Seedlings

After spending some quality time under Lara Hughey's tutelage volunteering at the San Pedro garden church I sprung for my own styrofoam seedling starting tray.  I couldn't find them at a local garden shop and $31 I paid for them through Amazon seemed steep.  These seem sturdier than the plastic trays I've tried to use of seasons past that got brittle in the sun or too floppy when full of just watered soil.  Since I had a bunch of warm season veggie seed packets languishing on the back porch, I decided to start some experiments.  Each cell in a row has a different variety of seed in it.  I add 2 additional rows every weekend so that the plants will be at different maturity levels to prolong harvest.  The knives mark what row I've filled up to and the start+end of the bean section.

Here are some notes on performance so far (moving into week 5) reading the cells from left to right.  If I'm super organized, maybe I will come back to this post to keep adding updates.    

Tomatoes-- 

Riesentraube (Baker Creek "free gift").  A disappointment so far, none have sprouted.  There are a bunch of volunteer tomatoes in the aquaculture bed and the side yard to pick up Risentraube's slack.


Zucchini--

Black Beauty is coming along nicely.  It is starting to show its first characteristically squashy leaf rather than just those initial 2 cotyledons.

Gray Zucchini hasn't germinated yet at all.  These were pretty old, much abused seeds, so this is not entirely a surprise.

Cucumber--

Lemon Cucumber seems like it will be the leggier variety.  Its sprouts are about a half inch taller than the Bush although it is at the same stage of leaf out.

Bush Champion has a more erratic germination rate going on so far.  One cell had 0% germination, the other had 100% (all 3 seeds).  So they may be shorter because it is 3 plants using the resources of one cell.  It could be they are a year older than Lemons (packed for 2015 vs. 2016).

Melon--

Kajari is one of the most exciting front runners.  It has the highest germination so far (4/6 seeds from week 1) and they are taller than the Lemon cucumbers.  These should hopefully yield pretty striped melons that taste like honeydews.

Squash--

Table Queen acorn squash seems to be reluctantly starting a single sprout of the 6 originally planted.

Beans-- the instructions suggested soaking these for a couple hours prior to planting, so that was what I did.  It helps that almost all of them look distinctive from each other so you can soak several in the same container without worrying about which is which.

Purple Podded Pole fastest to sprout and has shot up the highest of the bean section.

Golden Wax has made slightly less progress when compared to Calima, but like the Bush cucumber, this may be due to erratic germination and 2 seedlings sharing a cell.

Calima Bush is showing promise as the most vigorous of the bush beans and may give purple pole a run for its money.  Evidently we pick these at pencil thickness or less.

Red Swan hasn't sprouted at all yet :(

Dixie Speckled Butterpea (lima) Lima's seem to sprout faster than typical bush beans.  Dixie seems to be more prone to rot or damping off, but the 1 seedling that is established is the most mature developmentally of the 2 lima varieties.

Henderson's Bush (lima) seems to have a higher germination rate than Dixie, but may take a little longer to get going.

Watermelons-- like gray zucchini, these were all in the tiny plastic hand labeled seed packets that lead me to believe I purchased them a long time ago (when seeds were novel and I was organized) and have not conscientiously stored them in a cool dry place.  Fortunately, a lot of them still sprouted.
Black Diamond is middle of the pack with 2/6 germination and developmentally, they're all in relatively similar sized cotyledon stage.  Baker creek claims these can get pretty big.  

Black Seeded Ice Cream has the lowest germination of the watermelons (1/6).  Baker creek claims these store well into winter.

Blacktail Mountain has highest germination of the watermelons (3/6).  They seem the leggiest, but they are at the end that gets extra shade so they may have to be in order to grow.  Baker creek claims they are one of the earliest melons at 70 days, so they may just be early bloomers.