Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Sometimes you struggle

As with all things in life sometimes you are doing well, other times you struggle, and the garden is no exception to the rule. Over the last few months I have found gardening a struggle and felt myself feeling disheartened and frustrated. If I hadn't been gardening for some years now I might have interpreted this slump as time to quit. But over the years I have had many ups and downs in the garden and I have come to understand that every down is actually a hidden opportunity to learn and grow.

Raising seedlings has been one of my toughest learning paths to tread. And is it any wonder? Seedlings after all are baby plants and like all babies require a great deal of nurture. I guess plants don’t produce hundreds to thousands of seeds at a time for no good reason. But after my great seedling experiment I thought I had it licked. So it was with great disappointment and frustration when all my seedlings died following, what I thought to be, the exact same method.

One of the greatest tools I have in my gardening tool kit... is never hesitating to ask for help. I know this is often easier said than done. When feeling like a failure asking for help takes a great deal of personal strength. But time and time again I have found that the moment I reach out for help the feeling of failure just washes away leaving behind the calm of relief. In this particular case I sort help from Linda Woodrow. She suspected it was something moisture related. One of the her thoughts was the seedlings not getting good enough root to wet soil contact at transplant, due to me not packing the soil around the roots adequately enough. I had questioned this myself at the time of doing it - I was trying to simplify the method thinking watering would do it on my behalf. Sometimes shortcuts don't pay off.


After Linda had given me some clues it got me analysing what other things may have gone wrong. I had been using a small pump action hand sprayer (right) that probably was only giving the plants a light water. I have now swapped that for large pressurised sprayer (left). Much better! With any spray bottle I highly recommend labeling its intended contents.

The final possible issue I believe was caused by a combination of hot house and pot size. My mini greenhouse really works a treat but the raised temperature does seem to cause a lot more moisture loss. Combine that with the little pots I am using and I think they were simply drying out. Why would I be so silly to use such small pots then, you ask, especial as my great seedling experiment revealed that larger pots do indeed work better. The reason is simply limited space. In order to meet my goal I have calculated I need to have around 200 seedling on the go at all times. Currently the only space I have is a single seedling table.


I have now removed the plastic cover off the seedling table and my new batch of seedlings, still in little pots, are doing great. As you can see I have learnt from this failure. The last few days especially, have been very rewarding in the garden indeed.

16 comments:

  1. Hey Jason - I know exactly how you feel! Due to giving up so many times over the years I'm a pretty inexperienced gardener so I find seeds really tough to keep alive.
    One thing I did try that worked this year in my mini-greenhouse (mine's one of those freestanding things with zips on the front) was to use bottles filled with water as heatsinks. Since I started my greenhouse off in the end of winter, when there was lots of sunshine to warm up the greenhouse but nothing to help retain the warmth overnight bar the brick wall it's up against. It was suggested by a coworker and I took it a step further by leaving the lids off the water bottles - so the bottles helped retain the warmth longer, but also helped to keep some moisture in the air within the greenhouse on super hot days. It did seem to work, as I had less of the drying out issues I've previously had in other years.
    Glad to hear you got your gardening groove back :)

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    1. Well as you keep coming back to gardening technically you have never given up, just taken breaks. And sometimes that is what is needed when failure hits. There might be a good fialure management technique in that - allways take a break before declairing to give up.

      Re the idea of water bottles in the greenhouse... I love it! Especially having the lids off to help maintain moisture. So simple. Thanks for sharing it.

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  2. Jason, I found this approach intruiging, but I have yet to try it.
    http://gardendrum.com/2013/10/08/grow-plants-from-seed-in-a-self-watering-pot/

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    1. I like the idea except I would like to know how he goes about planting out. I have had very little success at transplanting when the plants are all grown together in a single container of soil. Their roots go wide and deep and mingle together. Digging them out results in mass root loss.

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  3. Hi Jason, I know just how you feel! I have a bower bird (or more probably several of them - I can't tell them apart!) that is determined to get my seedlings. It's devastated the last several lots. I spent all last weekend securing the shadehouse into a gulag and came home last night to find my carrots razed to the base - grrrrr. I cannot see how it is getting in. Houdini bower bird. I hope the carpet snake gets it!

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    1. LOL. Sorry for laughing but your snake comment struck a funny cord with me. Probably because it conveys so nicely the frustration. I am typically a very nature loving passive person but you will hear me saying "die snail die!" as I push them through the fence into the chicken dome.

