No more cases of damping off since Wes has added the fan for me. Many plants were ready for watering! So I think the fan is helping dry things out.
Plant window ventilation
Notes to self on growing mustard greens
I borrowed the ebook of Grow Cook Eat by Willi Galloway from the public library. So far the most useful factoid is that mustard green seeds can be planted when the soil temperature reaches 45°F. According to Oklahoma Mesonet we are there now. In the fall, the book says to plant when temperatures stay in the 70s in daytime. I assume that means air temperature. That may be a little harder but we can try!
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.
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.
Anybody need any loofah gourd seeds?
Wes and Paula cleaned off last year’s loofah gourd harvest. We have almost two pounds of seeds. That is almost a kilogram for our science readers. Wes was annoyed we did not get tare for the bag but it’s a very light bag, and I didn’t want seeds everywhere. Let me know if you want seeds. We might be able to supply you…
Wes has some sort of plan for the loofahs themselves. There is a whole rubbermaid tub full of those. This is from maybe half a dozen plants.
Learning about the best parsnip planting times
My parsnips (“Harris model”) said on the package I could do either spring or fall planting. While researching whether this was true for Oklahoma, I came across a useful post on an Oklahoma gardening forum (expand the featured answer by “macmex” who is located north and east of us, in Talehquah in northeastern Oklahoma) It sounds like you CAN plant them in fall, but as a biennial, they may flower (“bolt”) in the spring before the roots are big enough to be useful. So, we’ll see what happens with my fall-planted ones, but I have just put out a row of them today and I will put out another row each week until the third week of February and see what happens to those.
I also read everywhere about parsnip seeds that they do not keep well. Mine are going on two years old now so I put a lot out to make up for potentially poor germination rates.
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.
Trimming the onion shoots for root growth
I read recently (but can’t for the life of me remember which book) that when sprouting onion seeds, you should trim them to promote more root growth. I did this to half of my sprouts. This will make sure it doesn’t kill them first. If these turn out okay I’ll do the other half.
Roots shooting up??
Sedums for terrible rocky pile of old roots
These are not native or edible, but they sure will be useful to keep other plants out and shade the soil for my nearby strawberries and mealy blue sage. I planted some out near the curb last fall and today finally planted some rooted stems in a nook by our porch. There was a big sweetgum tree there lifting the foundation that we had to remove. This has left a weird combination of rotting roots, and probably several past owners’ worth of decorative pebbles AND wood mulch. A real great growing environment as you might guess.
