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Thursday, April 13, 2023 Little Ketchup Grittyville, WA

Entry 92 of 288  
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I put a thermometer in the grow hut overnight and it showed the plants have been colder at night than I thought, even though the soil temp reads 60 and the daytime temps are 60-80, the temp last night hit a low of 39 inside the hut... this is a good explanation for why they seem hesitant to grow at full speed. I guess I was being naïve and over optimistic. If thats the only problem, then that will be an easy fix!

In other pumpkin news, I used a new method to do a seed germination test of an old Mombert x Halbert seed I grew quite awhile ago. I used a rinse & repeat method very similar to the method making alfalfa or broccoli sprouts, where I soaked ALL of the seeds (200 or so) in a quart jar for half a day, and after that I i drained the water, and after that I rinsed them with water twice a day. The germination was poor, only about ten seeds sprouted, but nevertheless it seemed like a good method, and if growers had chlorinated water, I think it would work even better. I could see this being a useful technique for selecting the last good seeds from hundreds of old seeds where most are dead. With this method, its easy to spot the roots and pick out the ones that are still good. It doesn't require a large amount of paper towels or potting mix to narrow it down to the best ones. Just water and a mesh screen

But it only makes sense to do this for very poor germinating seeds where whole lot is otherwise slated to be compost/trash, and the opportunity to plant them is now or never... Because once they are soaked there is no turning back.
 



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