F. religiosa from batch 1 is now growing faster. Weather has
been very nice, so I sprayed the batch with some orchid fertilizer and
put it outside. Bad idea! Weather has been pretty mellow, but it's still
late July. With the cover, the grow tray got pretty warm and a few
little sproutlings withered. I possibly lost some. By my count, I might have lost about 24. Alright, lesson
learned. I attached the string LED grow lights to the growing pallet
with hot glue and moved this batch to the pallet.
My research on growing
F. religiosa from seed indicated that fresh seeds were important. Dried
seeds would not do well. That's simply not the case. My success with
sprouting the dried seeds leads me to believe:
1. Information on viability of dry F. religiosa is incorrect. They can be successfully grown from dried seed.
2. The importance of heat mats is overstated. Room temperature seems to do fine.
3. Either that, or I've been EXTREMELY lucky.
Perhaps
viability does drop if the seeds are allowed to dry. Regardless I
still got a high number of viable seed. Perhaps if I lived in London or
Germany and kept my house ice cold I might need a heat mat. Port Angeles
weather is mellow but it's not hot. And YES!! Luck had a lot to do
with my success so far. I have been lucky in getting good deals on grow
lights and scrounging a nursery pallet that works great as a growing
area. There's little information from folks who have actually grown F.
religiosa from seed. The information I've found indicates that fellow
growers have experienced the same results as I have, so I doubt I've had
extreme luck.
As other growers have
indicated, once they get their first true leaves they grow quickly. F.
religiosa start off so tiny! The seeds are about one millimeter. As a
side note, being that I moved the first batch to the growing pallet, my
grow light is available. I bought another seed starting kit with peat
pellets and transplanted the remaining seedlings. Being I had done this
once before and documented the process, it was much easier this time.
I had a bunch left over, so I planted a few to the now empty pellets of the seedlings that I had lost. Moving on to my other projects!
Chinese elm
seeds - I have ONE sprout. Out of 50 seeds, only ONE sprouted. Not sure
where the seed provider got these seeds. My guess is the gutter. These seeds were shit.
Japanese
maple seedlings - These are the chance seedlings. They're growing, but
weakly. I'm not so sure these are A. palmatum. The leaves are growing
strange. Leave structure is a five point leaf with deep indentations,
but the middle points are growing very long as compared to the other
points. Kinda like the little bastards are giving me the finger! The
leaf points are also growing very thin, like a lacewing, but without the
extra lacing. I'll continue to fertilize them and see what I get from
them.
Apple seeds - Utter shit, except the one
that sprouted. But that one is growing quite nicely. Whatever. What did I expect to happen from using apple seeds that I had been eating. Didn't
cost me shit to plant. I'm happy for the one seedling at least.
Schefflera
arbicola, guava and wisteria seeds - Fuck em, they're complete and utter shit. The whole lot of em. No sign of
life on these guys. Gonna continue watering them, but yeah, fuck em.
Crabapple
cuttings - They're putting on strong new growth. Summer has been cool,
so they're not growing as fast as the crabs I previously had.
Regardless, I'm happy to have them. I plan to allow them to grow out for
the next couple of seasons. Unless the deer come by and chomp em. The
deer can chomp my ass and die of ass poisoning. No, not really... but
seriously, leave my crabs alone you filthy ass chomping lil fucks. Go
home Bambi, you're drunk!
Trident maple
cutting - Poor little guy! I don't know how this poor fucker is still
hanging in there, yet he is. Two years of neglect out back. He's still
hanging in there. By a thread, but still there. Doing his/her best to
grow though. Mad respect for the little shit.
Azalea
cuttings - What. The. Fuck. Make up your little collective minds. Grow
or die. Put out roots or shrivel up and die already so I can move on.
They still haven't set root. Yet some are still hanging on. I'm
fertilizing them and watering because at this point, yeah I'm done with
them. But no I'm not. They can do them and I'll do me. You hear that
azaleas? Fuck off! Or don't. Shine on you crazy bastards.
Air
layer project - This is feeling more like project fail. I check the
packages regularly, make sure they're still moist. There's lots of green
moss growing inside, but I'm not seeing roots. Maybe I'm wrong. Temps
have been on the cool side. I read somewhere that it can take 90 days to
get a harvestable air layer. Fine. I'll just wait til Bernie's
Birthday. Right now, I'm just not gonna give half a shit for this project. Okay okay, I'll give just half a shit. No more though.
Scheffleras chop project - They're
growing awesome. I can definitely grow me some scheffleras! I've noticed
some of the leaves on one of the plants look distorted and a bit
spotty. I suspect it's from the watering. I'll try to water the base and
not the leaves.
Nothing else worth mentioning in the garden... oh wait, there is one last thing. I traded a small raku pot for a small shohin size Japanese maple. Looks like a garden variety A. palmatum, which is just what I wanted. Picture here:
I continue to make fuckery... erm... pottery!
I abandoned my pottery that I fired in Seattle. Just not worth
going back and picking up. I found a place on the peninsula that has an
open studio. It's in Port Townsend, about an hour from Port Angeles. A
lot closer than Seattle. I spent a couple hours over the weekend there making pinch pots.
That's all I have for now.
No comments:
Post a Comment