Babies growing up

Repotted about 2/3 of baby tomatos before it got dark.

Bigger pots mean not everyone fits in the cat-safe night area.

So we covered the other tray with a box and a heavy thing.
Supervisors have a meeting.

Field trip for veggies and new home for flowers

It’s warm and sunny in the day and cool but not hard freezes at night. I decided it’s time for plants to see the world!

The evening primroses, Rudbeckia fulgida, and Salvia greggii in their new home. I brought the veggies out for the day but forgot to take a picture before I brought them inside this evening.
Gram is too busy being cozy to worry about the new space opened up in the plant window.

The big freeze: an outdoor stratification event?

Supposed to be really cold (with highs not above freezing) later this week, so I figured I should get my lately acquired native and wildflower seeds in the ground. These included desert globemallow, blue flax, Liatris mucronata, and mystery Aster sp. (the latter two from Mom, thanks Mom!!). The first three I also put some seeds in the fridge for manual stratification and the first two I saved a bit to try planting in the fall if the spring planting doesn’t take.

I also had a few indoor seedings to catch up on. Judy kindly sent me some Chimayo chile pepper seeds, my Jimmy Nardello peppers never sprouted, my ground cherries only had two sprouts, and the poor Tommy Toe tomatoes died of cat and damping off.

Seeds before I put their 1/4″ dirt on them.

Window rearranging

Some guest plants are departing, so the Salvia greggii cuttings are moving into the plant window where it’s safer from the cat.

The extremely innocent young cat who definitely did not nibble and step on several seedlings causing the current fortification of the plant window and abandonment of the table as a plant staging area.
It looks like two or three of the five cuttings have “taken”, based on the new growth.

Airflow to prevent damping off?

Wes rigged up a small fan with power supply to pull air through the plant window. Fingers crossed it works! There’s always taking the baby plants in and out each day for sunshine but I’d really rather not. Because I’m lazy.

The small fan. You can see the plexiglass gap there and a larger gap is at the top, which you can see in the next picture.
The cause of all this nonsense (Gram the cat) walks by the clamp I need to put back up to hold the plexiglass in place. Briar supervises.

Damping off fungus attacks

Well we are having some damping off fungus in the plant window.  Lost the only surviving tommy toe tomato seedling and a lot of onion seedlings are falling over. I had hoped we left enough air circulation despite our cat blocking plexiglass but apparently not. The chef is looking into tiny fans to put there. I’ll have to start another tommy toe too.

Onion seedlings falling over from damping off, which is caused in seedlings ny overwatering. I set them outside in hopes that some might make it.

Rooting Salvia greggii from cuttings in late winter

One of my front yard Salvia greggii got dug up or knocked over by something last year so I took a few cuttings on Jan. 9. As of Jan. 21 I saw some new growth. Today you can see which ones appear to be surviving. I did multiple because I am not always successful, even though I only need one.

The various jugs and containers are to keep Supervisor Gram out of my plants. You can see which of the cuttings are bright green and growing.