Mass germination!

First of all, two more photos of lavender:


There were spikes coming off at all sides. I might decide to save a few for seeds. Anyone interested?


The next photo dump will be this weekend. I'll try to remember to take photos of all the germinating stuff tomorrow. This is the last of the backyard photos though.

Meanwhile, so what's germinated, you ask?

Well, I've one of bee balm and St. Johnswort for a while now. I got one feverfew (might resow because one is a sad number, it'll be lonely, and I actually have more seeds for that one). There're also now calendula (mixed color), marigold (French dwarf), basil (sweet), radish (champion), sunflower (dwarf cultivar of some sort -- I'm sad that I didn't remember to copy down the name before I threw away the packet), snapdragon (mixed color), thyme (olde English), and chive (garlic chive) (previous pots didn't make it through the transfer back home).

Just...wait for the photos. I think they're really cool.

Huh

Blog has been slightly glitchy lately and I've had a few problems the last two times I've tried to post. I guess it's too much to expect all my logs to be updated constantly. In any case, at least relative dating is still allowed and so in practice, anything within the week's range isn't too bad.

Germinated lately: thyme. Except they're dying because the soil that's suitable for germination is too water-logged for the seedlings, and my room moisture content isn't high enough for the seedlings to adjust to by themselves immediately. I'm trying to figure out how to go about gradually decreasing the moisture level at a rate that is greater than the rate of seedling dying because the moisture is too high but less than the rate that'll cause the seedlings to go "OMG WATER. NEED. WATER."

I'm...working on it.

Feverfew (#2) have started germinating. They face the same problem, I think, so we'll see how this works out.

Garlic chives (#2) are growing well so far. They're in terracotta pots which apparently leaks water like you wouldn't believe, so they don't germinate as well but a greater percentage of them seem to stay alive afterwards.

My coleus plant exist. They don't seem to be doing all that much growing right now. I think it's the root establishment stage, but ...are coleus annuals or perennials? I forget.

Forget-me-nots are alive and well. Milk cartons suffer less problems than the plastic ones, it seems, and retains moisture better than terracotta. Or maybe it's just because forget-me-nots are naturally moisture loving plants and so can cope better.

The columbines are FINALLY germinating. I feel like cheering, except I don't know how many of them can stay alive in the milk container. They're also relatively moisture loving, so hopefully they'll be fine. Mostly I think I'll keep my fingers crossed, because I've dealt with this cultivar before and some cultivars are more finicky than others.

Nope, no photos. Don't you know that the finals are approaching?

More planted

Put in St. John's Wort, bee balm, and thyme today. Also, just for the heck of it, put in some columbine (music mix) and forget-me-not (blue bird).

Random info: The fail-safe way to tell apart a cycad and a palm tree is that the palm can flower and the cycad can't (it makes this cone-like thing).

More planting

The feverfew hasn't germinated at all, so I re-seeded it (and over-seeded the tiny pot, I might add) and watered it very thoroughly before sealing it off again with shrink-wrap (which I fail at, I am hopeless with thin films of plastic, it seems). No sign of Dracaena, though the coleus plants are doing great. Chives are still very spindly, if healthy. I won't have time to check up on the club garden until Wednesday, and then I may go and seed some morning glories if nothing else turns out to be germinating (because they're so hardy). If I get around to it I'll soak St. Johns Wort (Common) seeds tomorrow over night so I can plant it around Wednesday with bee balm (Marshall's Delight) and thyme (Olde English).

I brought back one of the three bunches of mint with me to Davis and hung it from the bulletin board. It makes me happy. I will probably have way too much dried mint in a few months so I might do free-mint mailing then. We'll see.

Random info of the day: all plant cells have cell walls, some have only primary cell walls, some have both primary and secondary cell walls. Primary cell wall material must be laid down first before secondary wall can be laid down (which is why you'd never see a plant cell with only secondary cell wall) and is ... one of my professors once described it as sort of paper-towel consistency. Secondary cell wall is much thicker. It's what we usually refer to as wood.

The weather didn't pan out

It's going to rain today AND tomorrow, so our work day out in the club garden's been canceled (I'd say postponed, but the next time people can meet together is I-don't-know-when, so I'm going to say canceled). Currently, I'm also guessing that it means that the Central Park day's canceled also.

Chives are still growing, in all of their green, spindly glory. Neither the Dracaena or the coleus have germinated yet. The seeds I've been swapping on Garden Web finally came through and I received my seeds (traded in some poppies and about seven Dracaena seeds)! It's pretty exciting receiving the stuff in the mail. Now I have some feverfew (mailed from Rhode Island), St. John's wort, columbine (music mix cultivar, so what if they don't breed true? They're COLUMBINES), bee balm, cockscomb, blue flax, and bellflower (mailed from Georgia). I've been picking up a few tricks on soil amendments and square foot gardening, so there's plenty I can try out. Although I guess I won't really have time until Spring Break (and depending on the progression of my thesis, maybe not even then).

I can still start a few things indoor, though. A bit of the feverfew went into a pot (my last pot of reserve soil I have at Davis, oh noes) on Wednesday, and we'll see when it germinates.

Random info: ferulic acid is a part of lignocellulose that helps lignin crosslink (chemical interactions) with polysaccharides to increase the rigidity of cell walls. I.e., it's why seed coats are hard. It's also an antioxidant and I think some people do take like, though honestly I think vitamin C's probably more useful.

