Tomatoes

Ok, we have our first tomato seeding popping up. It has been exactly 7 days since they were sown and the first one would belong to which? The water or hydrogen peroxide? Drum roll please................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................and the answer is the WATER side. Yes, I found this to be interesting as well! I am looking forward to seeing what will come about in the next couple of days we well as what will come to pass with the carrot seeds that I had planted a couple of days ago!

New seeds planted and some photos

Alright, I got my carrots and watermellons planted this morning. This time I remembered to soak the seeds in the hydrogen peroxide before I planted them. After looking around a fair bit, what I decided to do was to soak the seeds in straight 3% H2O2 for half an our and then rinsed them throughouly. This is supposed to kill all of the bacteria, etc that would work to inhibit germination.

As before, I planted the H2O2 seeds on the right side and the water seeds on the left side. Only thing this time was that I don't have a very big garden so i don't have room for two watermellon mounds so I am only doing one with all H2O2 soaked seeds and receiving only H2O2 solution.
The other mound will be for the cucumbers that will be planted later in the season.

The lettuce seedlings have reached a point that they can be thinned so I did that too. I left a few plants every 6" or so. Here are a couple of pics of the garden itself

While it is still MUCH to early to make any calls one way or another, the water side seems to be doing a bit better right now. We'll see what happens with seed soaking as well.

Just for fun here are a few more pictures from around the yard:

Woo-Hoo!

Excellent! I got my seeds in the mail today from Victory Seed Co! Around here it is now time to plant the carrots and the watermellons - heck could have planted them a couple of weeks ago if I had had the seeds. I am going to soak half of the seeds in a hydrogen peroxide prior to planting...I will post up with the details later - just don't have the time right now.

Beautiful Weekend!

Alright! Friday, saturday, and sunday were all gorgeous days! In the 70s with bright skys and lots of sun for the ole garden! The lettuce is doing good. It's kind of funny, when I water the side of the garden with the H2O2 solution the ground gets all white and bubbly just like when you put hydrogen peroxide on a cut. Since h2o2 kills bacteria, I am wondering how much of a good thing this is. Does this help with the prevention of diseases and rots, or doe it go to far in killing off helpful bacteria in the soil?? Not really sure on this one and not sure that I have any way to really be able to find out - down side of a purely unscientific experiment I guess.

As of right now, though, I would say that it looks like the water side is doing better, but I think that it is purely due to the fact that there are more plants on that side right now - I had gotten a little heavy with the seeds. I am going to let them get to be a bit taller - maybe an inch or so before doing a first round of thinning. It is WAY to early to make any calls one way or another.

I also started my tomato seeds on Saturday. I got my Campbell Soup seeds in the mail and am attempting to grow those. I say attempting b/c I have not had to much luck with tomatoes in the past. I have them starting in my free starting tray - actually a left over container from cracker barrel (thanks to Joe the Gardener for the great idea - I'm actually using the toilet paper rolls as well for for the starter containers). One little catch though, dumb ass me forgot to soak half of the seeds in the H2O2 before planting them. Oh well, I will just work with watering them with the solution instead. The rest of my seeds from Victory Seed Company were just shipped so I will have to remember to soak them first.

It is raining today, so no watering is needed. Which just reminded me that I need to set out my rain buckets. Sure I could get honest to goodness rain barrels, but who has the mone for that?! I have a couple of trash cans that I use to collect rain water with and set out a number of large tubs around the house on the roof corners to collect rainwater that is falling. So now I am all wet.

Rain, Rain....

Another lovely day of rain. Of course the rain is good and we'll take all that we can get, but it has put this experiment on a seriously slow start! On the upside, my koi pond is full as are my rain barrels! Here's to not having to pay "the man" for water. Yay, that will show him!

The Great Hydrogen Peroxide Experiment

Ok, so I have seen a couple of places where using a solution of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) will help you plants grow healthier and stronger faster. When seeing this info I said to myself, "Huh interesting!" Seeing as how I am just starting my victory garden I decided I would try doing half of my garden with H2O2 solution and half with regular water.

Here are some of the sites that I have looked at about the topic:

http://www.using-hydrogen-peroxide.com/peroxide-garden.html

http://organicgarden.wordpress.com/2008/01/21/h2o2-many-uses-of-food-grade-hydrogen-peroxide/

http://www.using-hydrogen-peroxide.com/gardening-with-hydrogen-peroxide.html

So what is the plan? The right side of the garden is going to be receiving a solution using 3% H2O2 at a ratio of 1/2 cup per gallon of water. I will also use stronger solutions as recommended for disease control etc. I will also use a special solution to soak the seed before planting them which is supposed to make them germate quicker and healthier.

The left side of the garden will receive regular water. And commercially available "organic" disease fighters, etc.

Both sides will get the same firtalizers, compost, etc. On days that it rains, then they will both get rain water - duh!

I will use this space largely as a diary of what, when, and how with pictures whenever i think about it or get around to it.

So with all that crap out of the way, where are we at today? I planted Lettuce seeds - don't know the type off the top of my head, I'll look 'em up and put that up later - two weeks ago on 4/7 and they have been regularly watered since. They have all germinated and are standing at about 1/4-1/2". Yesterday (4/13) I began watering each side of the garden independently as stated above - the right with the H2O2 solution and the left with good old fashioned tap water straight from the hose as God intended :) Today was cool - about 55 F and rainy all day - kind of a long soaking misty then rainy then misty kinda day. So much for having a nice week or so long run of being able to really get things going, huh. I guess that would have been just to damn much to ask for. Alas - we work with what we got all in the name of the most unscientific science we can think of :) I will put up a starting picture tomorrow.