super.