I'm still alive

And the moonflowers have been blooming steadily through the month of September. For some reason, they aren't very fragrant, but I think that it has something to do with the low-ish temperatures we've been having.

Also, there have been giant radishes.

Almost there ...

It is cold, rainy and miserable and the first moonflower bud looks just about ready to open up. Will it be tonight?

Moonflower craziness, seedlings + lithops

I don't know why I was so shocked yesterday when I saw that my moonflower seeds had exploded into growth only 4 short days after planting given what happened last time but I was. This time around, I think I got the moisture level right because there's no white mold. Hopefully, they don't turn purple or get eaten by bugs.

Moonflower top growth

Moonflower bottom growth

Speaking of getting eaten by bugs, here's what nice and healthy bug-free bok choy looks like. Beautiful, isn't it?

In fact, all of my second generation (for 2011) seedlings are pretty healthy looking, although some of the older parts of the stems growth on the orachs and brassicas look a little skinny and weak compared to the newer growth (i.e., thinner at the bottom of the stem than at the top). The transition between skinny and fat at the node where the seed leaves grew from. This could probably be corrected by growing them next time at lower temperatures and with the lights a bit closer after germination.

Second gen seedlings 2011

Di Cicco Broccoli

Red orach

Orach

As for my lithops, they all seem to be doing interesting things. There are nice plump lithops and then there are wrinkly-looking guys. Some are changing colours, others are retreating into the ground, and yet others ... are they supposed to look like that?

Is this normal?

I'm from Buenos Aires and I Say KILL 'EM ALL!

There's still snow on the ground and my seedlings and young plants have been beset by a nefarious plague.

Remember the good old days when chez Dirt Gently's was a sea of green and the only worry was a spot of unsightly fluffy white fungus? Oh, how good it was to be blissfully innocent!

It seems that the plants in the propagation and germination station have been overrun with leafhoppers turning the propagation and germination station into a miniature version of Klendathu. Sadly, my foes weren't even the cool-looking multi-coloured ones (leafhoppers, that is, not arachnids). Instead, these guys:

Know your foe: Leafhopper

The little buggers laid waste to the jalapeno peppers, bacopa, cape daisies, moonflowers and bok choi. Thankfully, the datura and spinach have been spared; while I've found a few bugs on these young plants, they have mostly been undamaged.

The field of battle

The adult and young bugs suck the juice from the undersides of leaves, leaving behind a payload of toxic saliva that causes leaf burn, "windowpanes" in the leaves where they feasted and, in young shoots, causes leaf distortion.

Broken windowpanes

A little crooked

Leafhoppers especially like to hang out along thick veins on the underside of leaves, on the apical meristem where they'll royally mess up your new growth, in the crotches between the main stem and petioles on my bok choi, and at and just below the crown. Basically, if it's a hard to get at area, leafhoppers live there.

Is a live and let live policy preferable to war with the bugs? Maybe, if I could rely on predator insects to knock these little bastards off. But it's much too cold for the bugs that like to eat 'em to be very active.

I applied neem oil to the tops and bottoms of the leaves as thoroughly as I could, and spent considerable time daily manually squashing the bugs, but my efforts appeared to be futile. As a last resort, I drenched with insecticidal soap. This burned the plants and left holes in the leaves where there once were "windowpanes."

I've quarantined these plants again, leaving the germination station rather bare. I'm debating destroying the affected plants as I can't seem to get rid of the bugs, and two flats of newly germinated seedlings to protect. The other alternative is to leave the plants outside for a day, hoping that the cold kills off the bugs but not the plants. What do you think?

Dirt Gently Nursery for Slightly Fungus-ridden Toilet Paper Rolls: an Update

The seedlings have thrived in their toilet paper homes despite the initial appearance of white fuzzy fungus. There's no visible trace of the stuff any more on the rolls themselves, or on the soil surface. Instead, carpets of lush green growth.

Well, "carpets" might be overstating things a bit, but there is certainly a lot of happy little seedlings with one or more sets of true leaves today. Even the sad-looking purple moonflower seedling, and his brother whose seed coat is permanently attached to its seed leaves, are starting to vine away.

Clearly, time to pot them on, but with only a limited amount of potting soil on hand, only the most desperately leafy were transplanted today.

