The weather has just been beautiful lately. Friday afternoon, my neighbor and I had the children running around outside as we sat watching and trying to find out who was burning brush in the neighborhood. We were convinced it was smoke. It was everywhere, making everything hazy, but it lacked that smokey smell.
It was pollen.
Seriously.
They mentioned on the news that since we had such a late cold snap that the trees and flowers were all blooming at the same time instead of a few weeks apart like they should. I've never seen pollen so thick in the air like that.
This will be a great week for gardening! I'm on spring break, so I can hopefully get a lot done. Tomorrow, many of the potato plants need hilling. After weeks of nothing, they grow inches each day. Then, we're building the last two beds, so I'll need to fetch the materials to fill those.
Finally, I'm having problems with some of my tomato seedlings. The ones I transplanted into the old flower pot containers from transplants last year are growing by leaps and bounds. The ones in the large peat pots hardly look a day larger than when they were transplanted. I wonder why they're stunted. They're the same varieties, planted and transplanted at the same time with the same mixture. The problem is obviously with the large peat pots. Come to think of it, my cucumbers and squash didn't grow well in them last year, either....any idea why?
The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.
Posts
June 13, 2021 - Together Again
3 years ago
Peat pots don't work well for me, either. So...I don't use them anymore.
ReplyDeleteUgh, how disgusting! Since moving from green, lush, moist VA to dry, arid CA, our allergies have almost disappeared. I can only imagine how awful some in your area must've been feeling with all that pollen...
ReplyDeleteRegarding the peat, I've been working with it a lot in different mixes the past few months, and I think alone or mostly alone, it doesn't have very good water retention. Half my beans are in a MG seed starting mix (mostly peat), and the other half are in a homemade mix (1:1:1 peat, perlite, vermiculite--and a bit of D. lime). I can see the difference in water retention between the two, and think I'll stick w/the homemade next season.
EG, I'm moving in that direction, myself.
ReplyDeleteMomma_S, the mix in there is plain potting mix, only the pot itself is made of peat. The soil in both the regular pots and the peat pots is regular potting soil.
The pollen here has turned my car and house siding yellow! I don't have too much trouble with the peat pots when the seedlings are little, but when I repotted into the larger round peat pots last year, mine were stunted too, and I was having to water several times a day - the peat pots acted like a big wick sucking the water away from the roots. This year, I did them all in small black plastic 3 inch pots I had been saving from years of buying flats of bedding flowers, and the tomatoes and peppers are growing very well in those. I use half potting mix and half soiless starter mix when I go to the last transplant pot. Good luck, I am sure they will recover once they get settled into the ground!
ReplyDeleteA haze of pollin?! The people with even mild allergies must be absolutely miserable.
ReplyDeleteI've used peat pots in the past for growing flowers and find that they tend to dry out too quickly. I don't use them anymore as I felt they were wicking out moisture and nutrients from the potting mix so that the plants were starved. This is just speculation, though. I don't know for sure. All I do know is that I too saw a difference between the peat pots and plastic.
Do you have plastic pots to transplant them into? If not, what about newspaper pots?
The pots themselves may be wicking moisture out of the soil, that is the only thing I can up with. I have not been thrilled with them either and decided to use cow pots and soil blocks this year instead. Hope the laggards catch up!
ReplyDeleteErin, I'm actually thinking of getting some of them in the ground this week....shhhhh.....
ReplyDeleteThe ones I wanted to plant immediately still haven't grown true leaves, so I'll substitute them for the ones I was going to put where the onions still are now. Hopefully, once the onions are done, those will be ready to transplant!
GM, I love the newspaper pots idea. If I run out of the pots I have now, I'm totally going to the newspaper ones.
ReplyDeleteKelly, It seems like we're building a consensus here! Good bye peat pots. Hello....yogurt cups?
ReplyDeleteI transfered some peat pot seedlings into my SFG and they're all stunted. I sprayed mine with fish fertilizer, but they're still small and yellowed. I have NO clue how to give mine a little zest for life...
ReplyDeleteI blame the peat pots now.
DOWN WITH PEAT POTS!
That's really strange. I don't seem to have a problem with my peat pots. I have noticed however that my tomatoes are incredibly hungry feeders...Maybe they need a hit of fertilizer?
ReplyDeleteI have had problems with plants in peat pots before as well so I stopped using them. Yogurt cups sound like a good idea. Those little paper milk containers work great too.
ReplyDeleteWe had a dog with terrible skin allergies in TN who cleared right up in Northern California. That said, you live in GA, so I'm really sorry about the pollen. Good on the tomatoes.
ReplyDelete