A few more days and a lot more seedlings.
Currently there are 54 up and more subsurface hoops visible. So far the only no shows and no hoops are the Neon Habanero, the Fatalii and the Goronong - the Rocotto's not up yet but there are definite hoops to be seen, so I'm far from worried.
Here's to the next week or so.
Wednesday 31 December 2014
Monday 29 December 2014
Another Year
2014 whizzed by for a number of reasons and although the chilli crop was good it wasn't great. Too many reasons to go into, but hopefully 2015 will be better and I might get a little more blogging time. Maybe.
So 2015. The only plant I decided to overwinter was the Giant Rocotto, my 2013 plants were disappointing in 2014 so I decided to limit myself to one plant that was interesting but not highly productive in the hope of a better second year, we shall see what comes of it.
This season has followed my standard germination process - seeds from semillas.de soak for 24 hours, plant in rootriot cubes on 23/12/14 (thanks to my little helpers) in the heated propagator (pulse heating only) and lighting for 10 hours overnight per day. The only difference is that I've put two seeds per cube not one. I double planted like this for some mystery seeds last year and they turned out fine (provided you cut the cube in two at an early stage) so in the interests of getting at least two of each variety up and still having plenty to give away this is the plan. However this means I could have close to a hundred seedlings soon... and space could get quite challenging. But, as they say, that would be a nice problem to have.
So the news.
4 days in and there were signs of subsurface hoops.
5 days in and there were 5 germinations. (The hoop has to break the plane of the rootriot cube for me to count it)
6 days in and there are over 25 germinations. Hopefully it's going to be a bumper year.
So 2015. The only plant I decided to overwinter was the Giant Rocotto, my 2013 plants were disappointing in 2014 so I decided to limit myself to one plant that was interesting but not highly productive in the hope of a better second year, we shall see what comes of it.
This season has followed my standard germination process - seeds from semillas.de soak for 24 hours, plant in rootriot cubes on 23/12/14 (thanks to my little helpers) in the heated propagator (pulse heating only) and lighting for 10 hours overnight per day. The only difference is that I've put two seeds per cube not one. I double planted like this for some mystery seeds last year and they turned out fine (provided you cut the cube in two at an early stage) so in the interests of getting at least two of each variety up and still having plenty to give away this is the plan. However this means I could have close to a hundred seedlings soon... and space could get quite challenging. But, as they say, that would be a nice problem to have.
So the news.
4 days in and there were signs of subsurface hoops.
5 days in and there were 5 germinations. (The hoop has to break the plane of the rootriot cube for me to count it)
6 days in and there are over 25 germinations. Hopefully it's going to be a bumper year.
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| One of my little helpers checking on the germination to date |
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| My germination sheet - this is the easiest way to keep track of what came up when |
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