Month: February 2017

Great success with the second batch of Walla Walla onions!  Amazing germation rate from the package of seeds I purchased off a seller on eBay.

The first batch started out fantastic – but most died off because of the damping off fungus.  As noted in one of the prior posts, I saturated the tray with water at the bottom to keep the soil good and wet for the seeds to sprout.  Well, that caused the damping off fungus to grow and take over.

With the new batch of Walla Walla onions, I put about half of the amount of water in the trays – just enough so the soil was saturated and nothing was left in the bottom of the tray.  In addition, my small Dollar General fan provides a nice breeze to the plants when the lights are on (all on a timer).  With using less water and the constant breeze to dry out the top, damping off wasn’t a problem this time!

The two photos below were taken on the 20th of February.  They are doing very well for being about a week past their germination date.

The photo below shows the “old” onion seedlings on the left side.  You can see that there are very few left.  On the right side are the “new” onion seedlines – all doing very well and growing strong.

How about the Ventura celery?  It is doing good too!  In the prior post, I had mentioned that the celery had great germination.  I planted four containers with four seeds each (16 seeds total).  Upon counting, 13 (or 14) of those 16 germinated.  Not bad for seed that was stored in the freezer from 2010!

Storing seeds in the freezer is a great way to ensure your seeds stay viable for much longer.  Be careful to put seeds in a place where they won’t be disturbed very much.  I keep mine at the bottom of the freezer in a ziplock bag.  When I a ready to use them, I will be as quick as possible with opening the ziplock bag, pull out only the seeds needed, and put them back in the freezer.

So the Ventura celery are growing well.  I really dislike thinning out seedlings because I feel it is a waste, but you also have to ensure you plant enough to get at least one good sprout!

Off to a good start with the seeds now!  Still.. just am not sure what to do with the garden and how to keep the deer and other critters out.  It has been a major disappointment the past few years with the wildlife damaging tomatoes, green beans, and others.

The Ventury Celery has sprouted!

I’m quite impressed.  A total of 16 Ventura celery seeds were planted from seed that was from 2010 – seven years old.  About 13 of those germinated!

They are INCREDIBLY small still, but it took about seven days to germinate.  You can see a slight green spot in the second-from-bottom planter and two small green spots in the bottom planter.

I am writing this entry two days after I took the pictures – and when I checked the morning, some have the first two small seedling leaves showing up and are easier to see.  Probably will have pictures next week.

For the onions – what a difference the fan has made.  Running the fan while the lights are on has kept the top of the soil mostly dry.  That is great and so far, it has prevented damping off fungus from growing.

You can see the older Walla Walla onions in the background – and in the front are the newly germinated Walla Walla onions.  Again, these pictures are a couple of days old now – and every single cell (from memory anyways!) has at least one seedling – and many have two.  More great germination on this second batch of onions.

Some good progress so far.  Just hope that the new onion seedlings all do well.  If they do, I am not sure where I’ll be planting all of them!  There will be approximately 144 new onions (that is, if there is 100% germination) plus around 30 older onions.

Problem is – I’m already using a good chunk of space under the germination station.  I’ve planted twice as many onions as I typically do, so a full row under the germination station is being used – that would otherwise be used to start the tomatoes, peppers, and lettuce.

I have not fully decided yet – but I may not plant peppers this year.  Or if I do, maybe only half as many.  We have at least two full gallon-sized bags of chopped peppers in the freezer still.  They don’t seem to get used nearly as quick as others.  Heck, we still have about a half a bag of chopped up onions too.

The Walla Walla onions have not done well over the past couple of weeks.

They were moved out from the front (noth-facing) bay window.  While I don’t know if it was an issue with low light, the onions were dealt a major defeat.  They have been put back under the ‘germination station’ with the lights.

I expect it is due to ‘damping off’.  Every single cell had at least one – or two – onion seedlings growing very well.  Then all of a sudden – I’m down to about 35 onions.  All of the others fell over and withered.  I had noticed that all over the top of the soil, there was a white substance.  Looking it up online, I thought maybe it was mold or mildew growth.  Instead, if was the damping off fungus.

Damping off fungus is caused by too much moister and/or not enough air circulation.  I’ve never done much with air circulation before – so now there appears to be yet another dimension to growing seedlings.

Online, some people said to spray down the top of the soil with a 3% solution of hydrogen peroxide.  Hydrogen peroxide already comes in a 3% solution at the store, so that seemed like an easy fix.

Not sure yet whether or not that will help keep the damping off fungus at bay or not.  At this point, it really is too late anyways.

So, I planted another two containers of Walla Walla onions over the weekend to ‘start over’.  I’m still going to grow the onions that made it through – but 35 onions most likely will turn into 10 good onions in the garden.  Just my luck with how well they grow – or at least from what success I had when using Copra or Red Bull onions in prior years.

While I was planting again, I also decided to plant some Ventura celery.  I attempted some celery last year – but they never made it.  The seed I have is back from 2010 from FedCo seeds.  So it is seven years old already!  Hard to believe I have been gardening in the current house for that long of a period.

So, now the germination station is starting to fill up.  I still only have the one light though – no reason to get the other lights ready until I get germination out of the new Walla Walla onion seeds and the Ventura celery.

See the little fan there in the bottom left?  That is a small fan I got at Dollar General.  Only consumes 2.5 watts of power, so very little.  Problem is – I don’t want the fan running the entire time the lights are on – so that means having to get another timer to run that.  My thinking is to let it run for maybe 15 minutes and then off for 30 minutes.  Just enough to keep some air rotating every now and then.  But I will have to really watch the soil and water as needed since it will dry the soil out.  That is the idea for the top of the soil though – keep the moisture on top as low as possible but still allow moisture underneath.