The germination rate for the bok choi from Richters was excellent, with 15 of 16 seeds producing viable little guys. I sowed these a little too densely with 4 seeds per TP tube. As I separated out the toilet paper tubes and peeled back the cardboard, it was clear that the fungus had been driven underground and was thriving between the tubes and in the seed mix. Still, roots and leaves looked healthy — roots were peeking out from every crack in the rolls and some had even driven right through the cardboard. I thinned each tube to 2 seedlings each, and planted two tubes intact, and two tubes with the cardboard removed.

I ate the thinnings; they tasted like roquette.

Next up was the Bloomsdale long-standing spinach from Sage Garden Herbs, with 5 seedlings for 8 seeds planted. These were not thinned, and were planted 1 intact, 2 naked. Roots looked healthy, though less rambunctious than bok choi, and the fungus was also comfortably co-existing.

Out of those that have emerged, most of the Tree & Twig Jaune du Doubs carrot seedlings still looked a bit small. Only 7 seedlings out of 16 seeds have emerged to date. There was 1 tube showing 3 seedlings so this was transplanted into the same container as the spinach, TP tube intact, after the smallest seedling was removed.

Eight of 8 cape daisy seeds from Seeds & More had hatched, so tubes were planted intact and 2, naked. 2 seedlings were immediately thinned, one each from an intact and naked tube.

The purple moonflower was also transplanted.

I'll probably give the TP rolls one more shot and see if baking them before use (paper burns at 451°!) will prevent fungal growth, and if the seedlings I planted with TP rolls intact do OK.

The purple menace

So my lovely, vigorous moonflower seedling has been gradually turning purple over the last several days. What's up with that? The purpleness started with the stem and crept its way up into the veins of the seed leaves. The leaves themselves are now a mottled with yellow, green, and purple-black areas instead of the healthy green of a couple days ago.

February 28: Lower stem purple but otherwise healthy looking

March 1: Seedling still looks healthy ...

March 1: ... and so I'm not worried yet

March 3: Now worried. Purple stem, veins. Leaves purple-black, yellow. Sad trombone.

Even though some other seedlings also have purple stems, and true leaves appear to be emerging from this moonflower seedling (see below), the seed leaves look pretty unhealthy. Am I worrying too much?

Moonflower crotch shot. Wonder what kind of search engine referrals this will bring?

Some googling leads me to believe that this may be due to impaired phosphorus uptake and the resultant  increased concentration of anthrocyanins in the plant due to restricted transport of sugars around the plant. Possible culprits include restricted root growth (compacted soils), too-cold or too-moist soils, too much light, or a shortage of micronutrients (B, Fe, Mg) (Why are corn seedlings turning purple?, Purple pepper leaves, Help! My seedlings are turning purple, what do I do? Function of phosphorus in plants). Given that it's pretty warm in the propagator, the soil is moist-but-not-wet, and there's a rootlet poking out of the drainage hole at the bottom of the pack, I am leaning towards restricted root growth. Time to pot it up, I guess ...

Hopefully the toilet paper rolls are deep enough for the moonflower seedlings in Dirt Gently's Nursery for Slightly Fungus-ridden Toilet Paper Rolls.

In the same plastic 4-pack as the purple moonflower, a couple of "chinese spinach" seedlings seemed to have succumbed to damping off, or maybe they were just weak to begin with. I will have to keep an eye on things. I wasn't so concerned about how purple they were because that's how they came up.

February 27

February 28

March 1: 2 weak-looking seedlings top centre

March 3: Weak seedlings die

March 3

It looks like even more little lithops seedlings have appeared overnight. They are delivering 100% concentrated happy like champs.

Meanwhile, in Dirt Gently's Nursery for Slightly Fungus-ridden Toilet Paper Rolls, the seedlings keep on coming up and the white fluffy fungus seems to have mostly disappeared. You can see that the spinach and bok choy seedlings are starting to develop true leaves. Like the moonflower, the stems of some of the seedlings are also turning purple, but it can't be because of restricted root growth: the seedlings are tiny, and there's at least 3" of medium in the TP rolls.

February 28: bacopa seedlings emerging from pellet

March 3: Bacopa seedlings

Bok choy: 94% germination!

Purple in front, green in back. WTF?

True leaves developing on most bok choy seedlings

March 3: Spinach

March 3: Spinach true leaves budding

March 3: Cape daisy with 100% germination

March 3: Tree & Twig carrots

 The ivy geraniums continue to bloom under lights.