Sunday 8 July 2012

Sow, Sow, Sow Your Seeds: Gently

Small Sugar Pumpkin Seedlings
Annndddd... we have seedlings! Yes! Sowed on Monday, these babies came up by Thursday! Germination rate is 100%. Thank you, Diana of Kebun Bahagia Bersama. :-) I do wonder if these are too close together? The vines will sprawl all over the place, right? And I'll have to train them to go where I want them to, I suppose. Can they climb at all?

Small Bitter Gourd (Peria Katak) flanked by 2 Red Romaine Lettuce babies. In the front is a rather flopsy looking Rainbow Chard.
Oops the bitter gourd is almost invisible in this pic. It was looking a bit unhappy in the Glorious Gutter Garden where it is shady and slightly boggy, so I moved it to this spot where it will receive direct afternoon sunlight. I didn't want it to be lonely so I put these bright-coloured leaf veggies that will hopefully provide a nice contrast. They look a bit sorry here due to just being transplanted, but a few hours later they had perked up nicely.

Yellow Pear Cherry Tomatoes. I hope they like their new spot.
I moved these tomato plants because their original sowing pot was looking a bit crowded, and some bugs are sucking away merrily at some of the leaves. I sprayed these with some fruity enzyme and pray they will get well. I am thinking a basil in the middle would not be out of place. Or maybe some leafy greens? I am still undecided about the rest of the plants, I wonder if I dare grow some of them upside-down?

Parsnip seedlings?
Topweight carrots are now waving their tiny fronds in the breeze, but where, oh where are my parsnips? Turns out parsnips do take a few weeks to sprout. A few days ago I spotted these tiny seedlings in the area where I sowed parsnips. Could this be? There are about 3 of these in total. I forgot how many I sowed though.

Surprise Loofah Gourd??
Honestly I was very surprised to find this growing around the spot where I transplanted my first loofah gourd seedling several weeks ago. One fine morning I found that the seedling had disappeared, and a very satisfied-looking snail was heading away from the crime scene. I disposed of the murderer humanely (put it outside my house compound, near some grass), mourned the loss of my transplant and set about sowing new ones. It seems that the munched up loofah gourd has made a comeback. Hooray! Including this one, I now have FOUR loofah gourd plants. :-)

7 comments:

TukangKebun said...

Pumpkin baby plants look good. They can climb but the dangling fruit will be smaller than the one on the ground. Rainbow chard does not like shady area, won't grow much. Looks like Parsnip seedlings. Parsnip does take a long time to germinate.

Anonymous said...

ah i feel addicted looking at seedlings. such a new hobby.
Ah you're loofah probably has 9 lives like your cats too :D
I havent been planting again since my first attempt, boohoo :( But I'm prepping up the soil at the moment. Time.time..where are u timeee

Mama Pongkey said...

Tukang Kebun, I'll let the pumpkins sprawl then. I have to train them carefully so they don't get run over by the car when it comes in and out. You're right, the rainbow chard does look happier out front. I lost the previous seedlings because they didn't get enough sun perhaps. I hope new parsnip shoots have come up, it is a bit hard to tell because I recently mulched the area with citronella serai wangi cuttings. The kailan seeds from you seem to be sprouting now too underneath the ground cover :-)

DYTIP, I feel the same way too. So much fun, and so many possibilities. I am a bit impatient to be honest, I cangkul away the soil, dump goat compost in, cover it with soil and straightaway sow some seeds. I figure the soil will be ready by the time the seedlings need the nutrients. Yeay about the loofah, that was a pleasant surprise. I want to sow some more seeds today but dunno if I have the time.

Autumn Belle said...

Seeing your babies makes me want to plant more vegies in my garden. The snails are the most wanted criminals in my garden. They chomp away many of my cute seedlings. When I pick and threw them outside my house compound, they had a party there and a patch of my groundcovers went botak!

Mama Pongkey said...

Autumn Belle, I had a snail come in a while back, I placed it outside my gate near a tree, but it came back. Finally I placed it about 50m away from my house under some bushes. But now I have mealybugs and grasshoppers making themselves at home. I am actually quite hesitatnt to plant flowers, but lately I have been more bold. Hahaha. We'll see how it goes. Certainly your babies make me wish for a similarly luch garden :-)

Bangchik and Kakdah said...

Hah... snail, the night crawler will come again for better meals.. haha.

Mama Pongkey said...

Hee I hope not. Birds come to my front lawn to eat cat food I leave out for some visiting cats. Yes, I know, birds eating cat food???? So I hope they snack on any snails as well. :-)