Re-growing Celery test

One day not too long ago I tripped over a youtube video on how to regrow celery. So this Thanksgiving I saved the very bottom of the celery stalks that I diced for stuffing. I followed the general directions shared by all the youtube videos of soaking the very bottom of the original celery stalks for days in water. I think I remembered to change the water each day. After the little new baby celery stalks started growing -regrowing celery- I stuck the same bottom of the original celery stalk into wet dirt. Simple... and it's not dead yet! You can see the fresh celery stalks growing in the middle. The old cut-off celery stalks are a bit dried out, but I'm not sure yet if I should remove them or not. So far so good so sharing the story & the photo of the little celery plant that will hopefully regrow itself before I make stuffing again :)



Here's some video how-to-do for trying this yourself!  
Sorry to say I can't remember which celery video I saw first, so I put 4 different regrow celery instruction videos there to help anyone find them faster than I did! Good luck & I really do hope you try this - if it works, can you just imagine not having to buy celery ever again? Pretty cool!

Here's the update picture on how much (or little) the celery grew in 4 days.

Broccoli seeds sprouting

I got a nice surprise this afternoon when I was checking the pots to see if any seeds were drying out. Cute little broccoli sprouts pushing up through the top dirt. I didn't think that broccoli seeds would sprout so quickly though I'm so happy they did.

As with the other seeds I planted the plastic cover has to be left off now that the sprouts are showing. I am also stacking some scraps of cardboard under the pot to ensure the sprouts are only about 2-3 inches away from the light. I am doing it this way in hopes that the sprouts won't get leggy.



Updated: How quickly they grew in only 8 days!


Remembering Last Spring's Mistakes

Last year when I was just getting started with seedlings on indoor plant shelves I made a lot of mistakes. I'm sure I'm not done making them, but I'm trying to avoid repeating the same ones. Other than the cat eating the tops off the new baby plants, I had problems with all these issues:
  • Over watering (soaked roots to death) 
  • Under watering (letting things dry out = dead) 
  • Leggy seedlings (which just fell over dead either from over-watering or under-watering) 
  • Wrong lighting!
  • Very poor air circulation
  • Fungus gnats
  • Transplanting too late
The over watering was horrid. I really took care of the seeds & seedlings, took way too much care of them. Basically, I watered them to death. After a few sessions of emptying out little seed starter size cups of dirt, and seeing how far the roots of little seeds really do go down, I learned that the dirt at the top of the pots doesn't need to be wet, there's plenty of moisture down in the dirt, where the roots are.

Then I over-corrected and stopped watering them in the morning & at night, (yeah, I was that bad), and so I started only watering them every other day. (sighs) Please note: Baby lettuce will die if it dries out. So will every other baby seedling plant. Here's some good basic information I keep handy: http://www.vegetablegardener.com/item/10508/watering-your-seedlings

Once I got decent little 2" plants growing, I was happy. Then I found out tall little seedlings aren't actually healthy, they just haven't fallen over & died yet. Leggy is bad! It's usually caused by... bad lighting. The little guys are stretching up to the light, fighting to survive, and I was unaware. Having the right lighting & distances between the seedlings and the light is vital. I'll probably mess this up again, but this time when I built shelves, I made them adjustable :) I'll have to make another post about that.

My little indoor plants were getting very poor air circulation. It was an effort to save them, basically I protected them to death. The house cat was sneaking onto the plant shelves & eating the tops off the growing veggies. I was so frustrated with the cat (once I figured out is was the cat snacking & not some invisible bug eating plants) that I stuck all the plants into a very small area in a very small room with the door shut. The window in that room is rarely opened. The plants were suffering. They're supposed to get breezes, fresh air, not stuffy still room air.

The evil fungus gnats I nearly forgot to mention. They love moist dirt. They kill baby plants. They are pure evil and put me through hell for 2 weeks. I absolutely suggest learning about them here. http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/insect/05584.html.

Last but not least, by the time I made it through the first learning curves, I had way too many seedlings for the very limited pots that I did have. The weather was not cooperating enough to transplant directly into the garden, and I started a quest to find as many free pots on craigslist.org as possible. Apparently so did everyone else in the county, so I had to get very creative with making temporary "pots". From yogurt containers, to plastic food containers, milk jugs, plastic lined cardboard, and plastic drinking cups. It was frustrating as heck trying to save the plants that actually made it so far, while waiting for the cold weather outside to go away already!

Daily progress planning

Today I planted some oregano seeds and some garlic cloves. That's 2 more pots used and 5 total so far. I thought it would be a good idea to start pots full of things that I will use together at the same time. Sort of like a meal plan done way in advance. We'll see how that works out in a couple months.




The oregano seedlings aren't doing so well, but they did sprout! I'm a bit disappointed but at least they did make a showing. On the other hand, a couple of the garlic cloves did sprout. I can't recall if I planted 5 or 6 cloves, but so far 2 did come up, 1 much faster than the other. Here's the update link 11 days after planting along with pictures of the progress.


Have you planted garlic before? It's pretty easy:

Progress Today

Today I started with plants on the still-not-done indoor plant shelves. So far I've planted Kohlrabi, Romaine Lettuce and Beans (Pinto Beans). I was just planning on testing my latest PVC pipe watering idea with the Kohlrabi seeds, but didn't want to have unused lighted space.

  

Here's the updates!

December 8th: Lettuce sprouted (3 days after planting)


  • Lettuce seedlings with true leaves 
  • Kohlrabi sprouts (update photos are not encouraging)
  • The pinto beans have great leaves & height already!

Kohlrabi test fun

Inside the pot are kohlrabi seeds. In the center is a sawed off pvc pipe section so I can get water to the roots without inviting bugs to wet dirt on top by the future seedlings. I had learned last spring that I over-water and am hoping the pvc pipe watering idea will help me not over-water this time.





Well, here's what the seedlings look like 12 days later. Of about 20 seeds planted, only 3 came up at all. Not sure what I did wrong but we'll see if any of these 3 make it to be an adult plant or not.

 

Indoor plant shelves - Project 2

First of all, I am still learning to post pictures and text with this new phone, so sorry if this post ends up looking wonky.
For a while now I've been dreaming of having indoor plant shelves setup for growing plants in the winter. It's still only fall of course, but time flies and it feels like winter will be here in a blink. The main problem I have had with figuring how to build shelves is that I'm stuck with only being able to get free building materials from craigslist.org. Sure I can design to my heart's content, but when I go to a supply store and see the prices for wood and glass plate shelves I am sad. So the project is taking a bit longer than I imagined.
Luckily by the time people are cleaning out their garages and sheds, they usually just want stuff gone - so it's free! I've made just a few trips around town and managed to get:
- glass shelf pieces (so lights can shine more on plants)
- wood scraps (so I'm not losing money when I cut wrong)
- cardboard and plastic sheets (for making waterproof pot trays)
- plenty of used pots and seedling sized containers
The three things I did have to buy were indoor grow lights, short screws, and the power strip for plugging in all the lights at once. Next time though I hope to remember to look at Goodwill for super cheap power strips.
Sharing the picture(s) to share how far the project has come so far, even though no plants are growing on the shelves yet. The red shoebox holds the seeds that will be in the pots to be on the shelves - and hopefully growing nicely this winter.