Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Documenting the edamame takeover of 2010

Five days ago, I was ecstatic. My edamame seeds, after being lifeless (because I was an idiot and had these heat-loving plants on my cold freezer's lid-- I moved them when I realized this), had a few sprouts. The picture below shows only the one tray (the middle tray) with a few sprouts. I was happy.
But then... the edamame apparently decided they LOVED the laundry room. And by love, I mean LOVE. In just four days, the edamame went from the above, to a full-on takeover:

Yes, we're talking almost 100% germination. I've had to put them on pillars on top the freezer (so they won't get cold) because I was running out of space with them on the washer below the shelves.

They are taking over the laundry room.
Luckily, they have pretty compact, shallow root systems, so I won't be forced to move them too soon. And these seeds (midori giant) should get to be about 16" tall. So we're not talking GIANT bushes in my laundry room. But still... each of those flats has 78 pots, so 234 pots total. There's a pretty darn good germination rate... even if I say 80%, we're still talking 187 plants. Um.... They like soil that is not cold and moist, which is exactly what we have outside.

So, I think I'm going to get some dirt from the nearby forest products place. I'll have to wait for few days of sunny weather, because right now their soil is moist. I can get a few bins, and have that soil warm up in the laundry room. Then, I can transplant the pods into bigger pots, 3-5 per pot. They cannot go outside until mid-May or so. With only 68 days to maturity, come mid-May, they'll already be 45 days along. Hm.

I'm also stuck because my tomatoes have sprouted. This, if you can believe it, makes me happier than the edamame sprouting. I LOVE summer tomatoes, and I want to start them from seed because it gets expensive to buy lots of seedlings.
There are three types of plants in this picture. I have about 6 more varieties to plant. Yes, I'm serious....

So, between tomatoes and edamame, I'll have a very bustling laundry room. Other arrangements may need to be made. I have not built my cold frames yet, but this very well could be the encouragement I need to get my behind in gear.

2 comments:

  1. Holy cow! I'm so jealous. (I had no idea about the warm thing, either, by the way. I feel like I should copy your little projects at the same time you do them so that I forget and mess it up later...)

    Kelly

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  2. Kelly-- easy way to make soil warm (and moisten it at the same time)? Pour warm water on it. I tried this with my last batch of tomato seeds (planted last night), so here's hoping!

    Thanks for the compliment. I'm trying to learn along the way...

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