Gardening

Been several weeks since the last post!  Just crazy things going on – as with anyone.

Last week, I slowly went through the garden and got the weeding done.  Had to pace myself a little at a time because they were already getting overtaken by weeds.  A job that no one likes to do!

So these photos were all taken on the 21st of May even though it is now the 25th when I am posting.

First up – the lettuce.  We have a problem.  Just cannot win for losing.  Last year, deer obliterated all of the tomatoes and green beans in the front garden.  So, seven-foot deer fencing was put up around it.

Now this year, we have something eating the lettuce. The lettuce is now worse than what this picture shows.  Just yesterday, my wife said it looked like a wood chuck or a beaver was eating the lettuce.  She saw it when she was leaving the house (since this bed is just by our back patio).  Deer netting was already put around this bed, but it is just going right under it.

And now, just this morning as I was heading out the door, I looked at the peas.  The peas are pretty much a total loss.  Granted, I did not put any kind of protection around them – but they are between the garage and the house.  So the picture below show the peas in good shape, but they have been eaten at least half way down now.

What a shame.  Just every year, we have a new animal that gets into stuff it seems like!

Anyways, moving to the back garden.  The tomato plants don’t look great.  Behind the garage, it gets sun in the afternoon – maybe after 1 or 2 pm.  So, they are most likely not getting the light they need.  But hey, I didn’t just want to throw the plants out since they were usable – but I had no other place to put them.

Over in the bed where the carrots typically grow, the onions are doing very well – much better than the onions planted in the front garden!  Just seems like they are growing faster.

Here is what they look like in the front, where I plant them year after year.  A lot more too –

The big one right in the front was an onion that came from last year.  I must have left something over and it started sprouting in the spring.  Definitely a lot larger than the others that were transplanted into the garden.  That makes me really wonder if I should just starting seeding the onions directly outside based on how well this one came up.  But, I’ve had such bad germination rates with onion seed that there will be lots of missed spots I fear.

OK – the overall view of the front garden:

All nice and clean eh?  Yep, a lot of weeding to get all of this cleaned up.

The row of peppers are not growing very well and look ill.  I need to possibly get some epsom salts added around the plants since I’ve read that it does great.  And the one year that I did add epsom salts around peppers, it did seem like it made a difference.

Tomato plants in the front garden are doing very well:

Just last night, I did get the green beans all planted.  I didn’t know if I would ever get them done, but I forced myself to get out into the garden last night so they hopefully will germinate now.

Next up – potatoes.  This weekend, I got the potatoes all ‘mulched’.  I keep a couple of large containers of mulched-up leaves and grass.  So it was all spread under the potatoes to help keep moisture in and prevent green potatoes.

And lastly for the ‘other’ section for the garden that is out year-round – flowers and fruit!  The peony in the front has finally opened up with some nice, large pink flowers.  When this picture was taken, they were just ready to pop out.

The Iris plants near the driveway and road were very pretty for about a week or so.  But just in the past couple of days, they have already shed all of the flowers.  Just as one flower goes, the next one comes up.

And lastly, it looks like we may get a few Granny Smith apples this year.  They are up high enough so the deer cannot get to them.  Here are a few that are in the beginning stages.

That does it for now.. until next time!

It has been a few weeks since my last post.  Been a crazy time going on between a 9 day trip to Florida, some family activities, and another trip to Michigan for my job.

At least I got some pictures taken when I planted everything outside though!  All of the pictures below are from April 24th.

First off – the front garden.  The front garden had dozens of Copra onions planted along with the variety of tomatoes and variety of pepper plants:

I also had to secure the garden more this year.  Last year, the deer hopped right over the four-foot snow fence that was put around the garden.  So this year, I had to resort to the deer netting again.  I had some scrap 1×2 lumber that was setup around the garden and the seven-foot high deer netting was then put around it.  You can’t even see the netting, which is nice – but those seven foot pieces of wood really stick out badly.

Next up – the onions in the front garden:

I had

I had WAY too many onions that finally managed to sprout in the house.  So, I put five to six rows of onions in the front with about 12 – 14 each.  This area of the garden is ten feet by four feet.

