Grow Light, Grow!
Growing Trays
Today I cleared much of the remodeling junk still left in our laundry room away to make room for 4.5 large growing trays. The lamp is a 4 foot fluorescent fixture which holds two medium brightness plant lights. The light is hung about about 12″ above the plant trays: 4 x 50 pod growing trays and a single 36 cell tray.
It has only been 24 hours since we planted the seeds, so there is no sign of life yet. I have the lids on top of the trays and I have lightly spritzed each of the pods as indicated in the directions. None of the trays have any standing water left in the bottom.
Leaving the lids on all of the time seems like a good way to encourage mold growth, but what do I know about it? I can say that the pods do smell rather musky, but I’m sure most of that is the medium.
Outdoors
Emily’s mother gave her several cups with poppy seeds in them about a month ago. They are just now sprouting and they look as if the freezing rain is taking its toll. The upcoming forecast doesn’t seem to indicate much more freezing, so I have hope that spring will start in earnest soon.
Today I mowed the front yard and picked about a half bushel of dandelions from the back yard. These went on top of the wheel barrel full we picked last weekend. There are probably another two more loads of them out there, but we’ve found that this is probably a good time to be battling them.
I do find it daunting that we are clearly selectively breeding these foul weeds. The most obnoxious ones–the ones that flatten an 8″ circle of grass and grow too low to be killed by the mower–happen to be the hardest ones to pull. I think we need to put a lot more focus on those ones, lest they quickly take over the newly vacated spaces of their easier-to-kill cousins.
We were using both the Weed Hound and Grandpa’s Weeder, but sometimes just pulling them out by hand works best. Sometime this week, I’ll do some research to see if there is some way to inhibit their propagation without harming the yard and our empty garden.
I’m keeping a close eye on these moist seeds. Surely a watched plant will indeed sprout… and soon!
