Saturday, June 3, 2023

Gardening failures

Sugar Snap Peas.

Two varieties tried. Germination about 10%. Insecticide used in replant because I suspected wire-worms. Germination was only slightly better with the replant.

Rose seeds

Multiple sources. 0% germination. Driving by one of my seed sources I saw that they had been sprayed with herbicide. I do not know if it was before I collected seeds or afterward.

Some lettuce seeds

Old seed suspected. I need to purge all seeds older than 3 years old.

Some sweet corn seeds.

More recently planted seeds that were planted a week later are popping up while older seeds planted sooner are showing no signs of germinating. Will replant to pickling cucumbers.

Grafted persimmons

I transplanted them last fall. The grafted trees still have green inner-bark but are not breaking dormancy. Ungrafted seedlings are growing like weeds.

Successes:

Most of the orchard, onions, flour-corn, sweet-corn from new seeds, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, beets, sunflowers, cucumbers, melons, herbs, lettuce that was transplanted.

Irrigation plan. The switch on the booster pump is Tango-Uniform so I can only run one impulse sprinkler at a time. I run the impulse over-night and the trickle in the orchard for two hours in the morning. At this time I have a four-day-rotation with the impulse sprinklers.

Weeds grow like wildfire when watering.

At this point, the beans are somewhere between success and failure.

12 comments:

  1. Do you have any experience with seeds that are vacuum packed such as those sold by various prepper merchants?.
    Boat Guy

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have not.

      But I have stored seeds in the freezer and it seems worthwhile given the small amount of space required and the amount of food that can be grown.

      Once a seedline is in the ground, some of the plants can be allowed to go-to-seed to regenerate the line.

      Delete
    2. Thanks for that!
      BG

      Delete
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  2. By purging old seed do you mean raking out a bed and scattering?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Going through my various storage stashes and pitching the old seeds.

      Delete
  3. Before just discarding all the old seeds, you might find it worthwhile to read the linked post, which looks at whether some techniques used to germinate very old seeds might be helpful for seeds less than a few thousand years old.
    https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2023/05/23/germinating-extremely-old-seeds/

    ReplyDelete
  4. My tomatoes, peppers and cucumber seeds germinated fine and are transplanted in the greenhouse. All the cole crops so far have been an utter failure, the germinate and either die back or fail to thrive. Never had this happen before and I’m using the same regional blended soil I have always used and it came from the same bag as the tomatoes etc. I ended up buying starts from the local greenhouse for the hoophouses!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sounds like some of the seed packs may not be as quoted... While aging can cause some losses, 100% is a bit odd.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Our only failure this year was summer squash. They are supposed to be heirloom. I saved seeds from a pair of overripe gone by squashes, as I do for other vegetables. Those seeds never sprouted. Leftover seed from the original package never sprouted either. Bought a new package and all seeds sprouted. So I have squash plants, but no idea why the early seeds never did.
    Southern NH

    ReplyDelete
  7. Last year's garden failure: Planting tomatoes on ground the grew beans the year before. They would only ripen on the counter and not on the vine. Too much nitrogen. Mater of fact the vines were like bushes.

    ReplyDelete
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