Potting up the seedlings
I've never grown borage
before, but I should have guessed from the larger seed size that the
plant wasn't one of those slow-growing herbs. While thyme, oregano, and chamomile
planted in the middle of February are still so tiny that you can hardly
imagine them growing out of their starter cells, the borage planted ten
days later seemed to be too big for its home as soon as the cotyledons
emerged. Time to pot up!
I like to keep the
nutrient levels very low in my seed-starting trays to get the babies to
work on roots while also minimizing problematic soil fungi. But bigger
pots means it's time to mix in well-rotted horse manure along with the stump dirt
or potting soil, at a ratio of one to one. A friend of Mark's
introduced the idea of potting up into plastic cups with holes drilled
in the bottom, which is a great innovation since the pots are cheap and
you're able to keep an eye on root growth. I have a feeling our borage
will require yet one more round of potting up before we're allowed to
set them out in the middle of May, and the clear pots will help me
ensure they don't grow root bound in the interim.
Technical
note: Some of you probably noticed we were unable to make new posts for
the last 24 hours. I'm afraid that comments you made during that time
period may have been lost --- sorry! I think I got to read them all, at
least, although I'm especially sorry that Brandy's comment about
placenta can't be shared with the world....
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.
Thanks so much for the ideas. We've been covered in snow here in Virginia for 3 weeks. We started our tomato seeds 2 weeks ago and they are already up 2 inches. We've order more seeds that should be arriving any day to get some of our other crops started for our growing season. I'm going to try starting grape cuttings to expand our grape wine. Any luck with this?
Amy