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  4. Hi Jason,

    Looks like you use cell trays like I often do (otherwise small pots). Soil can indeed dry out very quickly in them and sometimes won't 'wet' when you do water. I have a shallow tray, large enough to hold the entire cell tray, with water and worm wee or seeweed in it and simply stand the whole tray in it till the cells are thoroughly wet. They get a fertiliser boost at the same time.

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    1. Have I understood correctly that once wet you take them out? Because I had tried wicking mat, but the constant saturation didn't work. And do you put fertiliser in the water every time, and how often do you dip water?

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  5. I too understand your frustration. For me it's rats. I cover my seedlings every night to try and avoid this. We propagate into punnets and then I pot them on. For pots I use the top half of tube stock pots which are placed back into the tray they originally come in but turned upside down. This tray and the pots are placed into the bottom half of a styrofoam corn box to which a layer of seedraising mix has been added. This gives the seedling some protection against drying out. At night they are covered by the top half of the styrofoam box which has recycled plastic glued to it to make a cover.I have very good results with my seedlings, needing a consistent quantity of over 500 seedlings a week.We do have a propagation house and hardening off area which does help in our success rate. I make both the seed raising mix and potting mix here on the farm. When potting up I first water the potting mix thoroughly and then pot up the tiny seedling, still at first leaf stage mostly, press in firmly , cover with a lid and don't water again til next day. At this stage I use a watering can which gives them a good soaking but doesn't hurt them, after that watering is usually by hose. My success rate is extremely high.I feed with seawead weekly until they go out into the hardening off area then they also get fish emulsion weekly. The pots made using the top of half of the tube stock are to us a perfect size and have the added benefit of being extremely easy to plant out as they have no bottom they are easily pushed out from the bottom thus reducing transplant shock. We wash all of our pots after use to eliminate any pathogens. Hope this info is of some help.

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    1. It is always good to hear other peoples techniques. The more examples you get presented with the more the common components start to stand out. You have got me thinking about the seed raising mix at the bottom of the box as a water reservoir. I have tried wicking mat that kept the pots constantly wet but it made them too wet. Your approach would do a similar thing but perhaps not so aggressively.

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    2. Hi Jason, it's definitly not too wet. Our home made potting mix is very free draining. It makes a wonderful little microclimate!

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    3. Have you had any problems the styraphome boxes cooking the seedlings when in direct sunlight, like I did? Or do you keep the seedlings shaded? Also am I correct in understanding you created a clear plastic lid for the boxes? Just found this post of yours.

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    4. No problems at all with overheating quite the opposite in fact. The lids are heavy duty plastic so not so clear, we even have some with vinyl on them left over from some flooring.

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  6. I've been gardening for six years now and we have recently moved to a full-grown nursery complete with greenhouses. Fall is here in Europe and I thought that with having greenhouses I can keep my family fed all winter. I started planting cold-weather vegetables a month ago and felt sure that within a month, the greenhouse would be green with food for the winter!
    A week went by and hardly anything germinated. I had kept everything moist and even though it was cold outside, the greenhouse was toasty inside because of all the sun we were having. After three weeks there was still no or little germination and I was soooo frustrated! In the last four years of gardening I hadn't had any such luck in raising plants! The seeds were fresh, the soil good, I had watered enough! What was wrong? In the end it dawned on me that cold-weather plants might not like greenhouses at 30 C for germination! So I opened all the windows and doors, we had a wet and cloudy spell and I replanted everything. The greenhouses stayed cool to cold and everything is growing well now!
    But it goes to show even with so much gardening experience under my belt, I still make mistakes or turn off my brain sometimes. Nature is great about keeping us humble and showing us that there is always more to learn! ;)
    So, keep up the gardening and if it doesn't work, tweak the system until it does. :)

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    1. "Nature is great about keeping us humble and showing us that there is always more to learn!" So true, and so nicely put. And thanks for sharing such a great story. Moisture and temperature seem to be the two key variables that need to be managed.

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  7. Hey Jason
    Sorry that this is unrelated to this particular blog. We are going to turn our swimming pool into a natural fishpond, with native weeds etc. Are you aware of anyone in the permaculture community that has done this? I've seen instructions for doing it in other states, but nothing specific to South Australia. Cheers Brett Jensen (brett.jensen@outlook.com)

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