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  • From: Pat Meadows <pat AT meadows.pair.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] A Riddle ...
  • Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 14:44:19 -0500

On Wed, 31 Mar 2004 11:41:13 -0600 (CST), you wrote:


>
> 1. Those 72 hole things you can buy at the hardward store for
> $5
> 2. I've recently moved to shallow (8 inches high I think)
> sweater boxes. In these, I've been using those Jiffy-Pack
> peat containers (square ones) filled with the 'Supersoil'.
> I can fit 50-60 of these in one sweater box.
> 3. Same as #2 but with round jiffy-pack peat containers.

I've had really bad results with peat pots. I won't use
them anymore.

I use the little 6-cell packs: 48 of those fit in the flat.
That gives the roots more room to grow than the 72-hole
things. Of course, it takes up more room per plant too.

I think you're paying vastly more than you need to if you
buy this type of item at a local hardware store. Online
nursery/greenhouse suppliers should be *vastly* cheaper.
Maybe you even have a nursery supplier nearby - we don't.
You can Google on 'nursery supplies' to find them. One is
here: http://www.fredgloeckner.com . There are lots of
others.

>
>> Have you fed them with any fertilizer/plant food? If so,
>> what kind and how often?
>
>No, I'm not feeding them at all. The 'Supersoil' has some fertilizer in
>it already. As I said, i've been very succesful with this stuff up until
>recently. Lettuce planted from seed in the sweater boxes on 2/6/04 are
>already in the ground and growing! Others in this set of stunted plants
>with bound roots have been sitting there since Dec and Jan.

My guess would be that they didn't get nearly enough
nourishment.

>> Can you give an estimate of how many hours of sunlight they
>> receive per day (on average)?
>
>Well, as I said, up until about a week ago I had to them all in at night.
>So they were getting probably 8-10 hours a day. Now they're outside all
>the time, so they get 12+ hours a day.

That's certainly plenty of sun - so that's not the problem.

Maybe it's a combination of factors, but I would strongly
suspect 'not enough nourishment'.

Because my seedlings are in the house, I feed my seedlings
with houseplant food (I can't use fish extract in the house
or my cat would be up there destroying the plants) - just a
basic, ordinary houseplant food from the grocery store,
using the houseplant food at 1/2 the strength recommended on
the bottle. I feed them (at this 1/2 strength) every other
time I water them - they generally need watering daily, so
they are fed every other day.

So far, so good (all fingers crossed!). I've never had any
problems.

And I try to time starting the seeds so that they are in the
little 6-cell packs the minimum possible time. I started
lettuce and Asian greens on March 3, for example, and
transplanted them outside two days ago. Swiss chard
started on March 10 will go outside sometime this week.

Cheers,
Pat
--
"Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of
supply and demand. It is the privilege of human beings to
live under the laws of justice and mercy." - Wendell Berry




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