#growing seedlings

[balkanradfem]

Prepairing the soil for the indoor seedlings!

Yesterday, I put many seeds to germinate in a wet paper towel, and I've already used up all of the soil I had stored for spring plants, so, I had to go to the forest on a nice sunny day, and dig out some soil from under a dead stump. I only take soil from already dead and rotting trees, and only take a little, because that soil is now made out of tree-decomposing matter, which is very fertile, rich in nutrients, and basically compost quality. It's also very light and airy and that makes it possible to use in containers, all soil that is used in containers needs to be very light so that the baby plants can stretch their roots thru it.

Other than the forest, I'd been able to find such soil in the areas where the river has flooded and dumped massive amounts of tree leaves, which then decomposed for months, and again, have created compost.

I've planted my seedlings directly into the forest soil before, and they were growing just fine, then for a while I was mixing new forest soil, with already-used-up forest soil, and that was fine too! I also ran some experiments mixing soil with fine sand, and planting half of my seedling in soil+sand mixture, and half in only-soil, and they've both grown equally well, no difference was noticed.

This time, I'm going to mix my forest soil with already-used soil, which I have on my balcony, and I have a bag of fine sand from the riverbank. I'm making this mix because it will increase the amount of soil I can use, since I have a neck injury, it's complicated for me to bring home large amounts of soil home, and re-using soil is effective and easy, and perfectly fine if you add fertilized and nutritious soil in it.

You don't need to go thru this entire process just to grow plants, you can use store-bought soil, or try any kind of soil you have around until something works, I'm doing this just to increase the amount of soil I have and make sure it's easy to grow in!

So I have forest soil, already-used soil, sand, and a bucket to put it all in. Before it gets in the bucket, I want to be meticulous and clean it, because even the already-used soil will have some hard clumps or pieces of bark or something, that might bother the tiny seedlings when they grow. I want to make it the most airy and productive soil ever. This is how the already-used soil looks after it's been clean.

And once it's nice and clean I dump it into the bucket! Now it's time to clean the equal amount of the forest soil, and this one is way more messy. There are leaves, roots, pieces of bark, rocks, seeds, sometimes there's even tiny little bugs I accidentally woke from hibernation, but they are fine and good for the soil, and they generally just keep living in the soil and don't go running around the apartment, so I don't mind them at all.

This is how it looks before and after I cleaned it, I was just brushing my hands thru and taking out anything that felt clumpy and odd. If you had a big sieve you could do this within seconds, but I like having my hands in the soil, so I was having a good time spending 10 minutes picking stuff out.

Now, both of the soils are added into the bucket, and I'm also adding sand in. Sand isn't going to add any nutrition to it, but it is very airy, very light, and very easy for little plants to push seeds thru. It will make the soil lighter, and increase drainage, means the water will run down more easily and the soil will not keep water inside. I've tried to make it about 20% sand.

And I'm loving the result after mixing! The soil is a tad more grey in color, but extremely light and airy, I think the plants are going to love it. It's a bit less filled with nutrients than the pure compost would be, but I will add nutrition when the plants become big enough to require it (when they have more than 1 set of true leaves).

All of the clumps, leaves, pieces of bark and clusters of roots I took out, can be composted, but, I'm going to actually use them for filling the big pots on my balcony. I usually add all of the clumpy soil at the bottom, because it adds more drainage at the bottom, and by the time the plants grow their roots all the way down, they won't be bothered by the clumps, it's only the most fragile tiny roots of baby seeds that are sensitive and need airy and non-clumpy soil.

Since my experiment with mixing went so well, I repeated the process and added once more, a container of used soil, container of forest soil, and a bit of sand, to make a full bucket of soil. Now I have plenty of soil to work with! I'm going to keep this bucket inside of my room, because those baby seeds are used to warm temperatures, and will want to be planted in warm soil. I'm also closing the lid, so the soil remains damp and full of life.

If your soil dries out, then the bacteria and diversity inside of it starts dying off, and it can even become hydrophobic! In case it does get so dry it starts rejecting water, it can still be rehabilitated, by adding more organic soil in it and mixing it all together. I've also seen gardeners add soapy water, because bubbly water has less surface tension and is more easily absorbed by the dry soil. For this purpose, they'd add a few drops of dish detergent in the water.

