Update - Beginning of March

March is the month when the pace of indoor seed starting really picks up, especially towards the 3rd & 4th week.  We had a bit of a thaw a few days ago, quickly followed by record lows (again!) which essentially created a frozen layer of ice over all of the accumulated snow.



Sunshine Reflecting on the Ice Covered Snow
Hopefully the beginning of the end of winter
 

The good news is that the dip in temperatures only lasted a few days and we are now slowly but surely heading into some seasonal weather with highs (finally) over the freezing mark and even a couple of days going up to 6C (43F) next week…time to break out the shorts & t-shirts ;)

I, for one, have never been so anxious for spring to arrive…fingers crossed that this shift in the weather really does mark the end of yet another memorable winter.

Now on to what's happening under the grow lights.


Asparagus

The asparagus seedlings are doing fairly well.

Asparagus Ferns - 4 weeks
 

Every single seed in the packet germinated, so I now have 26 little plants.  The asparagus bed that I planned would be able to hold around 20 plants.  But I’m such a wimp when it comes to getting rid of seedlings, especially such precious ones, that I’m going to try to adjust my plan so that I can plant all of them.

The tall, floppy, wispy ferns are so delicate that I am paranoid about damaging them.  I feel that even an accidental brush with my hand may cause one of them to break.  I can’t wait to get these safely tucked away into a nice, deep pocket of soil outdoors.  If all goes well, only one month to go…


Onions

Most of the onion seedlings have come up & are looking pretty good.

Onion Seedlings - 2.5 weeks
 

So as not to disturb the seedlings, I normally test to see if a cell pack needs watering by lifting it & if it feels light, it gets watered.  When it comes to the onions, this can get a little tricky.  The flat is so large compared to a regular cell pack that it still tends to feel fairly heavy, even when the soil is dry.  Last year I didn’t realize this and I let the tray dry out a bit too much a few times.  I’m hoping to do a better job with watering the onion flats this year.

I also planted the seeds too shallowly last year and in some cases, you could actually see the base of the onion and the little roots going into the soil.  This, of course, made them much more susceptible to damage and drying out.  This time round, I sowed the seeds a good ¼” deep & so far, they are all looking nicely anchored.

On Friday, I finally picked up the Nebuka bunching onions & a couple of packets of leek seeds.  I will be getting these started today.


Peppers

Almost all of the pre-germinated pepper seeds that were sown have emerged & these are doing well.



Pepper Seedlings - 2 weeks
 

I was still waiting on one each of Ostra-Cyklon and Corne de Chevre to come up and they seemed to be taking much too long (it had been almost 10 days), considering the other seeds I sowed from these varieties only took 4-5 days from sowing to emergence.  I decided to do a bit of gentle rooting around in the soil to see what the story was.  The Ostra-Cyklon seed only had a small root coming out and the Corne de Chevre had nothing - perhaps I damaged the seeds when sowing them?  I decided to start over on both of these.

As for the Hungarian Hot Wax peppers, it's been 15 days and only 3 (out of 12) seeds have germinated - I'm still waiting for 3 more.  Last year, these took from 8-20 days to germinate in the paper towel.

I’ve looked at several sources that refer to how long various pepper varieties take to germinate and noticed that many of the varieties I am growing germinated in less time than that stated.  Mind you, these times probably referred to how long the seeds took to emerge when sown in soil, so of course, that would add a few days to my pre-germination times.

The Hot Wax is the exception, taking quite a bit longer than the 12 day average that I’ve seen.  I’m starting to think that the issue is perhaps not with the variety, but the seeds themselves.  The seeds are not old, I purchased them last year from Baker Creek, but perhaps they came from a bad batch.  So when I was at William Dam picking up the onion seeds, I also picked up a packet of their Hungarian Hot Wax pepper seeds.

Hungarian Hot Wax from William Dam

I’m pre-germinating some of these now & we’ll see how their germination compares to the Baker Creek seeds.


Flowers

I’ve also sown some petunia seeds that my daughter picked out last year.  I’ll be doing a post about that this coming week.

And that is what’s happening under the grow lights on this chilly (but seasonal!) March day.

Till next time…