Category: Seeds

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Backyard baby plant update

The purple lady bok choy grows quite nicely when earwigs are not swarming it.

It grows bigger, too!

The wildflower seeds are doing better than I had hoped!

The green milkweeds are starting to have adult leaves.
There are actually pale coneflowers (Echinacea pallida) growing!
A single adult leaf is emerging on the Liatris mucronata. I have a second one in a smaller pot too.
I mistook the leaf of this seedling for a clover and pulled it yesterday, but quickly realized my mistake. I put it back in the dirt and watered it and it seems okay so far?? I hope so as it’s the only columbine seedling I’ve found so far in the sprouting trays or on the ground where I put seeds in the fall. The package said best sown outdoors in the fall.
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Big tomatoes

There were four plants getting too big for their containers, so we put them in the raised beds.

I also planted seeds of rouge vif d’etampes squash, cushaw squash (supposed to be resistant to squash vine borer), country gentleman corn, bush zucchini, and marketmore 76 cucumbers.

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No more diatomaceous earth, now for oil traps

I talked with a nice county extension agent today who said anything soft-bodied could be hurt by diatomaceous earth (DE) including toads, though being large and hopping they’ll be less so than a slug or earwig. But, I love my toads, so no more DE.

She did however suggest oil traps to reduce their population while I work to make the habitat less absurdly full of rotting wood (thanks past Claire for all the mulch).

So, now we have five pitfall traps with about half an inch of oil in them.  Three have used fryer oil (vegetable oil) and two have fresh, unused vegetable oil.  (That big plant in the lower right is the Brunswick cabbage I have been nursing along under a glass jar.  Time for it to face the world!)
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Earwig prevention attempt again

I saw that the new bok choy and mizuna seeds are coming up so I tried all this diatomaceous earth again. I also put vaseline around stems of one each mizuna and bok choy as I read that can keep them from climbing too, though the seedlings are only barely 1/2″ tall so we’ll see.

All the white dust is diatomaceous earth.
Since the earwigs are desperate enough to eat onions I dusted the onions too.
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Anti-cat defense fortress air flow adapter

Wes made a holder for one of the fans to attach to the shelf where we hide the tender plants at night from Gram right now on cool nights. Isn’t it nifty?

It is the orange part behind the fan.
He even made it so the towel can be tucked into a groove and not get stuck in the fan.