Here's my bucket of soil! This can fill many containers and cups, and when I run out, I have enough ingredients to make more. In a few weeks, I'll probably have to go to the forest to get some more, but I'll be all set until then.

[hanafubukki]

Thinking about falling in love with Malleus.

How it’s such a gradual love that you don’t see coming.

You met him one night.

You might have even thought him weird.

Became friends with him.

Got to know him as Tsunotaro first.

Then as Malleus Draconia.

But never the future king.

There’s tears and wounds as there always are in a relationship of any kind.

But as time pass, so do wounds heal.

And as time moves, so do feelings gradually change.

Until one day, you noticed your feelings had seamlessly changed.

It felt normal.

A given.

How could you not have fallen in love with him?

This fae that held your heart.

He can have it.

For you knew no one else would treasure it as much as he did.

I love you, Malleus Draconia.

[rosielindy]

What an awesome idea! Get those melons up there where they belong 🍈🍈

I have a chain link fence, I’d like to do this with butternut squash. Hmmmm, it’s not too late…. 🤔

[wildrungarden]

4/20/24 ~ I found this tree hidden in my gardenia bush out front growing. Anyone know what kind it is? I pulled it up and planted it in a pot for now till I figure out what kind it is ☺��

[dearjewels22]

Brace yourself. It WILL get dark. It WILL be hard. It WILL feel like eternity. But don't give up. You WILL come out better, stronger, wiser.

[gardening-guy]

garden update || 10/25/24 🌿🏡🥰🌱

see that very nice-looking raised bed on the bottom right? THAT'S NEWWWW!!! i just set these two new raised beds up yesterday with a dear friend who's been staying the night over the past few days!! yippee!! 🎉 i've been showing this friend of mine how to garden and letting them learn in my backyard. we've only done flowering plants so far as well as planting dill & cilantro seeds -- so yesterday, i decided it was time to learn about crops!

we sowed seeds for walking egyptian onions, broccoli de cicco, dill, and cilantro; but i plan on also teaching them how to transplant so we'll also transplant in more kale, cabbage, and hopefully chinese pink celery! this'll be a very full & very productive raised bed, i hope!

i also have a few pictures of the progress in the greenhouse box!

the seedlings are all steadily coming along! i do need to sow a LOT more chinese pink celery seeds, so i'll do that once i finally get another bag of soil (i already need 2 more for potting houseplant props, 4 more for my last raised garden bed, and probably 2 more for future seedlings -- augh my budget is so fucked).

currently in the greenhouse box, i have 8 chinese pink celery, 15 cilantro, 3 copenhagen market cabbage, 3 blue-curled scotch kale, and 3 dill. (holy shit so much cilantro, they're going to be gifts for friends!!) i plan on transplanting the kale, cabbage, & pink celery all into the raised beds, i'm just waiting for them to grow up a bit more unfortunately.

i also have photos of some of the flowering plants in the raised beds from today! i use an app on my phone called planta to keep track of all my plants, and once a month, i like to upload photos & notes as a monthly plant progress report. it does get pretty daunting, seeing allllll the tasks that i have to do daily in the app, but i slowly make my way through it! i'm one of those people who just really likes recording & organizing stuff, especially hobbies like reading, gardening, writing, working out, et cetera. i've got apps/websites for most of them!

the butterfly milkweed, bee balm, and coneflowers are steadily going dormant for the cold seasons -- i really really hope they survive and thrive in the spring!!! i'm proud to say i've been a lot better about remembering to prune my chrysanthemums and they definitely look a lot happier (especially compared to last fall's mums)! that coleus is inevitably going to die off, i've accepted it since they're not really meant for outdoors especially in the ground. my lithodora is looking alright (hopefully will bloom again in the spring), my gerbera daisies are looking gorgeous, and the petunias are doing alright (yet are looking a bit... scattered, i suppose).

that's mostly it now for this garden update! i will say my zinnias are still going mighty strong, and i've been seeing soooo many bugs & critters in my tiny lil city suburb garden, and that makes me happy! the stray cats are mostly comfortable with me, the birds love their bird feeders, the squirrels keep taking shits in my raised beds (as well as this one stray cat i call cinnabun), and there's a regular praying mantis in my garden that i am lowkey terrified of (she's just so fucking huge i think she's cool and i respect her but damn she watches me steadily and it's freaky)!

