There are many purple martins and bats swooping around in the evening scooping up moths and mosquitos, I suppose. It got me thinking about those birdhouses people make and hang out for the birds. (Bat houses are another matter, altogether) Anyhow, with the trellis in place I have finally become brave enough to attempt to grow some gourds.I had lost a package of long necked gourds, so I ordered additional seeds from the Red Rock Nursery http://www.redrocknursery.com/. The seeds came in two days, free shipping. The new seeds are shaped like snowmen. Luckily I found the long neck seeds and I’ve decided to sow both varieties and see what happens.
I thought I’d mention the method of soaking I use for almost all of my seeds. This has been sucessful with most of my seeds at verifying germination before setting in soil mix or soil. In the photos are shown the Purple Queen Bush Bean Seeds.First choose a small container, one for each type of seed. I started with ice trays, now I’m using 2 ounce plastic cups. (dixie cups work well but are not reusable) Mix 16 oz of water with one ounce of 3% hydrogen peroxide. I put as many seeds as I want plants, plus one, in the cup and cover them with Peroxide water. Let them soak over night. Most seeds soak up alot of water over night and it is recommended to go ahead and plant them, but I don’t. Instead of planting them, I pour off the old water,rinse and re-soak with fresh H202 water.
It seems counter intuitive to soak them so long, since the seeds may rot. I actually had a very smelly incident with some bean seeds but that was before I thought to refresh the water . Since alot of seeds put off refuse from the bio-chemical reactions, it is important to change the water frequently. I am able to see the seeds germinating in the water,and take the guess work out of how many I need to resow. In a couple of days, with beans, you can see the little rootlet start to emerge. With Basil, I actually had lots of tiny green baby leaves floating about after they escaped their gelatonous shell. Pumpkin seeds, you see the shell split and it looks like it is giving you a raspberry.
It seems that the germination time is cut almost in half by soaking this way. And the plants, that made it past damponing off, are growing very well. I can take the germinated seed and place it excactly where I want it to grow rather than casting a lot and wondering which ones might come up. I intend to start as many of my seeds this way as possible.
