Friday, December 27, 2013

thinning and transplanting

the wild potatoes have been up and running for twenty-three days now and i have taken ( with no small amount of trepidation ) the first step in moving them on...i will need the germinating tray they are living in right now soon enough to start some more wild potatoes among other things so i took the two larger ones down to the plant room, put some compost and potting soil in peat pots, peeled back the netting on the peat pellets, set the pellets in the pots, and filled in with more potting soil and compost "hilling" it up around the base of the somewhat leggy plants...then i took them back upstairs and into natural light to see if i have jumped the gun an done more damage than i wanted to...the roots are still safely encased in the peat pellets so i am hoping there wasn't much in the way of root disturbance...the aim is tuber to work with in a few months because i have had zero results with direct seeding in the past few years...more on this success ( or disaster ) as it develops...there are still three more wild potatoes up and i have more than one hundred seeds left...i will start again if necessary...some of the failed kinua seeds had begun to mold in the pellets with the seedlings so i began to clear them out as well...i was going to remove the stunted plants as well but discovered their roots were hopelessly intertwined with those of the larger plants...so the runts stayed...the mold did not.

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