i am potentially going to try to make an arch trellis in the garden with these camping tent poles that i want to repurpose, so maybe that'll be my next big thing? or i do still want to do another greenhouse box once my budget is not as tight (although that's looking like not anytime soon unfortunately) -- we'll see in the future!!

thank you for sticking around this long, and i hope everyone has a wonderful day + weekend!!! :)

[geothebio]

today in gardening: found a wild black raspberry bush behind our shed that i never even knew existed

[tj-crochets]

Hey y’all my brother is trying to grow some seedlings (this one is a sunflower) and these white dots showed up in the soil overnight? Do you know what they are, and should we do anything about them?

I know pretty much nothing about growing plants and I have no idea what to do lol

[elucubrare]

ok herb garden version uhhhh 5.0 let's gooooooo

i'm putting in gravel at the bottom for drainage and only doing things that should be good companion plants (rosemary, thyme, oregano, parsley) AND now i actually have decent sun exposure so it should hopefully work this time

[semprvivum]

Spider plant seedlings 🌱

[vulpzz-zrrda]

Hello other dad variant, I believe we haven't met before!

I'm other Collei!.....I think

@sumerus-little-sprout

Oh hello, ...other.. Collei! How nice to see you around ^^ How are things for you, sweetheart?

[balkanradfem]

Alright so, and I promise this is funny, I have been dealing with severe deficiency in 'making plants grow successfully'. It's going worse than any year but I'm also having a lot of fun with it, because I'm no longer discouraged by baby plants dying, I'm already germinating the next batch and I know I'll be just fine.

This year's weather has been so nice, gardening wise! We didn't have a crazy hot February like the last few years, it's been very frosty in fact, so that the trees didn't flower too soon and I love that for us, that is the promise of fruit, and also making me feel a bit more at ease that the weather, for now, isn't hectic.

The middle of March was nice and sunny, and I felt encouraged to put my baby plants outside, just for an hour or so every day, so they would get used to direct sunlight. I also noticed some of my baby plants turning purple, and I thought, AHA! Nitrogen deficiency, I can fix this by fertilizing them, so I did, a bit too much maybe, because 3 days later half of my tomatoes, and a bunch of other plants sadly died. Some of the plants actually showed signs of getting burned by the sun, but only after the 3rd day they were outside! You're telling me sun was fine for 2 days but then the 3rd day it was just too bright and you had to expire??

Some of the plants that did well initially, also ended up outside when it was, a bit more windy than they could handle. And I wasn't even home, by the time I got home, the plants were already lying horizontally, unable to fight the violent weather.

And this is funny because I take all of these risks every single year and I never had this many of them pan out badly, and never had this amount of seedlings die, but truth be told I do plant too many tomatoes every single year and I should maybe tone it down, 70% of my meals are tomato based at this point (it's so easy to conserve), and I should focus more on some beans and pumpkins.

So anyway, since seedlings are not vibing, I finally gather my senses to go to the actual garden one day, because I'm thinking, there will be cabbage savoy there, and spinach probably grew a bit by now, maybe I can have some fresh spinach! Maybe swiss chard grew and I could eat that, maybe there's a carrot that germinated and would make me happy.

So I bike to the garden and as soon as I get there I realize that everything I was hoping to harvest just went to seed. Two weeks I've been too sick and dealing with medical issues, and I couldn't check on the garden, and 2 days of warm temperatures and everything said bYE and went to make seeds?? The rapid change took me completely by surprise, I didn't think things would go to seed while we still had frosts. I stubbornly picked the cabbage deciding to just eat the little flowerbuds and leaves anyway, the flowers didn't open yet so with a bit more prep time, it's all edible. My spinach went to seed as well, the traitor. It's March!!!

As discouraging as all of this sounds, this is incredible for learning, because now I know that every single thing on this list has a good chance of happening this time of year, and I'll be able to make better choices next time. In fact, if all of this didn't happen now, it would probably happen any year from now on and I wouldn't be ready or expecting it. Next time I'll get all those cabbages before the sun touches them. I'll try growing spinach in the fall when it won't go to seed as easy, and I'll think twice before taking 3-4 risks at once with baby seedlings.