Propinquity

The second pot of chives (the one that I didn't knock over) started germinating today. By "started germinating" I mean that one lone green shoot has finally made its way up to the open air. Let's...I planted these at around the 14th, and so that's about a 13 day germination period.

Nothing's coming up with the dragon plants, but then, those are only from about a week ago.

Here're some photos of my germinating chives. The last picture was taken yesterday, right before the seeds in the second pot decided that they're fed up with their subterranean life-style:

Jan 15th


Jan 21st


And finally -- the 26th of January.

... ...

Davis is one of those places that is blessed with a farmer's market every Saturday and every Wednesday, and it's a small enough town so walking there every Saturday morning (weather permitting), is an option. I like getting my fruits there once the fruits have started coming out because, while the prices are sometimes more expensive than the prices you'd find in places such as Safeway, the fruits also tastes better.

The cultivars of fruits grown is only a small part of the reason why that is. If you took the type of tomato plant that produces the bland tomatoes you'd find in the supermarkets home and grew them at home, you'd find that the final result still tastes much better than the store variety.

It has something to do with the process of fruit ripening. We can tell most ripe fruits from unripe ones by some combination (or summation) of these three basic hints: 1) it's softer, 2) it's a different color, and 3) you don't feel like spitting it back out when you take a bite of it, i.e., ripe fruits taste better than unripe ones. The "become softer" thing is due to the start of the degradation of secondary cell walls (the stuff that makes wood hard? All plants have a little bit of it surrounding their cells to some degree). The change of color is due to the interconversion of plastids, such as chloroplast (green), to chromoplastic (red, orange, yellow, etc). The tasting better thing is due to the degradation of acids and chemical compounds (e.g. tannin and other phenolics) that gives the fruits a bitter or astringent taste). (The plants developed this because it doesn't want its seeds to be eaten before they're down developing and can protect themselves through the...um...less hospitable conditions of an animal's digestive tract.)

All this can be induced artificially by ethylene, a plant hormone.

So what generally happens is that the growers will pick the still green fruits (vine ripen = a slight hint of not-green color on the fruit) and pack them and ship them off. Green fruits are hard and don't get damaged as easily during shipping and then, once they've reached their destination, the fruits are "forced" to ripen by exposing them to ethylene (I wonder if they still do the chamber thing, anyone know?). The downside to this is that natural ripening also involves the production of sugar and transfer of ergastic (secondary metabolites, usually the stuff that makes the fruit smell good / have a particular taste, that sort of thing) substances to the fruit, and when the fruits are forced to ripen, they don't get that because there's no plant and leaves around to produce the sugar or transfer the stuff from. That's basically how you get a fruit that is technically ripe but without the benefits of high sugar content or most other things that make the fruit taste good.

The sad thing is, they've done surveys about this and the consumers will always pick the better looking fruit to the better tasting ones. The naturally ripen ones will never be as appealing shelf-wise because they bruise easily during shipping and well...next time you go pick out an orange or something, the one that you'd usually skip over, that has a slightly darker color and is kind of bruised looking? There's a high chance that that one'd taste sweeter than the really firm, perfect fruit sitting next to it. (Though they're trying to get rid of those fruits, too.)

Now, since I do sometimes play the part of the starving college student (which I am very much not) with great skill and conviction, I only do a very small fraction of my shopping at farmer's market. My decision to get what where usually came down to this: for everyday food and practices with recipes, get the cheap, supermarket stuff; for the fruits / veggies that I plan on eating raw and for cooking for special occasions, go to farmer's market.

Then of course my parents sometimes bring me a bunch of fruits which will be the forced ripened ones, and I'm not picky, I'll eat them anyways.

What grew and what didn't

The pot of chives which I've accidentally knocked over and then refilled have official germinated: that is the good news. The bad news is that the chives are starting to tip over already which is probably a direct consequence of not having enough soil on top to push it through (the resulting seedling usually will not be as vigorous when they do come up). The other pot, which I haven't knocked over, has no germination rate yet and I haven't decided whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Nothing from Dracaena or coleus.

Skipping with the watering

The weather forecast said that there'll be a shower later today, some tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow -- pretty much the rest of the week looks like it'll be wet. On the plus side, this means I won't have to bike out to the field to water the things I just planted on Saturday. On the downside, that means that the ground will be squishy for a while yet and I don't know if we (that is, the club members and I), would be able to schedule in a garden work day before mid-February.

I suppose I can always just tell people to be ready to get muddy, except people tend to not like getting wet and messy and will therefore not show up to the work day, therefore negating the entire point of scheduling a work day in the first place.

Took another picture of the garlic chives I've planted about a week ago today. One of the pot has started germinating, but that's also the pot that I spilled a little, so the seeds are closer to the surface than the other pot (and therefore the seeds that are popping up get to cheat a little). I'll have to see which one ends up looking hardier, because that'll be the pot that I stick out in the field to brave the elements, the herbivory, and the varying amounts of neglect.

Random info: Being alive means being metabolic, and being metabolic means having loads of enzymes. Most enzymes work only when they're in an aqueous environment, and so when the biochemists need to do an experiment that needs an enzyme that can function under relatively dry environment they sometimes go look for the enzymes in the plant seeds, because plant seeds are fairly dehydrated, and yet they're still metabolizing (slowly but surely, which is why really old seeds don't germinate -- because they've used up their reservoir of food and so has no energy left to germinate) which means they have special enzymes that can handle relatively dry environments!

My goodness that's a long sentence.