The rest of the decent onion starts went into the bed on the driveway in the back.  Usually, carrots are planted here but I just couldn’t throw away good onion starts:

Another 42+ onions were planted here.  As long as the weather is not terribly wet like last year, I’m hoping we’ll have a really good harvest of onions.  Last year, it was pretty wet and well over half of the onions ended up rotting in the ground.  What a shame – spending all that time starting the onions and maintaining them – for over half to be unusable.

Next – the peppers in the front garden:

A total of eight peppers were planted down this row – right in the middle.  This section is about 16 feet long (not including the area where the onions are planted) and four feet wide.  Unfortunately when I was putting the deer netting up, the roll of deer netting fell on the first pepper right in the front – causing it to break right at the stem.  Not much hope for one of the eight pepper plants, but I left it alone to see if it will grow back.

And for the tomatoes:

When I got back from Florida, the tomatoes were absolutely HUGE under the lights in the house.  I knew they needed to get planted outside right away.  Because so many of the seeds came up, not only are there tomatoes in the front garden, but a full row of them in the back garden as well:

I didn’t have enough tomato cages, so I had to buy another six of them at Menards.  I have a few rebate cards from Menards from different rebates that they offered last year – when we spent some money re-doing the kitchen.  So it didn’t really cost anything out of pocket – but they were about $20 for six of them.  They had the larger, more stable tomato cages but they were almost $5 each.. wasn’t going to pay that!

Next – the peas:

These are the Cascadia Snap Peas variety – which is a variety where you can eat the pod and all… as long as you harvest them prior to the peas inside becoming large.  Otherwise, they get bitter tasting.

I soaked all of the pea seed in water for a few hours and then planted them all outside.  Seems like it took about three weeks for them to germinate.  At least they didn’t rot in the ground though!

I wasn’t sure how well the peas would come up since the seed was about four years old.  I usually go through and put one seed every inch – but this time I just tossed them in the trench and covered them up.  The peas next to the house (gets warmth from the house) came up very well – but those along the back didn’t come up so well:

Can’t even barely see them – but they are over on the right side where you can see a few here and there.

Next – the lettuce:

Unfortunately, when I got back from Florida, the lettuce was almost all dry and withered.  I was afraid they wouldn’t bounce back.  But, they at least have continued to grow and have come back.  While I don’t have an updated picture yet, the picture taken a week ago does show the plants are doing well.  I did have to directly seed more Red Salad Bowl and New Red Fire lettuce into the garden patch.  Of those, about six of the eight places where I planted the seeds have come up with at least one plant.  We definitely like our lettuce and have salads on a regular basis.  So one thing we really look forward to is garden-fresh salad.  Unfortunately we only get about six weeks of salad before it turns bitter and is no good.

Next – grape vines:

Last year, we believe an animal got in and cut one of the grape vines.  So, we only have one left.  Luckily the one that is left is the one that has pretty well taken over the entire arbor.  I didn’t cut back the grape vine this year so it is really growing everywhere.  I think that will present a challenge this year with the vines going well over the arbor.

Granny Smith Tree:

I missed taking the picture of the tree when it was in full bloom – and it is very hard to see some of the flowers even from this angle.  The deer also love our tree.  The bottom four feet of it is severely stunted from the deer constantly eating away at the branches and leaves.  But, the tree has really put some tall shoots upwards to help combat that.  The tree does look a bit bad though with the branches everywhere… needs a bit of a trim.  But I’m afraid of trimming it up because of the deer.

And finally, the old rain barrels:

The rain barrels were put into commission.  After several years, the structure is still holding strong and the barrels have continued to provide us a great wealth of rainwater caught from the roof of our garage and house.  It certainly is messy behind the garage with an old compost roller that I tried to use once (which wasn’t worth the effort) and some other trash barrels that I’ve kept leaves and twigs in.

Welp, that takes care of the garden update for this round!

I didn’t make a post last week – since nothing ‘new’ really occurred.  Same thing this week, but I wanted to provide a post showing the growth of all of the veggies.  They are doing quite well!

First up – the Copra Onions.  In year’s past, I sometimes would cut the onions down.  Mixed results on this and some folks said it helps to stimulate root growth.  Decided to leave them alone this year.