The baby seedlings who survived all this are the victors who are strong and resilient and probably can't be killed by any of my bad choices. Even if I have slightly less plants, I'll have the most powerful plants. The last batch I've planted seems to be growing rapidly, because the weather is light and warm now, and I've planted some flowers I've never had before! I'll have tansy on my garden, for the first time ever.

[kineticallyanywhere]

Tell us more about Doodler Normal Kinetic i beg of you

First thing to note: Doodler Boss Normal would not survive contact with Canon Normal

Cause the thing with this version of Normal, I think, is that the situation to create it is so specific; and in a way that I've never thought about before, for a narrative? I'm sure it exists somewhere, because what story framework doesn't already exist somewhere but like.

this version of Normal only happens in a world where all 4 anchors are broken with violence and not a single other person is questioning that decision by the end. (which I don't think is going to happen! for the record!) in this world, Normal presents himself as a last bastion of empathy, but where in any other story that would look like a shining knight with their Chosen One sword and shield and righteous strength, in this story it looks like a kid ready to turn into an eldritch monster because the eldritch monster is the only other creature he can find that makes any sense to him. a character who, written in words, is a paragon hero who's virtues refuse to crumble. but because of the Ao3 CSS skin of the world he's in, he gets all the style and flair and trappings of a villain.

(which, again, I don't have reason at the time of this writing to think that this situation would happen; that there isn't going to be at least one other person on Normal's side. It's all but impossible to predict any of these kids and I think they all have good hearts, even Scary. Link right now is an unsettled weather vane in a storm, Taylor for all his swagger doesn't seem on the side of brutality, and then like... Hermie???)

that said! In a world where sometimes you can't decide if you want to sit in your disappointment or scream at the top of your lungs, there's falling back on your new frienemy-of-the-family monster bro

(anyone with a writing bug and time, feel free to use any, all, or none of these ^^)

for thoughts on where this AU would end up, anyone can obviously take it anywhere but I know the version I would make would have a happy ending (I am allergic to writing tragedies, sue me). I guess it would be a story where finally snapping and letting out some Oak Anger and not apologizing (because while it's not okay to be cruel it is okay to be angry) is what gets characters to come to terms with each other and better understand each other and meet each other in the middle and even come to terms with themselves and what version of expressing themselves makes them happy and comfortable and best able to love themselves and the people around them.

all of that admittedly wrapped in a gift box with the catharsis of a character saying "I'm not okay with how you're treating me" in a very badass fashion, as we all wish to do one day.

also for those of us who would die for Scary but also want to take her by the shoulders and shake vigorously there's the Rule of 3s for swiping the Goth Crown from Scary a THIRD TIME

all of her put-on apathy and tiredness and lashing out but from a genuine place, simultaneously forcing her in front of a mirror and asking her to reach back for the part of herself that started the day of the debate "bright eye-ed and bushy tailed" so that she could even stand a chance at getting through to Normal??? The ways to talk about Scary skyrocket even higher. to be clear, I don't want this as a form of stealing Scary's narrative, I want it as a way of taking Scary's narrative and hitting the NOS. give her just about everything she wants, for everyone to agree with her and listen to her and think she's right and enforce the belief that she has any power over what's going on and then see if she even likes it. See if she likes herself and see how far she's willing to take the identity of goth punk seeker of darkness. ask her where the line is. show her the road she she's taking and ask her where the line is. canon parallels and connections between normal and scary are a whole other post I can have and will drive to work in the morning writing the meta in my head, the way Normal is a previous version of Scary cranked up to 11 and the way Scary makes herself into a person that Normal has every right to be but isn't becausehe'shumanandflawedbutsogoodatheartandnevergivesuponothersnotevenherandAUGH

[i-am-a-stupid-robot]

Oh, but I am blessed!

[allthingssoulful-garden]

141 tomatoes in the ground, planted last evening. I was planning to buy and plant them a couple of weeks from now, but someone brought us 3 trays of tomatoes a few days ago and they were big enough, I didn't want to keep them in trays much longer.

The first row are, as always, my tiny colorful heirlooms, but turns out the trays were enough to fill the other 3 rows.

Took longer than expected to plant them, but I'm glad it's a gardening task I can check off my spring to do list.

[melancholyfleurs]

woke up early before work today to transplant my seedlings into their buckets on my porch in my gardener lesbian mode now that the last frost is over 👩‍🌾