Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Seeds planted....First of the season!

I finally planted some seeds for the 2011 season!  Bitter gourd seeds(that I saved from the ones bought last year from grocery store) was the first to be planted on March 1st.  All 27 of them.  No germination yet!  I did soak them for 2 days before planting(I read that it improves the chances of their germination).  Ofcourse, bitter gourds(or any asian gourds for that matter, are notoriously slow to germinate with very low germination rates)  I will wait another two weeks before giving up on them.  Atleast I didn't pay an arm and a leg to get these seeds :)

The other vegetable that got planted on March 4th was Eggplant.  Three different pkts of eggplant!  These are also very slow to germinate, so I decided that they get seeded next.  Fairy Tale egpplant(6 seeds) is new this year with 55 days to harvest (the earliest of all eggplants).  I couldn't find them anywhere in local stores(I called all the garden centres around) and finally bought them online.  The other variety is Long Purple eggplant(6 seeds) which was from last year's leftovers.  The third pkt is a mixed variety called Burpee's Garden blend and has 4 varieties - Applegreen, Rosa Bianca, Millionaire Hybrid and Snowy Hybrid in equal proportion.  6 of them got planted( I wonder which ones got planted- will have to wait and see!).  No germination yet.


Bitter Gourd and Eggplant seeds in trays.


I keep my seed starting trays by the south facing windows.  No lights or any other accessories.  Last year, I was successful with this method, but then last year, in March the temps were 40-50s.  This year, it has yet to reach 40s and sunshine is quite rare too.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

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