Pods Pop

Seedling Germinate...

I started the day climbing the stairs with my greenhouse to the backyard. As I headed outside I heard a bang bang bang and shake shake shake. I headed upstairs to the front door from the sun room, slowly. I thought it's either the cops or a burglar but I was set on burglar because the door was being shaken not just banged on. So I crept slowly to the door and and peeked out to see Mike's mom trying to get in... at that point it registered that I wasn't in danger and quickly opened the door to a beautiful day, it was about 61 degrees and sunny. 

After letting Mikes mom in I headed down to the sun room to place my greenhouse in the backyard sun and water them if needed. They were all just the tiniest bit bigger then the night before except for 1. That one doesn't seem like it's going to make it although I still have some hopes for it because as my mom pointed out when she joined me in the backyard for a look-see, "it has a little bit of green there you see?" There is a little green leaf, asleep, in the middle of the inactive crown. Like I said before my mom, still on her break, joined me in the backyard to help me finish watering the strawberries before our walk on the C&O Canal trail starting in Bluemont Park. 

Bluemont Park...

When we arrived at the park it was sunny and beautiful again. We were worried that it might be too chilly for a walk because the backyard had become windy and clouded right before we left. We hopped out of the car quickly and grabbed the plastic bag I'd brought to collect creek rocks in and started our walk. As we walked I told my mom all about continuous lettuce growing and how I'd recently decided to add lettuce to my garden plans. She mentioned that her father had a green thumb like nobody she'd ever known since. He grew lemons, maraNon, guava, mango, cilantro, spinach, papaya, and started the  it all from scratch. I then told her about Plot Against Hunger the charity that provides vegetables and fruits from local and home gardens to the needy children in the area. I mentioned that I had recently volunteered to help with the vegetable garden at the Central Library and anywhere else in the Arlington area. I'd learned some about PAH last year when I first discovered my love for food gardening and the Central Library food gardens. I've planned to donate my extra's from Patch to them but I wanted to do more for them and myself. My garden is small and I won't get to try half of the things I'd like. This way I can garden more and help the children. Amazing! 

As we walked along the trail and creek we collected little rocks shaped slightly like strawberries. I'd read that if you paint rocks to look like strawberries and put them by your plants in the garden the birds will believe them to be strawberries and when the real things grow the birds will believe them to be rocks and leave them alone. We were lucky because the second we decided to turn around it started getting clouded, windy, and looked like rain. Our walk back was quick, cold, and unpleasant. 

Testing...

We hopped in the car and drove back to my home so that I could put my greenhouse back inside. I didn't want the rain and wind to damage my plants. I ran up the drive and into the backyard and put the GH inside. On my way back out I checked my testers. I wasn't expecting anything. I was actually starting to think I had a black thumb for seeds but as it turned out the radish seeds had just sprouted and so had a few of the test spinach seeds. It was pretty amazing to see that they had germinated. I was so excited to find out I didn't have a black thumb I think I sort of uprooted the small babies. It doesn't matter in the scheme of things because I wouldn't have been able to transplant the germination testers but I would have liked to have the self control to allow them to get a bit bigger. Either way it was great to see... my tests, my strawberries, and my faerie garden were growing. YES, my faerie garden! 

Faerie/Container Garden...

The point of the faerie garden was to find out whether or not seeds/seedlings were as sensitive as all of the blogs, books, pins, and website articles made them out to be. It turns out that they aren't as far as germination goes. The Faerie garden has succeeded so far. The spinach seeds I planted have begun to germinate. Yes, it took them the full 14 days but it was worth it to find out that plants have a little wiggle room for mishap. Now, as far as my container goes that's a bit of a weird story. I thought that it wasn't working out so after lunch with my mom (I went back out with her after putting the GH inside) I came back home and started to dig into the container to replant. As I dug in slowly I started to see little white roots. The seeds I'd planted 13 days prior to today had germinated they just hadn't shown signs of germination. What I suspected was in fact true but not in the way I'd suspected, if that makes sense. I thought that the reason my spinach had not grown was that I'd topped them with too much soil and firmed it too firmly. That was the case but what I thought was that if I'd done that that the seeds wouldn't grow at all. That wasn't the case I think they just needed more then the full 14 days to appear because the soil was thick and firm. I don't know that to be a fact they could have died trying to come up, never making it to the surface, and not getting enough light but now I'll never know because I'm sure my digging killed them. Mind you I planted about 33 seeds, just so that I had better chances at getting 3 to germinate, and only dug up 3. After seeing that the 3 had shown some growth I left the container alone except for scraping off about a half inch of the topsoil. I still won't ever know if the seeds died because they were planted wrong, I dug into them, or they just were going to die. I should have been more patient but now I'll replant in another container and see what happens with the current one. As far as I see it 3 successes out of 4 is pretty good for a beginner.