Today's post will be very short because my eyes are watering and burning something fierce. It's either looking at a screen for 17 hours a day every day, or it's allergies. Not sure. Anyway, I didn't do much for my garden today.
What I did do, is to plant the corn seeds that I soaked for about 20 hours. They were still hard when we took them out, but they were much plumper. I am never sure how long to presoak seeds. Mel is amazingly silent on the issue and the advice I've gotten is mixed.
Anyway, my 4 year old was excited to help plant the corn (his favorite veggie). And he liked watching the peat pucks grow. Cute suckers. It was a fun 15 minutes with my son.
Note that after my spinach/onion fiasco, I took pains to label my seeds so I know which is which. But it was hard. More than once I absentmindedly tried to mess up the seed order. I'll get better I swear.
So now these peat pucks are sitting on top of the fridge germinating. I can't wait to be able to plant these. Note that I only planted 16 total seeds. If I plant these too early and they fail, I'm not out much. However, if they work, I'll do 30 each next time (in about 3 weeks, or 2 weeks after I plant these). I figure doing 50 or 60 at a time will help me get to my 200 stalks fast enough to not miss the season.
And if my corn fails completely? No problem, I'm out $5 in seeds and the use of 44 SF this season. Next season I'll be able to plant much more of what works, and maybe even try out something new, like pumpkins, cantalope or watermelons. Who knows.
Your corn should not fail completely, although you're tempting a large setback. This "cold snap" we are in is going nowhere anytime soon. We're still 6-12 degrees below normal for the next two weeks. Possibly more of the same after that. In your enthusiasm to get things going, you're doing things too early. Me too. All of my cool weather crops I have outside are doing exactly what yours are: sitting there waiting for warmer weather. I think next year I'll have a grande indoor lighting setup where I can start seeds in early March and put them out mid April thru early May.
ReplyDeleteI thought Mel said to soak beans for no more than 4 hours due to their getting over-plump and splitting. For other seeds I remember reading to soak them overnight. I've done over night with most seeds and that seems to work well.
ReplyDeleteAlthough only about half of my peas came up since I put them in 5 weeks ago. I think the other half were mostly poached by slugs and snails.
I found a HUGE snail this morning. Most of the ones I find are smaller than a nickel. This monster was about the size of a golf ball. Luckily he hid under the boards I have on the ground so I grabbed him and tossed him in the yard waste bin. They seem to like it in there.