Sunday, March 23, 2008

Forest of tomato seedlings



I hope you are having a delightful Easter weekend.  To celebrate the day, I let the hens out into the backyard.  Free range!  They and the dog just ignored one another.  So much for that worry.  I had counted on them for an easter egg, but they let me down.

The garden transplants are growing, as you can see by the picture of the tiny tomato forest.  Each pot had two or three seeds germinate of the four planted.  Today I thinned them down to one plant per pot.  This is where I start to get nervous; a damping off fungus now will eliminate my carefully tended, self started seedlings.  The tomatoes were the first to really get growing, but one set of the basil seedlings also are up and got thinned today.  

Interestingly, all the basil seeds in one set of six pots germinated, while none of the seeds in the other set of six are up.  Did I seed too deeply in one set?  Too little or too much water?  Too cool at that end of the flat?  Or did I just label wrong, and the other set of pots is an entirely different plant?  The first of the teeny, tiny pepper plants have just emerged.  They are still too few and too fragile to consider taking out even one of those seedlings.   It is cold and windy today, so I am avoiding the outside garden chores.  Getting the seedlings thinned and watered pretty much wraps up the gardening for today.