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Arthropods 2019

I started soaking some seeds on about December 1st, trying to get an early start this year. Grew slooow through December and first week of January and then got some growth. I'll put up some recent pictures later. 
 
I've also started planning for outdoors. Bought some bales of straw for compost making. I'm wondering about herbicide residue in the straw so I threw a seedling in a pot with only straw. It doesn't absorb much water at all so I have it in a double cup, outer pot has no drain holes. Gotta be careful about moisture. 
 
Straw stacked
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Covered
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Seedling test
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I'm interested to see what happens. I hope I don't get any signs of herbicide damage because I'd like to be able to compost all this straw and expand the garden.
 
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I haven't seen much growth on any of the seedlings, including the straw test one, so I'm not sure about herbicide damage yet. All the seedlings have slowed down growth ever since the outside temp dropped real low, which made the indoor humidity go from around 35 to <20%. At 35% RH and 85 degrees F plants took a loooong time to produce first leaves. However, with lights farther away and temps around 80 and RH still around 35% they grew well.
 
These pictures are from the 24th
 
My best seedling, scotch brains started December 1st
 
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Goronong
 
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Dedo do moca red (largest), habanero oxcutzcabian orange, and a hab I got from a local garden
 
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internationalfish said:
Saw this thread and thought "Wait, arthropods? Shouldn't that be in 'Growing Other'?" :D
 
Pretty cool seedling test, looking forward to seeing your other pictures!
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Hahaha I bet all the outdoor growers end up helping to grow some arthropods
 
PaulG said:
The straw test is an interesting idea.
Clever :clap:
 
Looking forward to the pics...
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Thanks for the encouragement, I hope it works!
 
Goronong is growing up nicely in its larger pot, and I like the color too. I'm not sure whether it's from the fluorescent lights or a seed variation.
 
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Could curled leaves and slow growth be caused by low humidity? It's been around 20% for around a week. All plants but the manzano in the pic are showing it (manzano's growth has slowed down too). I'll be making a small grow tent out of pvc and plastic to hold some humidity, hope it helps.
 
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Are you letting the soil get pretty dry between watering? That helped me last year, but I haven't nailed it down exactly because I have it on a few plants this year too. Could be other issues but they seem to do better when I let them dry out more.
 
Walchit said:
Are you letting the soil get pretty dry between watering? That helped me last year, but I haven't nailed it down exactly because I have it on a few plants this year too. Could be other issues but they seem to do better when I let them dry out more.
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Thanks for that. I have been letting it get pretty dry generally, I even had one or two cells totally dry out. Maybe I've gone overboard on watering since that happened
 
Chinense have definitely been doing it worse than baccatum and pubescens.
 
No fan! But I do have an extra timer, I can probably dig up a fan too. I'll definitely try that, should I point it straight at the plants or deflect off a wall kind of thing?
 
Arthropods said:
I started soaking some seeds on about December 1st, trying to get an early start this year. Grew slooow through December and first week of January and then got some growth. I'll put up some recent pictures later. 
 
I've also started planning for outdoors. Bought some bales of straw for compost making. I'm wondering about herbicide residue in the straw so I threw a seedling in a pot with only straw. It doesn't absorb much water at all so I have it in a double cup, outer pot has no drain holes. Gotta be careful about moisture. 
 
Straw stacked
attachicon.gif
IMG_1949.JPG
 
Covered
attachicon.gif
IMG_1950.JPG
 
Seedling test
attachicon.gif
IMG_1951.JPG
 
 
I'm interested to see what happens. I hope I don't get any signs of herbicide damage because I'd like to be able to compost all this straw and expand the garden.
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Interesting to me on multiple levels since I'm growing in hay bales this year. I wish I had straw but there is none down here. It has to be imported from up north.
 
I imagine straw would have more herbicide than hay for feeding horses. It's good you're doing a test. Someone posted an account here of a horse that ate some hay with 2,4-D on it and manure from that animal killed his tomatoes. If you decide to use it or compost it, throw some nitrogen on it. I put ammonium nitrate and horse manure on my bales in late October and they're full of compost. I'm reloading the bales with additional composting hay and shredded oak leaves so they don't compost down to nothing by growing season.
 
I am curious to see how that sprout does planted in straw only.
 
I'll trade you some of my 90% grow room humidity for your 20% if you want to throw in a couple bales of straw :lol:
 
 
DWB said:
 
Interesting to me on multiple levels since I'm growing in hay bales this year. I wish I had straw but there is none down here. It has to be imported from up north.
 
I imagine straw would have more herbicide than hay for feeding horses. It's good you're doing a test. Someone posted an account here of a horse that ate some hay with 2,4-D on it and manure from that animal killed his tomatoes. If you decide to use it or compost it, throw some nitrogen on it. I put ammonium nitrate and horse manure on my bales in late October and they're full of compost. I'm reloading the bales with additional composting hay and shredded oak leaves so they don't compost down to nothing by growing season.
 
I am curious to see how that sprout does planted in straw only.
 
I'll trade you some of my 90% grow room humidity for your 20% if you want to throw in a couple bales of straw :lol:
 
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Im glad youre interested! I looked at your glog a while back, it was part of where I got the idea to get bales of straw for composting and start that over the winter. I figured if you had yours composting fast without turning, I could speed things up. I like the idea of growing directly in bales but I also wanted a medium that I could put in containers, so I went for composting the straw.

Ive heard those herbicide horror stories too. From some internet digging it looks like often the herbicides used in Michigan to grow wheat are short livedthey break down so much over several months that they wont affect plant growth. Only a few are persistent herbicides and theyre not super widely used.

My sprout is growing very slowly, but no deformities so far. I hope the slow growth is just because I dont have the watering down for straw. It has shot one root out through the bottom of the pot. Ill put a picture up to compare to the original.

I would make that trade, maybe even out our humidity situations. Would it be more expensive to ship humidity or bales of straw?
 
Walchit said:
Nice diy pots! I thought about it, but just bought plastic pots instead. I didn't know how stable the fabric ones would be.
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Thanks! Im excited to make more and fill them. Took more time to make than I thought. Planning on making some huge ones later
 
I used old restaraunt napkins to make a couple pots last year. Are you seeing them? I like upholstery thread. Its pretty much impossible to break. Not like normal thread. Just my 2 cents.

And if that's the same weed mat I had its pretty nice stuff. I used it on my raised beds my first season.
 
Yes, I saw a big red bag in a post of yours. Very cool stuff, I thought about using different cloth but the weed mat wasnt expensive for a lot of it and it does seem very nice. Thiiiick stuff. I used some nylon thread that Im pretty sure is used for upholstery, some website recommended it for grow bags. Almost too thick for the eye on the standard machine needle
 
Arthropods said:
Made a couple of grow bags from thick weedblock fabric. 5" by 5" base, 7.5" height. I can fit 8 of them in a 1020 tray, will probably only do one or two trays of these until it's warm enough to set up a somewhat insulated grow tent in the unheated shed.
 
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Those are super-awesome! I'll bet they work great,
and that you can make them last a couple of seasons
if you wanted, considering the work and time you have
invested.  Very pro-looking!  I would probably use a stapler  ;)
 
Walchit said:
Nice diy pots! I thought about it, but just bought plastic pots instead. I didn't know how stable the fabric ones would be.
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I have used root pouches from 1 gallon to 7 gallons
in size, and found all of them very stable. 
And durable, especially if watering from the top.
 
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