What did you do in the garden today?

[Paz]

I think you mentioned that you purchased sterile seed starter mix. This is my first year attempting to grow seeds in the house for transplanting later, but I have been reading lots of articles and watching a number of YouTube videos on the need to sterilize any and all seed starting and potting soil mixes to kill fungus gnat eggs.

The 3 methods I have seen are cooking the soil in the oven, microwaving the medium, or dumping boiling hot water over the soil. Most of the people I have seen on YouTube use the boiling water method, which is what I plan on doing with my starter medium. I have my seed starter shelf in our second bathroom, so the last thing I want is fungus gnats flying around in the house.

I only sterilize soil if I want to grow mushrooms on it. I do however sterilize pots and scissors with bleach.

 

[Paz]

I turned the soil to make a couple of new beds and hopefully plant pepper/ faqus (haven’t decided yet). Afterwards I fertilized the tomatoes. I might plant tomorrow some more garden tomatoes as well.
Pulled weeds around the litchi and longan.
At work we finished Dutching the plants.

 

[pennyJo1960]

Morning Gardeners this year we may not have to wait till July to plant like last year.
Was so wet last year.

 

[Paz]

I'm thinking it's from too much water. Basically I had them started in a peat pellet. Those pellets were pretty wet. But once the seedling got about 1 - 2 inches tall, I moved and buried the peat pellet into a larger cow pot filled with Miracle Grow Seed Starter. I wetted down the seed starter afterwards. Since the peat pellets were already pretty wet, I'm wondering if it was just too much water for the tender roots...

Other thoughts...

I've had some fungus gnats flying around so I've been spraying the soil every few days with Mosquito Bits.

Lastly, the grow lights are LEDs but I still feel it's a bit warm in there than room temperature... I can't imagine it's warmer than 80 degrees TOPS though so surely that can't be the culprit....

Usually the leaves could because the plant is trying to stop evaporation from its leaves. Basically the plants are most likely thirsty either because you haven’t watered enough, the temperature was too high, or the roots were choked by over watering. If you have enough plant, I’d suggest pulling one plant out and looking at its roots.

 

[Sally PB]

At work we finished Dutching the plants.

What does this mean?

 

[Sally PB]

Busy today. I planted about 45 pots of tomatoes (will do a few more). Lots of different varieties, including 11 that I've never planted before.

I planted 3 hot peppers, and 2 sweet peppers. 4 Luffas. And about 150 onion seeds.

There was dirt under my fingernails!

 

[member 655102]

Week 4 update:

 

[WthrLady]

@Acre4Me our cotton was treated the same as field cotton down south
Here, weevils don't live through the winters, so also not a problem. Creepy looking little things. We have soy weevils here.

Cleaned out the seeding shed and the garage today, I'll seed the veg and flowers tomorrow.
Huzzah. I'm missing one seed heating mat. Where on earth did it go?

 

[TJAnonymous]

I love learning new things through gardening. My pet peeve is it can take months/years to figure out what you're doing wrong.

I've probably spent 2 yrs college tuition in learning what NOT to do in my gardening education...

 

[TJAnonymous]

Well, I had garden plans for today that got set aside thanks to drama... *sigh*

There's a dog that lives about a quarter mile away as the crow flies who constantly shows up at my house. Nice dog. Beautiful, really. But he attacks my chickens and ducks if they are out free ranging in the pasture. We've caught him and taken him home before. His owners don't want to claim him. There's two different houses (they are related) who claim the other actually owns the dog. Neither can afford to feed or care for it. It used to have a collar with tags. They removed the collar completely.

Anyway, the dog showed up and attacked my chickens again. I caught it and penned it up. DH stopped by the area where it lives to talk to them. One house refused to come to the door. The guy at the 2nd house agreed to come get the dog. Showed up with no collar or leash and let the dog out of the pen. The dog proceeded to attack my animals AGAIN. I came outside right as this was happening. The guy, my DH, and DS were chasing the dog as it attacked at least 5 or 6 more chickens. I called to the dog and he came to me. I held him while DH grabbed a lead rope from the barn. They used it as a makeshift slip lead to get him loaded in dude's car.

There are feathers EVERYWHERE. I don't see any carcasses but my worry is one is injured off in the field or hiding in the brambles. At least 2 of my birds were limping. I need to wait for the sun to go down so I can count chickens and check for injuries.