Hairmetal, It has been a couple years, maybe 3 years since I've used 32 cell trays. I prefer 16 cell tray over 32 but for some reason, I left a box of 16 cell trays at the previous house when we moved 2 years ago. Like you said, 32 cell tray dries out fast. I know when they are ready to be pulled out of the 16 cell tray but I'm not quite sure yet for 32 ones. Whenever they develop woody stem, they are probably ready. If the stem is still green, not ready. Just not sure how much longer. Just something you'll have to experiment and learn from it. When the mix is very airy and very fast draining, you will get very fibrous root system compared to dense and slow draining mix. They spread out fast as well. Montezuma Cypress has rather aggressive root system so I have to be careful not to let roots escape out of drainage holes at the bottom into the ground. I have 15g roottrapper bags with knit fabric bags at the bottom so feeder roots can escape through them and anchor the trees and get extra nutrients from the ground below. Roots will easily snap off whenever they are ready to be harvested.

That's a good point about home soil testing kits. Chemically, those kits are credible, but they require that instructions be followed very carefully, and that's often hard for the home gardener to do. A number of kits have been tested by the UC ag extension, and that's what they found. The price of a professional soil test isn't a lot more than the price of a good quality home kit. So why bother with the latter? But no, a good soil test is not necessarily one where a "lab" does the testing and provides "understandable information". Any crappy lab can do a bad job coming up with incorrect results, and dress it up to make it look "understandable". There are home gardeners with cheap kits who sell their services as a "lab". Again, reputation is a good discriminant. Many ag extensions who don't do their own commercial soil tests will provide a list of labs that they consider to be reputable.

A few small points: -it's wrong to say it's not exponential growth. The fact that it won't be exponential forever is well known (obviously it cannot increase past one-hundred percent, and will slow before that). If one wishes to be pedantic, you can say it is currently in or starts out as an exponential growth function and eventually slows. (But if one wanted to be pedantic, you could also say the Gompertz function is also an exponential function, just with a specific form that provides for exponential growth and then slows). -That point is irrelevant in a population that is nowhere near the so-called 'herd immunity' constraints. -The more important point is that even at relatively low levels of infection, it begins to overload the health system - any health system. And when the health system is overloaded (particularly in ability to provide intensive care spaces and ventilation support), things go bad quickly with increased mortality. You may not care about your own risk of getting a severe case, but you will care if you cannot get other necessary care because all available medical personnel and key equipment are tied up with covid patients and you're unable to get cancer care, any kind of non-urgent surgery, etc., etc. -This relates to the exponential function directly - search for the now famous "bend the curve" graph. If the rate of infection is slowed (the size of the exponent is lowered), it may be possible to keep the number of critical cases within the capacity of the medical system to manage. The final total may be the same number of cases, but if they occur over 24 months instead of 6 months, the mortality impacts may be enormous. (Side note: Wuhan figures fell, but not without massive government intervention; you can't just say 'if Wuhan kept doubling for sixty days it would be the population of the earth - the shape of the function was changed with outside intervention. Or in math terms, the exponent is not fixed). -Capacity: without getting into differences between countries, it doesn't make sense to say that e.g. US hospitals are at 65% capacity so we're okay. I know a bit about hotel business - and 65% is considered a pretty good approximation of long-term 'full capacity' (with normal margin for repairs and whatnot). The basic issue is 'surges' - use of hotels is not constant every day. A hotel with high weekend use will be full two or three days a week, with no (or minimal) extra rooms. With no spare capacity (on market) for large events like a super bowl or a world cup. Unlike the hotel market, though, there is minimal ability for 'other supply' (private homes, airbnb, etc) to fill the gap. There are not that many substitutes for ICU units with ventilators; people without hotel rooms can stay with relatives, people without ventilators when needed die. -The situation is worse with hospitals: we like to focus on beds, ICU units and ventilators. But trained medical staff is a key limiting factor - and they get sick, have to be isolated, and even die during epidemics. There is some capacity to increase (surge) but not unlimited; the system can get overwhelmed. It's one thing to have the spare capacity on hand to deal with a 'normal' surge or even a one-off catastrphic event limited to one major metropolitan area (where a spike in cases and then things settle down). A fast-spreading epidemic is another, because continued increases (for a while) and medical staff getting sick at the same time (and having to drop their usual specialty). It gets into triage of who lives and who dies very quickly.

That broccoli looks like it's bolting in an extra dramatic way. My knowledge of cauliflower is limited--I, too, am debating whether to harvest some tiny heads now or wait to see if they get bigger. Assorted comments: - For lettuce (and most plants, really), I try to put a maximum of two seeds per seed-starting cell. When they get their first true leaves, I murder one of them by cutting it off at soil level, rather than pulling it--I don't want to disturb the survivor's roots. - Then I wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. I tell myself repeatedly that the growth is exponential--a tiny plant will seem to never grow, but when it finally gets some size, it GROWS. - I'm going to try to attach a picture of a sixpack of my own lettuce seedlings. I feel that my seedlings are at least a couple of weeks away from planting--they should (by my standards) be, oh, eight times this size, with leaves big enough that they could be in a baby greens mix without being laughable. (Remember, exponential growth--now that they're about the size of a quarter, they'll size up fast.) - I generally plant when the cell is loosely full of roots--when I can see at least a light tracing of roots around the edges. (When I remove the plant, that is--if you can see roots while it's still in the sixpack, it's seriously rootbound) If too much soil falls away when I take the plant out of the cell, I'm planting too soon. If the cell is packed with roots, I'm planting much too late. - In your case, I would nip off all but two plants in each cell--you can cut those tiny stems by pinching between your fingernails. I would say nip off all but one, but I don't know what your bug situation is, and you can often grow two lettuce seedlings close together, as long as the pair is a normal distance from the next pair. - And then I would wait. And wait, and wait. - And I would start another set, if you have (or are willing to buy) any more seed starting supplies. Lettuce and spinach can be grown well into the fall. I'm also seeing that the cells aren't very evenly full of mix--next time, I would try to get them evenly full so that they all have about the same amount of space for their roots, and therefore can progress in parallel. - I think there's no harm in giving them even more hours of light. - Editing to add: Re the catnip, I'd suggest nipping off all but, oh, four in each cell. Wait a little while. Then nip off all but two. Wait a little while. Then nip off all but one. I think it's going to be several weeks before those size up much.