6,340 Garden Web Discussions | Growing from Seed
My morning glories have been out for 3 weeks!!! I was covering them at night for the first week or so and now they are vined about 5 feet up my trellis already! I am zone 4....so yes...your mg can get into the ground if you ask me!!!My marigolds have been out for a week and are doing fab,.....I would say to get your plants outside, they are prob. in need of some sun, wind, rain, and real soil!!!!
Thank you so much! I didn't knick the Moonflower seeds, so that may be the problem there. I tried to with the castor beans, but I don't know if I suceeded or not. I saw some suggestions on knicking seeds, so I'll have to try that.
Thanks again! :)
Alicia
Actually, no....not like a bonsai mix. At least not the bonsai medium that I am familiar with. Though bonsai medium does have bark fines, it also has inorganic particles such as Turface MPV, granite grit, etc. Mine has no peat whatsoever.
A nursery mix is intended for the growing of woody plants in the nursery setting....in containers. The medium must drain rapidly but still be organic (as in once living) based. Nursery mixes have two primary ingredients. Bark fines and peat. Some are mostly bark.
You can improve any average potting medium by adding plenty of perlite and bark fines to it.
Your seedlings are extremely lacking in sufficient sunlight. Stems should be short and stocky. Those seedlings will be difficult to transplant into individual containers. If you are going to try to expose them to some proper light, you will need to do so very slowly. Acclimation for plants such as these could take several days or weeks. Overdoing it (as in placing them in the direct sun all day) will kill them in a very short time.
Here is a link that might be useful: 
oh my god... mine looks terrible! :(
thanks for the link. it helps a lot to have something to try and compare with. they're at the balcony now, with at least a few hours of direct sunlight. maybe they need more. going to try the windowsill next.
thanks again!
I don't understand what you sliced. Taro is available in large bulb form this time of year. If you have an existing Taro in your garden you may dig it up and divide a large mass of roots into several divisions and replant in the soil. What you are doing I have never heard of. Al
thanks for the reassurances! :)
i'll leave them alone for now, and hope for the best. they're the cockscomb variety, and i am super-super excited to see them flower. don't think i've come across them before. hope to post back to this link when they have grown up ;)
not sure if you're still following this thread, but i took your advice and transplanted the celosia when the pot got a bit crowded (mixture of soil, some peat and vermiculite).
now i have three long flower boxes full of healthy, happy celosia seedlings. hope they grow out strong! :)
The algae is an indication that conditions are too moist. Keep the surface of the 'soil' disturbed so that excess water can evaporate properly. Because the sides of your soda bottle container are clear, it makes a perfect environment for for algae culture. Algae requires sunlight. ;-)
You might want to consider painting the outside of your bottles next year to prevent this. Excess algae can muck up the pore spaces.
I go and sit next to mine while i am in a rough & tough spirited mood in hopes that they pick up on the energy & when they are placed outside where ever they will go, they will be rough & tough with those nasty pests that try to take em out, survive all those wild creatures that will make there way about their space, stand strong against those whipping winds, driving rains, and h-llish hail storms! : P
: )
It also helps to sing "survival type" songs to them..... you know..... you always want to prepare your babies for the real world! ; )
Enjoy your night!
Tonia
Try a little weak fertilizer the next time you bottom water. You mentioned you started the plants in fertilizer free mix. At this stage, 6 weeks later, they may be ready for some fertilizer, as the seeedlings have used up pretty much everything that was contained in the actual seed. This happened to me this year, and once I gave them a shot of weak (1/4 strength) miracle grow in the water, they took off like gangbusters. Hope this helps.
They have germinated except for one spot I finally got filled back in and just planted those the other day. I opted to leave the caps off for a little ventilation, and watched the humidity in the bottles. They germinated well before the package said. Today there was moisture in the bottles but it looked dry down in there so I gave them some extra water around the bottles.
Now I'm inclined to leave them on for a day or two longer, then take them off and watch them closely.
With the bottles, I could go two or three days without misting. It wouldn't work very well for a whole row, but for spot planting, it is definitely the way to go. I did cover the seeds with a potting mix the required depth I made up and had handy rather than use the soil in the bed.
I'm going to try that for other things from now on when I don't want to mess with transplanting.
Some grew outside the bottle here but not the other seven or so spots where I sowed them. Now I'm going to have way more than what I need and do not like thinning seedlings. Should I let them fight to see what they will do?
If I thin them, should end up with one bushy plant, I could end up losing them all.
I think I will take the bottles off tonight and keep a close eye on them for awhile, may have to slap them on briefly again because now they've been protected from the real world.
I started my mg inside as well and when they were beginning to vine I put them outside! I put them out a few weeks ago and they are climbing like crazy already about 4 feet up the trellis in a full sun area! I moved mine from the little "starter" pots VERY CAREFULLY to plastic cups with holes in the bottom- not peat pots....they dry out too fast!
So I would suggest moving them to little plastic cups (12-16 oz) or at least let them start vining before putting them out!!!!
Sounds like damping off, which is a fungus that attacks young seedlings, usually ones started indoors. Mine started to do that too, but mine were wintersown. My solution was plant them out immediately, that way the microscopic "good guys" could take care of it. It worked for me. All of the ones planted out made it just fine. Cosmos is a full sun annual. As long as there is a good root system, and you keep them watered at first, they should recover from the transplant, as you have already somewhat hardened them off. Once they are established, they are pretty drought tolerant.