Attempt at an experiment

I've been using MiracleGro potting mix for my plants. I thought about making my own potting mix, but for me, that is too stressful. I would like to be as "organic" as possible but I definitely have my limits. I decided my goal for this year is not to use pesticides and do my best to deal with diseases organically. I will also try to get organic fertilizers but I started off with MG potting soil which has fertilizer mixed into it (I didn't get the organic type either). When I went to Lowe's to get soil, I initially got garden soil thinking it was the same thing. Fortunately I read that they were different before I opened the bag so I returned the bag and exchanged it with potting mix.
  I was listening to an episode of "grow your grub" podcast where Steve talks about seaweed fertilizer. This reminded me that I have several packages of very old and stale nori seaweed in my pantry (that is not edible). Steve sent me a great link about making fertilizer using kelp. I also have kelp in my pantry but they are still good to eat so I will not use this. I think that nori can be used instead but I want to test if this homemade fertilizer is effective. So I decided to set up an experiment. I had basil, peas (the ones I tried germinate in a paper towel), and tomato seedlings that I could use.

tomato seedlings that are quite cramped and stunted, subjects of the experiment

To set up this experiment correctly, I needed to find potting soil without fertilizer. This prove to be very difficult. I finally found one at Lowe's called Garden Pro Potting soil. I set up 5 conditions per plant (MG=miracle gro; RS=Garden Pro): MG, RS only, RS + liquid MG fertilizer, RS + compost tea, RS + seaweed fertilizer. The compost tea is actually the water that is dripped out of the compost bucket I talked about some time ago. I went all out and set up the 15 cups for this experiment.

Top row: peas, Middle: tomatoes, bottom: basil. The column on the left is MG, the rest of the "regular soil"

The Garden Pro potting soil was really strange. It looked like it had a lot of sand or clay maybe, but the texture was totally different from MG. It looked really dense so I added some perlite. After setting up the cups it occurred to me that this soil will not work for this experiment (ie: not comparable to MG), but at that point it was really too late to look back. I watered each cup...and the RS dissolved to about half the volume and the water that drained out was brown. So at the end, I'm not sure this experiment is gonna work. If the seedlings don't die in the next few days, I'll start the experiment.

After watering, soil dissolves to about half the volume

The coffee colored liquid that is seeped out

Chilling on my windowsill

I'll end with some pictures of mesclun greens that I a) thinned out b) used for salad. They were more mesclun-y than my previous "salad".

Pre-thinning

Post-thinning

The salad was good

I am a plant hypochondriac

I am pretty bad at self-diagnosing myself using the various online resources. It turns out, I'm the same when it comes to plants. Fortunately, with the peas, granny told me the leaves look healthy (thanks!). Now I found some sketchy looking brown spots on my zucchini plants. After searching around on the inter-web, I found some pictures that look similar but no concrete answers. I'm thinking it is either sun/wind burn or something fungal. The leaves feel really dry (though the soil has enough water). I'm seeing some fungal gnats too, so probably I need to decrease the watering. I have 2 zucchini plants in a smaller pot living on the ground floor (under the balcony). The ground floor plants are the seedlings that I was thinking of putting in the compost bucket but couldn't bring myself to do it. Anyway, the ground floor zucchini, despite being in a smaller pot, don't have this problem. The difference between the 2 plants are that they are not in direct sunlight throughout the day and they are not a self-watering pot so the water just drains out the holes on the bottom. (oh, and all my plants - not the seedlings - spent the weekend outside).

Zucchini plant in the larger pot, the edges are brown and drying

The other zucchini plant on the balcony, the dry patches in the center is browning - not powedery

Zucchini plants on the ground both look healthy

Many years ago I watched a show with Jamie Oliver where he was trying to promote healthy eating for children. He was working with a group of grade school kids (I want to say about 5th grade) where he would show them a vegetable and asked if the kids knew what the vegetable was. I distinctly remember that the kids could not identify celery. It is pretty amazing that there are kids out there that don't know what fruits and vegetables look like let alone how they grow. To this end, my knowledge of how vegetables grow and what they look like before they are mature is limited. For example, I didn't really think you can grow lettuce from seeds...I'm not sure how I thought they grew, but I just never thought about lettuce seeds. As a results, I've been fascinating by the mesclun green seedlings (they are starting to grow leaves that look like mescluns). Now I'm curiously observing the growth of the arugula seedlings. At this point they don't look anything like arugula, but if you taste them you can definitely tell they are arugula (a bit more bitter than I'm used to). If you compare the arugula seedlings versus the petunia seedlings (the ones that I collected last year, that I'm absolutely surprised is actually germinating), they pretty much look the same (and are about the same size...tiny).

Arugula seedlings

Some more arugula seedlings

These are petunia. Up close they look different but they are about the same size as the arugula seedlings

Speaking of petunias, I planted some in a container in the front of the house. I did the same last year and I had some serious problems with tobacco worms. They seem to only like my flowers since I was careful to examine the flowers of my neighbors and they had no damage. At least this year I have a bottle of Bt, ready for combat if necessary. It looks like at the moment I'm just having a little slug problems (I know only because I saw one the other night and I picked it off).  

You can see where the slug(s) feasted (white flower is half gone!)

not so fungi

My first attempt at sowing the peas, the germination rate was very poor. I really like snap peas so I want to have more than 4 plants. I read here that you can germinate the seeds in a paper towel. This way I can pick out the ones that do germinate. I dampened a paper towel, put the peas in it, spritzed it with water and put it in a ziplock bag.  I didn't read closely enough because I sealed the bag completely. 2 days later, I opened the bag and I see this:

 There were some seeds that looked like they were cracking so probably more seeds will germinate. But then I saw this:

The peas were all slimy and a few of them looked as bad as the above photo. Yuck. Sealing the bag was not the right move. I didn't want to throw them away so I got rid of the ones that looked particularly fuzzy and transferred them to this plastic container and left it open. I hope they don't all grow moldy...I want to pot the ones that are germinating tomorrow.

