Anyone started seeds without grow lights? Without anything modern?
OkieTexan (7b)
7 years ago
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AmyinOwasso/zone 6b
7 years agojlhart76
7 years agoRelated Discussions
Starting Seeds indoors without bug issues?
Comments (14)I would like to comment that seedlings need nutritional support pretty soon after germination. I would not wait for several weeks....a few days, perhaps. Those dissolved elements are required in each of those rapidly multiplying cells and your mix won't be providing much. Keep a close eye out for fungus gnats, though. Jiffy Mix is very conducive to those darned little things. The adult gnats don't feed on fungus! Most of them don't feed at all, a few species sip flower nectar. They are born to procreate. It is only the larvae that feeds on stuff in the soil. They will love the Jiffy Mix....See MoreHow to make new orchids without loosing anything in your collect.
Comments (11)I year ago a friend of mine and I jointly purchased a 13 cane plant from DUNU who delivered it to us in Santa Barbara. I had to sell on of my grand kids to pay for it. I got the numbers of canes wrong in my initial blurb. We split it into 7 cane and 6 cane plants and I won the coin toss and ended up with the 7 cane piece. As I said the last 2 canes were tenuous, leafless and poorly attached to the plant. It took major soul searching but I eventually separated them, they immediately fell apart and I now had 2 sorry looking canes. They sat there for a year and now are sporting a new growth each. Both my main plant and my friend's have a strong new growth and seem to be well on their way. It will take a couple of years until the 2 new plants will be worth looking at but maybe then I can recover some of my cost or make some very strong trades. In the mean time there is another Australian FCC making waves. D spec Yondi Tina Goliath FCC/AOC etc apparently was cloned and the small plants are now on the market. I got one for relatively little and have both the FCCs sitting side by side. The Yondi has 3 juvenile canes and is making a new one. My friend also got one. Because of the cloning I think we will see a lot of them. The Daylight Moon is still much more difficult to get so hopefully my 2 newbies will still be worth something when they are old enough to sell or trade. We have a few D speciosum nuts in Southern California so I'm sure there will be a demand for the plants. I have my eyes on a guy who has a nice collection of Avril's Gold and there is someone in San Diego who also has outstanding D speciosums. I'm keeping ny fingers crossed that the 2 new growths will thrive as that is not always the case. They represent the reason why one should never discard a worth wile orchid piece until it is truly dead. I'm also not a believer in the sphagnum in bag trick. If the cane has neither roots nor leaves, I believe it should be left to its own devices and water will only rot it. I mounted mine without moss or any other media and they got sprayed daily but dried off immediately after. Nick...See Moreseed growing gizmos & gadgets you can't live without...
Comments (37)I agree a zillion times on the heat mats! I have 12 of them and need more of them. I do like the idea of using a heating blanket, never thought of that, it would be perfect size for starting flats of Caladiums this year, as last year I didnt have enough heat mats for them and it took forever for them to sprout. Lights are also vital for me, I have way way way too many of them in our home, occupying 4 different "grow rooms". Other gizmos, I use a large turkey baster for watering individual plants. The baster seems to let out just the right flow of water, as the watering cans seem to spill water into individual plants that dont need watered. This can be time consuming, but necessary until flats are all drying out at the same time. I bottom water all seedlings until they have been transplanted. I also use, well it isnt a gadget but it is a technique really, a gallon water jug where I mix my fertilizer at HALF STRENGTH with water, and I will use equal portions of this (as needed) with WARM water, which gives me a 1/4 strenght fertilizer for all seedlings/plants that get watered. As you know, you should never water with cold water, but if you mix a batch of fertilizer and then dont need to use it all right away (say, a gallon amount), it gets cold in its container. So, I allow the gallon jug to get cold and then just mix with warm water, whatever amount I think I may need. I just use a second water jug and mix equal parts. No fertilizer waste! I also use valve action markers in different colors that I use to right on my pots, so I know what is in them. I dont actually right out the whole name, such as Petunia 'Tidal Wave Silver', but I will simply write a small TWS on the pot, so I know what it is without using tags, because tags can (and do!) fall out. In the off season, after I scrub my pots, I use a black valve action permanant marker and mark over these labels so that the next season they are ready to go. I also have jillions of pie plates, muffin tins, and pot pie tins which I use for sowing seeds. These are the perfect depth for planting almost all seeds. Though, I am now beginning to use more commercial plug trays, I still use lots of the muffin tins for planting up to 25 seeds. I also use cut up sections of plug trays for "jimmying" up the different containers to reach the light. For instance, right now I have several containers with impatiens seedlings and several with petunia seedlings, which are about an inch difference in height. I jimmy up the petunia seedlings in the flat so that they are the same height as the Impatiens, and all plants are the same distance from the lights. My plants almost touch the lights! I also use little tiny baby toothbrushes for scrubbing plug trays and bottle brushes for cell packs and pots. My husband designed some "free standing" grow light racks for me for when my plants have outgrown the shelves. We drape several chains over a table and hang the lights under the table, and I can keep growing on my plants when they are quite tall. I can raise the lights up to two feet if I wanted to! Most plants dont get that tall though before getting hardened off, but the height is nice for getting containers going early. Anyone can build this, just get a good old sturdy table. I also do the wet toothpick trick! Works great for "smashing" pellets also. I like to smash my pelleted seed so that they all germinate at about the same time. Another thing to do with the toothpick--if any of you are like me and want to conserve every single seed that germinates, I get frustrated when I have a container of ready-to-transplant seedlings and I look closely and see several seedlings that had just sprouted. Especially with seed that was expensive, like impatiens! What I do is, I keep an eye on the flats and I will use a toothpick to remove some of those tiny germinated seedlings from the container, and move them one by one into a new container. Since they have just germinated, there is only a very tiny root system, so you dont hurt it at all by moving it. If I did not move them, they would get ruined when I transplant the larger seedlings to cell packs. I also keep an eye out for ungerminated seeds,in particular with impatiens or seeds that I spent a lot of money on. I dont quite understand why they dont all germinate at the same time, but it happens all the time! I will use a toothpick to pick up the seeds, put them in a new container and back under the domes for germinating. This also keeps me from losing those baby seedlings I mentioned before. Tedious? Sure! But I strive to get everything I canfrom what I spend on seeds! Anyway, those were my gadgets! Neat post!...See MoreHas anyone got rid of Bermuda Grass without chemicals
