Starting from Seed: What You Need and How Do You Do It

Here's some pics of the Peroxide seeds. They have perked up the last few days. On the tomatoes, almost 100% rate, even one of the cucumbers is popping up, but hard to see in the pic. All of these were not new seeds. The cucumber seeds are from either 2015 or 2018 dollar general seeds. Also a pic of seeds from green beans that I got from a local guy that sells at the farmers market. I grew the original plants at least 8 to 10 years ago. Every year i grab a few and I store them the old school way. Hanging in a tin shed. No climate control. No nothing really. Just a net bag. But EVERY YEAR I can grab a couple beans, pop the seeds out, stick em' in the ground and they will grow. I stagger plant them and that way all season long we can go out every few days and just grab a handfull and have them for supper. If you like beans and pork and grilling. We clip off the ends of the beans and make about a 1 1/2 inch bundle, wrap them in real bacon, pin the the bacon on with tooth picks and soaked them in Italian dressing either overnite or at least for a couple hours and them throw them on the barbee till the bacon is done to your liking.

 

@livin' in the woods This is a really cool setup that you have. I like how organized you are and I've been curious about germinating older seeds. I have a fair amount of seeds from older seasons and may need to try the hydrogen peroxide. Thank you for posting the pictures.

 

Things are getting along well. Have been transferring some plants to bigger containers.

 

@Texan

 

These look great! You're going to have an amazing garden!

 

The girls are working hard , Im still building .
S

 

@Cruisin Sloth Very nice! I haven't grown asparagus before.

 

Busy DAY here , needed to clean the Mason Bee houses (i made them ) and let the bees out from last year. I had 4 to five on my hands warming up.
Now to clean the tubes and re lay the parchment paper to get the harvest again .
Maybe 70 out so far.
Sloth

 

@Cruisin Sloth it's amazing that you have honeybees and built your own Bee houses. I want to learn beekeeping someday, but here there are so many fire ants and parasites that I'm worried would attack the Bees. I keep treating my property and am trying to get rid of the pests, but they always come back.
I really want to get out and work in the garden today. I've been stuck working at my desk a lot this week. Hope you are having a wonderful day!

 

They are not "Honey" bees , Mason are a small bee that is used to pollinate the buds. (And not the queer beer type)
They don't sting and are hatched from cocoons. Dark cocoons are male and the light ones are female . The tubes are installed in the drilled house holes
that is marked in paint of yellow and red , all houses are different markings so they know which one is theirs. The tubes are lined with thin parchment paper and inside end is folded shut and then the mother bee only needs to seal one end.
tubes are 1/4 longer that house hole and the paper is 1/4 longer for the tube .



The Tupperware has a hole in it and a dot of honey for food when cold 8c here .

Those tubes didn't get any parchment paper insert or the house never had a tube in installed ..the bee just filled the hole and muddied it over .

[Im rolling the tubes with the paper installed and leave it extend so when i Harvest the conoons , it slides out and rolls out the 5-6 cocoons !

 

@Cruisin Sloth I hadn't heard of Masons before, but according to what I read on google they sound even better than honey bees and have a much higher pollination rate! They sound wonderful. I like the fact that they don't sting. This looks like a very intricate process that takes a lot of patience. Thank you for sharing the updates!

 

Movie of a few flying around me and then into the house , yellow butt is pollin from all the trees and flowers

 

@Cruisin Sloth What a beautiful bee. It looks very content. Thank you for sharing. I torched a lot of weeds today. It was cathartic. I want to plant another food forest.

 

You want to talk starting from seed? Remember how I said to use whatever you've got on hand?? Well check this out!

Bought a tomato, recently. Nice slicing tomato. Good taste (especially for store bought), sliced easy, and made some great BLT's with it!
Liked it so much, I saved FOUR seeds. Planted them last week, and got these coming up this week!

That is, literally a McDonald's large coffee cup, with some potting soil in it. Dropped 4 seeds in, covered 'em up, and watered the soil. Used the clear plastic cup from a fruit cup, as a humidity dome! And got FOUR seedlings from those seeds!

I'll wait until they get bigger, with a couple pairs of "true" leaves (these are just seedling leaves, to get the photosynthesis started), then pick them out of the soil, and transplant them to their own pots. The reason they're so darn leggy (tall), is because I didn't expect them to spring out so darn quick, and they were reaching for the light!

Literally, USE ANYTHING.
(Oh yeah, and that's my Aldi's bought aloe plant, in the background. Bought it in a 3" clay pot, and transplanted it to a bigger container, with cactus potting mix. It's gotten just a little bit bigger, since then!)

 

@natshare
Reading your post ,as i scrolled down , a saw a aloe plant, thought wow some weird hybrid thing again .( Ya know the Mrna or whatever in lettuce )
Sloth

 

@natshare Very nice and resourceful too! Those cups work surprisingly well for seedlings. There was one spring that I got such a kick out of raising all of my seedlings in coffee cups. I would just stab drainage holes in the bottoms and plant.

Your aloe looks really healthy too. My aloe plants are doing well in containers, but the moment I move them off the porch, they lose their color. So I'll let them live on the porch.

 

Remember that old sack of black beans? I just got my 1st round of beans from it! I'm SO excited!!!

So_excited by Alanaana posted May 23, 2023 at 11:39

Round_1 by Alanaana posted May 23, 2023 at 11:39