Seedling Progress Report. 2.15.2021

 Here are seedling photos for today and a few days ago.  Most are doing quite well.  Some are still germinating, some probably wont.  I always plant extra for that reason.

 

The shallots had lower germination than the onions even though they are related and look the same.  Still, there are some.  I added more seeds to cells that had limited germination or no germination.    The Japanese scallions look good.  The celery germinated over a week or so, now quite good.  Eggplants were uneven but there are enough.  Peppers too.  

The colors are weird due to the LED lights.  For some, I had them too close and the leaf tips dried out.  They will be OK.  Some people cut off the lead tips to encourage growth from below.  I don't get it, but at least these will be OK.  These are the bulb or storage onions.  They are growing faster than the scallions and shallots.

The two celery are from Baker Creek heirloom seeds.  They are Utah and Chinese.    There are various peppers, but so far I have a bunch of Jalapenos, a banana pepper, Serrano, and a Thai pepper. I dropped the cell pack for shallots, so now replanted some.

These are the two apple seedlings so far.  Both are from the same apple, a Calypso pollinated by columnar Golden Sentinel. Interesting, one is red leaf and other is green leaf. I had stratified them, wrapped in moist paper towel, in zip lock, in fridge, since about August.  I had to change the paper towel a couple of times due to mildew.  I planted these seeds in cells that had pepper seeds that did not germinate.  Then in one, the Thai pepper seeds germinated anyway :-)  I can separate them later.

Here is my seed starting setup so far.  I turned off the warming mats, since the seedling have germinated.

The view from outside today.

Some plants I brought in last fall.

This marigold, I dug up in the fall and planted in a container in potting soil.  It was a volunteer and has been blooming all winter long.

I've dug up this geranium every fall for about six years.  Maybe longer.  Sometimes I let it dry out in the garage.  This year I kept it going in the sunroom.  Sometimes it blooms.

The nepenthes have suffered because I've been sick several times this winter, and they need more water than I gave them.  Some are OK.

Grafting. 3.12.19

This is the first step of wrapping the graft with plastic strip.  Knot tied.

The strip is flattened, wrapped tightly up, then down, and tied again.

Finally, the scion is wrapped to avoid dehydration.  I used parafilm this time.

Today I grafted new scions onto a number of pre-existing apple trees.  I'm comfortable with whip and tongue grafting, so that's what I do.  These trees are young but starting to have some size.  They are dwarf or semidwarf size trees.    For one, a large, mature  branch of Pristine broke due to graft failure, so I'm not grafting Pristine back onto that tree.  There is a small "water sprout" branch near that location, so I grafted a new variety to that branch as a replacement ("Bob's red flesh, a small apple with red flesh throughout).

I thought I would show my current method.  It's much easier than the older methods that involved grafting wax and string, or sticky tape.  I use strips, about 3/4 inch wide, cut from gallon-size "Ziplock" plastic freezer bags.  After experimenting with stretching, I can get a good firm tight binding, without breaking the strips.

The cutting and fitting of the scion and understock is as usual.  I didn't do as fine a job as last year, but apple is fairly forgiving, so I think they should take.  Once the whip and tongue graft scion and understock are fitted together, I tie a strip of plastic strip below the graft, with one end being short and the other long.

Then I flatten the strip, and wrap up, then down the graft.  I pull the plastic strip as firm as I can, without stretching to the yield point where it loses it's stretch and tears.

Then I tie the end of the strip back to the original knot.

I wrap the scion with either a thinner plastic strip, or this time, parafilm.  The goal there is to prevent dehydration but allow the buds to grow

This method gave 100% take last year.  I'm hoping for a good result this year too.

I grafted -

That "Bill's Red Flesh".

A local crab apple variety from an HOS member, "Hi Jack".

Pristine.

I also bought some Bud-9 rootstock at the HOS show, and grafted Northpole apple onto that rootstock.  I want to see if I can better limit the height, and make a much more compact columnar apple tree than I have with the original Northpole.


And quince varieties, to the quince tree that I'm reworking, adding Limon and Crimea Quince cultivars.

Also, onto a plum branch, I added one branch from an ornamental, fastigiate red plum (Scarlet Sentry?) from elsewhere in the yard, for pollination purposes.  That goes both ways - I'm curious to see if those plums are larger or better set, when pollinated by more proximal plum varieties.