This morning I planted more seeds for the kitchen garden. With so many seedlings already, it can be a challenge to give them space under the plant lights. Most of the early ones are tropicals, like tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, but some should be able to go outside soon. Like lettuce, cilantro, celery, chive seeds.
What I planted:
Two six-packs of Chinese chives. We use a lot of those for dumplings. Home-saved seeds from last fall. We've been growing Chinese chives from our saved seeds for about 20 years. They are perennial so I don't save and plant every year, or even every other year. The seem to fail to thrive after four or five years, so it's good to regenerate them now and them.
Two containers of cilantro. One from new seeds, one from seeds saved last fall.
Paste tomatoes, experiment. One batch is Roma II hybrid, one is Amish paste tomato. One six-pack of each. I have not tried either. The best are Ranger hybrid from Territorial Seeds but they are WAY more expensive and their shipping and handling is horrendous. If the Amish turn out OK, I can save seeds from those for future growing. If not, there is the Roma II hybrid. My main challenge with paste tomatoes has been blossom end rot. I read that calcium spray will prevent that, so ordering that now. Flavor-wise, it's possible that either the Roma or Amish will be better than Ranger, anyway.
I planted some old parsley seeds. About 5 years old.
The last batch of cilantro seeds was interesting. I thought the home saved seeds always did well. This time, germination has been spotty. Maybe I'm just too impatient. Still, there is some. Today, to do a side-by-side comparison, I planted a pot of new Ferry Morse cilantro seeds, and another pot of home saved seeds. We can use a bunch of cilantro each week, so they can be planted every week or two.
Photo is cilantro seedlings. I think this is about 2 weeks old. It does look like more are germinating.