Peppers – After a few weeks, they finally all did germinate.  About five seeds were planted in each of the eight black containers.  The majority of the containers had two or three seeds germinate.  So the seeds had less than 50% germination rate.  But it is all from saved seed.  Peppers are very easy to save the seeds from and that is a nice feature.  Just wait until they are fully ‘ripe’ and when opening up the peppers, a few California Wonder peppers will product dozens of seeds for use the next year.

Lettuce – I got lucky!  In the last post, I had mentioned that none of the New Red Fire lettuce came up.  Well, it looks like it just took an extra week for some of the color to come out.  In the photo below, you will see one of the lettuce plants in the back that has a little bit of coloration to it.  New Red Fire lettuce is a ‘pretty’ leaf lettuce with the shades of green and purple.

In the photo above, the Parris Island Romaine lettuce is really taking over and trying to crowed the others out!

In the photo above, you can see the Red Salad Bowl lettuce towards the center of the picture.  It definitely has a different leaf structure than the other ones.

Next Up – the tomatoes.  They are growing very well and they have all been divided into separate containers.  So, a lot of tomato plants this year.  Unfortunately I have mixed all of them together now, so I am not sure which variety is where.  I believe there are two Red Cherry tomato plants and then a mix of Best Boy and Roma.  Will just have to see what we get this year.

Last week, I did get out into the garden and do a little bit of work.  I never was able to get the back garden tilled in last year since it got cold very quickly.  I spread a lot of leaves over the area and they needed tilled in.  After getting that accomplished, the Cascadia Snap Peas were planted.

From what I read from the U of I Extension office, they note that peas should be planted in Central Illinois around St. Patrick’s Day.  So I planted them about a week later than the recommended time.  Either way, I haven’t put peas out this early before, so I am just hoping for the best.

Prior to planting, I soaked them in water for about two hours.  Then when planting them out, I am usually very picky about ensuring to put one pea seed every inch in the soil.  But this year, I made the trench and just let them fall out of my hand.  Because the seed is already about four years old and germination wasn’t great last year, I figured it would be OK to overseed them – then thin any out if needed.

But a week and a half later, still none have sprouted.

So far this year, it has been pretty cool.  We have had some days where it has been unexpectedly warm – and then it cools right back down again.  The past couple of nights have been below freezing here in Central Illinois.  Based on my reminders, the 90% chance of last frost date has already past – but yet we’ve had at least two good freezes since then.

The onions and the lettuce are to the point where they need to be planted outside, but I don’t want to risk them freezing.

The plants are doing very well this week with pretty good growth.

First up – lettuce.  I took individual pictures of each of the lettuce plants to help with what the varieties look like.

Simpson Elite.  Fully green leaf-lettuce that produces very well:

Red Salad Bowl.  Leaf lettuce that is mostly purple:

Parris Island lettuce.  Dark green lettuce that is a romaine lettuce variety:

Unfortunately, I don’t have any New Red Fire lettuce that sprouted.  I put out two four-pack containers of lettuce and seeded about four seeds of four varieties.  Odd that none of the New Red Fire lettuce came up.  One of my favorites – because it grows very well and is quite similar to Simpson Elite – except that it is multi-colored with purple and green.

Anyways, here are the lettuce containers:

Onions – all of the onions are doing very well and keep growing.  Many have already put their “second leaves” out from the base.  The very first set of onions was a complete bust and there are only a couple left that are living.

Moving in.. tomatoes.  Saturday, the tomatoes were divided out.  Divide and Conquer I say!  Many of the tomatoes had more than one seedling that sprouted.  Especially with tomatoes, I dislike just thinning them.  There were a lot of Red Cherry tomatoes that came up, so I did thin those and only moved one of the extra seedlings to a new container.  So, I went from planting a total of 8 tomato plants – and after dividing them up, either 15 or 16 are now separate.

Peppers – Yay!  Many of them have sprouted.  I believe five of the eight have come up so far, with a couple of them having two that have sprouted.  Unfortunately, I don’t remember which peppers were the California Wonder or the small sweet peppers that were planted from saved seed that was from the small peppers that were purchased at Aldi.

