Sunday, March 6, 2011

Potting Greenhouse seedlings

I ran out of pots and my creative pots. I had some Styrofoam cups sitting around so I pulled those out and poked a small hole in the bottom and started potting my seedlings. Even with the cups I had I found I still had to go out and buy some more. All the seedlings with an extra long stem went down into the cup so that they new looked like a normal plant with a normal size step showing above the soil. And really its not a bad idea to have the roots deep. Its for the reason that with El Paso's hot weather in the summer, the soil can get very hot and its good that the plants have a deep rooted system to protect them from the heat. I read this in a preview to dessert gardening book I previewed at Amazon. Plus a lot of them were tomatoes and the instructions for those were to plant 2/3s of them stem below the ground. Tomatoes easily adapt and grow new roots where underneath the soil. That makes them sound like little monsters doesn't it? But if its one thing I'm confident about I will have some nice tomatoes this summer.

Being that these seedling are young and had been inside the nice warmth of the greenhouse, I decided to place them in my bedroom window which receives full sun. However I do have extra thick windows that are treated to block out plenty of UV rays.





The plants rather like this spot but they still go into shock when they get full sun. An example is the Jamaica. Some of the leaves on those seedling plants unexpectedly wilted. One was even left with now leaves and I'm expecting that one to die. I'm starting to wonder if since Jamaica is very much a tropical plant, if it will do well in the hot El Paso sun, or if it will need shade, or just stay indoors. I'm probably going to have to plant some more to leave room for error.
Wilted Jamiaca in Center
 Here are some that I saved but had some leaves wilt.  They seem to be fine now that they are indoors.


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