Comments (58)I know this is an old thread, but I'd like to add the knowledge I've gained from battling bermuda grass over the years using only organic methods. I live on heavy clay soil and the bermuda grass is heaviest over the leach fields of our septic system. Because I can't plant anything but grass on the fields, I added lots of planting beds near and around the fields where the bermuda is the thickest, but didn't know how much of a pain that was going to be. So, to say the least, I've been whacking at the bermuda for years and learned the following: Digging it up is an almost useless undertaking mainly because of our thick clay soil. There's always enough missed that the stuff comes back fairly quickly. This is especially true if digging it up near a sidewalk or driveway. There is plenty of rhizomes under the pavement. Burning the stuff with a propane torch is fun at first but grows old quickly when you start seeing new green growth the following day. I also can't do extended burning sessions because I'm usually doing a remedial removal with good plants near the bermuda. I'm lucky enough to not burn the plants I want. Boiling water held promise when I tried it despite risking killing roots of my wanted plants. Though my first attempt at this was incredibly dangerous (super propane burner under a giant stainless pot filled with boiling water and a smaller pot to scoop and pour the water out). I saw definite slowing of the regrowth but I couldn't risk doing it the way I was. So I devised a plan to turn my propane torch into a continuous hot water flame thrower by getting thin copper tubing, turning it into a coil, and attaching it to the end of the torch. With the hose attached to the other end and a valve to adjust the water volume, I was able to torch and pour boiling water on the bermuda at the same time. Unfortunately, the bermuda just kinda laughed at the rig and kept growing. Industrial strength vinegar (ie, 20% acetic acid, and yes I know that stuff is quite dangerous) works wonders to kill the top growth, but sadly it just grows back. Now if you're putting in a new bed, thick paper or cardboard under the added soil or mulch will work, but only if timed correctly, more about that to follow. So what's left that an organic gardener has to kill this grass? The final thing in my arsenal is black plastic and not clear plastic. I've tried the clear in another area, albeit it didn't have bermuda in it, but it did have johnson grass and it loved the clear. The johnson grass just kept on growing. The black plastic I've used is the stuff meant to go in crawl spaces as the moisture barrier. It's thick, heavy, and comes in really large sizes. And it withstands the elements very well. I've used one piece now for a year and it doesn't show any UV damage that most plastics would show. Now there's a trick with using the black plastic. You have to time it right. If you want to kill the bermuda, do not put it down in the early spring to take it up in early summer or late summer for late fall removal. Because bermuda goes dormant where I live, the spring time use of the plastic will not really kill it as it is probably still dormant under the plastic. But, the interesting part is the fall timing. As cooler temps approach in late summer, the bermuda starts going dormant even though it is still green. It starts storing more in its roots. So, even if you smother it then, it will come back in the spring. I learned this dearly when using the thick paper method of killing the stuff for a new bed. The paper did its job to kill the bermuda for that year, but in the following spring when the paper degraded in the soil, the bermuda came back with a vengeance. So time laying the plastic out in the early summer to at least late summer. That should ensure total removal. Of course, if you're paranoid, like me at times, leave it longer. Now, there's another problem with thick, black plastic. You really can't use it in already established beds because it will choke out your good plants and probably wreak havoc with your soil. It works wonders for killing this stuff before establishing new beds and for areas without plantings like walk paths. But what do you do with established plantings? This year I got a new weapon. Woven black plastic: http://www.groworganic.com/sunbelt-weed-fabric-3-x-50-roll.html The stuff lets air and moisture to pass through while keeping a total blackout for the soil surface. I haven't yet tried it on my bermuda as it is still dormant-ish, but I have some ready at first signs. It looks extremely promising as the material is thick and just as light blocking as the black plastic for a crawl space moisture barrier. And it should work just fine around my already established plantings....See Moreplantermunn
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoOkieTexan (7b)
7 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
7 years agoOkieTexan (7b)
7 years agoOkieTexan (7b)
7 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
7 years agoOkieTexan (7b)
7 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
7 years agomulberryknob
7 years agoOkieTexan (7b)
7 years agosusanzone5 (NY)
7 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoOkieTexan (7b)
7 years agoOkieTexan (7b)
7 years agoOkieTexan (7b)
7 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
7 years agoOkieTexan (7b)
7 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
7 years agoOkieTexan (7b)
7 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
7 years agoLisa_H OK
7 years agoOkieTexan (7b)
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoRebecca (7a)
7 years agoluvncannin
7 years agojlhart76
7 years agoMelissa
7 years agojlhart76
7 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
7 years agoOkieTexan (7b)
7 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
7 years agoMacmex
7 years agoOkieTexan (7b)
7 years agoMacmex
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoOkieTexan (7b)
7 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
7 years agoOkieTexan (7b)
7 years ago
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