And finally, a quick overview of the area with all of the tomatoes under the Germination Station.  With dividing the tomato seedlings, I am using all of the space under the lights.  No room for anything else!

Wow, major success with the new batch of onions that were planted a few weeks back.

The new onions that I planted have been great.  While I don’t know the percentage that germinated, there are a LOT of onions that came up.  What still is strange – the new onions that I planted in the original tray in the black plastic containers… very bad germination on those.

Now, I did run a heating pad under the onions for a few hours on a couple of days – the same day they were planted and the day after.  But then I started reading that the optimal germination temperature for onions was around 68 degrees.  Since our house is kept at 69 degrees, I shut off the heating pad after that and didn’t use it.  I can’t think that having the heating pad on for a couple of hours on those two days would have made a difference, but I just don’t know what else may have caused it.  To have great germination rates out of the new tray versus those that I planted in the older tray in the same black nine-pack containers and at the same depth… something must be different.

Celery… there will be no celery this year.  The two seedlings didn’t make it.  So, will try again next year.

Germination on the various tomatoes and lettuce have done very well.

I was astounded… again… at how well the germination rates were for the tomatoes and lettuce.  As you can see above, four of the eight lettuce squares had either three or four seeds germinate… out of the four planted.  Then there are two that had two seedlings.  And two squares didn’t have any.  I didn’t label what I planted in each square, so it will just be a matter of seeing what they are.  A few of them already have some purple colors on them – so those either are the New Red Fire or the Red Salad Bowl varieties.

With the tomatoes, right front and center is the Red Cherry Tomato seedlings.  Total of six germinated out of about eight that I seeded.  This seed is quite old – some of the original seed that I bought even before moving into the house we’ve lived in for eight years!  That was back when you got a lot of seeds in a package for your money.  Now, it seems you are lucky to maybe get 25 seeds in a packet.

Above is another view of the trays.  You can see more tomato plants shooting up there in the front and over to the back / right side.  The Best Boy Tomatoes – I believe new seed was purchased either last year or the year before.  Germination rates on those were also very good – two or three out of three seeds came up in each.  This is a hybrid tomato and very good, so I grow it every year.  But with having so many come up, I don’t just like to pluck out extras that come up.  Will see if I can save them and maybe put them in other squares.  Now, to see if I have room in the garden to plant them!

Welp, the Germination Station is pretty well full, but when I take the celery out in the very back right, that will give me room for at least four large squares to transplant some of the tomato seedlings.  And, I may take out the entire tray of onions in the back that just are not turning out very well.

What a strange question – does sowing depth matter?  The answer…. yes… at least for onions!

I have had a difficult time this year getting onions to germinate or grow properly.  So much that with the last post, I fully re-seeded at least 300 Copra Onion seeds.  At this point, I had figured it was completely because the onion seed was one and two years old.

But alas, major success!  With the newest seeds, they were all covered with about a half inch of soil in each of the containers.  A really good germination rate so far from them.

Look at all those little sprouts!  In all of the little square areas, I planted four seeds.  In many of them, all four sprouted.  Here is the odd thing though.  The original onion tray (in the back of the picture above), I took out a lot of soil and put in the black plastic square containers.  Re-filled them with soil, put the seeds in, and buried them… just like the tray in the front of the picture above.  But how many have sprouted there?  Zero.  None.  Well, in each of those containers, I did only plant two onion seeds.  But it is still odd that absolutely none have germinated.  I put water under the containers – so no differences there.  But maybe since there is still soil directly in the tray itself and not those square black plastic containers, it wicked up the water before the square containers did.  Not sure, but either way, it looks like we should be set with onions for the year now.  With having four sprouts in some of them, it will be fun trying to untangle those.  Really dislike thinning seeds out, but it may be necessary this year.

With the celery, that has certainly been a lost cause.  Two celery plants seem to still be surviving.  The other one most likely is not going to survive.  With the other celery planted last week, none of those germinated.

So it was time to clear out some of the celery cups.  I don’t have as much room under the ‘germination station’ as I have in year’s past – since everything is on one of those fold-out banquet tables.  They are not as wide as where I originally have been growing seeds every year – which was downstairs in the basement on the large pool table with plywood over the top.