 I also noticed some white spots on the pea leaves. I don't know if this is some sort of sickness (not all the leaves had the spots). I couldn't find any information on the web, unfortunately.

Finally, I left the bigger plants outside all day. Most did OK, but I had one broken leaf/stem on the zucchini. Again, the wind. I cut it off at the base near the stem and will wait to see how they do. The stem was really prickly.

I have a shopping problem

They had a farmer's market today at the parking lot next to our office. I wanted to see if they had any fruits I can add to my Greek yogurt. Unfortunately it was a rainy day so there wasn't a lot of people there, and I was imagining a farmer's market like the on 32 second street, but it was much much smaller and not much produce. There was a food booth, ice-cream truck, 1 small vegetable booth, and 2 vendors selling plants. One booth was selling tomato, pepper, rosemary, and parsley plants. The second booth was all herbs. I spotted a purple basil plant - I have seen pictures of this plant but had never met one in real life. I really wanted to buy from the other vendor since the women manning the booth looked like they took a lot care growing the plants and cared about them (now that I know how much TLC is required to grow plants from seeds) while the herb booth was manned by 2 teenagers that looked like they didn't want to be there. However, I could not resist the allure of the purple basil and bought that (along with an oregano plant). I need to stop purchasing plants, I'm gonna run out of space.




And the Genovese basil at home is growing nicely - looking more like basil. They smell fantastic!
   




 

Check out these seedlings here...look closely, they are so tiny. These are arugula seedlings I sowed 3 days ago. At least that's what is said on the package.

I'm really liking the way the planters look on the balcony. I've decided to leave the peas, tomato (early girl), and zucchini (in the larger pot) outside overnight. I hope it doesn't get too windy and break the young plants. I need to start thinking of ways to create a wind barrier for the balcony.

All kinds of nasty

Bucket #1 there are holes on the bottom

Bucket #2

Today was warm but cloudy and tremendously windy. I thought we would have a thunderstorm so I left my plants inside. In the evening, I decided to "turn" my compost before going to the gym. I have two 5-gallon composting buckets (urban organic gardener link --> has great info on starting a compost bin). I drilled holes on the bottom and sides of one bucket (bucket #1) and was too lazy to do the same for the second (bucket #2). I figured it is a small bucket so it would be easy to turn the compost around to aerate it (wrong, with a little shovel, it is hard to get to the bottom). The compost in bucket #1 had no smell (well, smelled like dirt/soil). The compost in bucket #2 was smelling a little like horse radish - nothing too bad but definitely like something was going on in there.

This bucket should be fabreze'd

I decided that I should empty bucket #2 and get some air to the bottom of the bucket. And after dumping half of the compost into the bucket I got a whiff of something nasty, real nasty...like the kind of smell you get when you walk into a porta potty at a summer festival kind of nasty.

I panicked, starting running around not sure of what to do. I was so glad it was windy otherwise I probably would have killed my neighbors with the stank. I quickly drilled holes on the bottom and sides of bucket #1. Scurried into the house, grabbed some scrap paper, shredded it and put the stanky compost (if I can call it that) back into the bucket - layering it with the shredded paper. I am still unsure of when the compost is "done". I guess I should wait until I can't identify the food scraps. I hope I can figure out this composting thing, it is such a great way to reduce waste and save money on compost.

Tomatoes need their space!

Here is a quick comparison of the growth of super sweet tomato seedlings when they transferred into individual pots versus not. These seedlings are about 1 month old. Can you see that the seedlings that have their own pots are larger and happy looking? Now that it is getting warmer and sunnier it probably a better environment for them to grow. They are, however, a lot smaller than the starter plants that I saw at the store the other day. The same difference in growth was observed for the peppers as well.

Starting to feel like summer!

Second sunny and warm day in a row! I smell summer is finally here!! I quickly checked the weather forecast and decided that today will be warm all day (70-80s). I took all my plants that are in big pots (eggplant, jalapeno, tomato, and zucchinis) out on the balcony. Then I sat there contemplating whether I should leave the seedlings out to. I know you are supposed to slowly expose them to the elements. From what I've read in gardener's blogs and from listening to podcasts (yes, I listen to gardening podcasts because I am totally addicted, a dork, and know little to nothing about what I am doing), you are suppose to take the seedlings out for about an hour one day, 2 hours the next, 3 hours the next and slowly increase the exposure time monitoring how they are responding. On the weekend, yes, this is reasonable. But during the week, I cannot figure out how this is possible. I live really close to work, so it is feasible to come back home quickly and bring the seedlings inside... but really? I can't do that. So I decided against leaving them outside for the day (though I have a feeling they would've been OK). As I was driving home afterwork, I was little concerned that my plants wouldn't fare well in the heat.But they were looking quite happy on my balcony!

If you look real close, you can see the peas "grabbing" the string

Jalapeno and eggplants are doing well

I'm not sure if this is what the mesclun green are suppose to look like. The side I thinned out doesn't look any better than the other side. Hm...

The balcony can be accessed from the second bedroom. There is no water source on the balcony so I have to go into the bathroom. I made a little funnel to make it easier to get the water in my watering container. Works pretty well!

Water bottle-turned funnel