The majority of the garden has been seeded now… at least those that are started indoors.  Three Best Boy tomatoes, four Roma tomatoes, one Red Cherry tomato.

Two California Wonder peppers and six other sweet peppers.  Last year, I saved some seed from sweet peppers that were purchased at Aldi.  Everything I read said they were hybrid and the fruit would not be similar to what was purchased at Aldi.  Well, last year the peppers that grew from those seeds were pretty darn close!  Some were larger and some were smaller, but they still tasted great.  Last year I also planted some Anaheim Hot Peppers but this year, they won’t be coming back.  I found the skins of those peppers to be very tough and not pleasing.

Then the lettuce was planted; two each of Parris Island, Simpson Elite, New Red Fire, and Salad Bowl.  We love our lettuce; just too bad that we only get a few weeks of lettuce before they are bitter.

That pretty much fills out the germination station.  With having three celery cups left in the very back, I could put in a couple more plants if needed.  Might be good to start a few cucumber plants inside!

Otherwise, green beans, peas, and carrots will be the other vegetables planted.  All of those are direct-seeded into the garden.

It has been a tough year for me starting the garden.  The celery and onion seeds just are not growing very well at all.  I attribute that to celery seed that is over six years old.  The onion seed has notoriously never sprouted well if it is last year’s seed or older.  While I did get some to come up, the germination rates have been very bad.  And, many of the sprouts have not bee ‘normal’ and didn’t live.

So, this weekend, I essentially started over again… well, keeping what has been previously planted though.

I still had at least a dozen or more celery seeds from the packet.  So, I soaked them in water.

Celery seed is so small – that in the cup above, you barely can see little brown/black dots.  Those are the seeds.

Out of the six cups planted with celery seeds, three are still up. But, one of the seedlings doesn’t look promising.  Initially, all three of them looked pretty bad – but the small seed shell finally popped of two of the seedlings yesterday and allowed the two small leaves to spread out.

I got our daughter involved with the dirt process – since she likes to get messy.  She helped to fill six new cups for the celery seeds.  Always good to include the kids in the gardening process so they understand it and how things grow!

Unfortunately – she got the cup of celery seeds that were soaking… and dumped the water and the seeds out!  Out of all of the seeds, I was able to retrieve four that managed to stick to the side of the glass cup.  While I do have another packet of Ventura Celery seed that is at least a year newer, I’ve decided to ‘call it quits’ on the celery for this year.  So, whatever sprouts is what will be.

Moving on to the onions.  I finished the last of the onion seed that was purchased last year.

You can see the packet and some of the black onion seeds in the picture above.  I went back to doing it the way I have always planted onion seeds; I got out the small black plastic containers.  Filled them with soil but left about a half inch of room from the top of the containers and the level of the soil.  Then, four seeds were planted in each of them and covered with about a half inch of soil.

When I initially planted all of the onion seeds a few weeks back, I definitely did not give them a half-inch depth for planting.  They were just barely covered – maybe 1/8 of an inch of soil or less.  So, I could have really messed up with the planting – causing many of the sprouts to look bad and not sprout correctly.  And, they may have not been evenly hydrated enough.

In addition, I put the plastic containers (as shown above) on top of a warming pad.  I let them warm up a bit.  As always, I took out one of the black plastic containers and filled the tray with about a half-inch of water, which is then pulled up into the soil (also as seen above).

After a few hours of the heating pad, I opted to remove it.  Many websites I saw said optimal germination temperature is around 68 degrees.  We keep our house at 69 degrees during the day (but it does drop back to 64 at night).  Between that range should be very good for onion germination temperatures.

After the new batch of onions were planted, I then dug out the soil in the old onion tray – where there was nothing growing.  I still had some onion seeds left – even after putting four in each of the square seeding containers.  So I planted the final seeds in three more containers and filled the bottom of that tray with water as well.

Now it is a waiting game to see what happens.  It could be a bare year in the way of onions and celery.  I just hope that I have better luck with the other seeds – which will be started in about a month or less.  This year, I am cutting back on the amount planted though.  I’ve always grown cauliflower and broccoli – but I don’t think I will be planting those this year.  But, I will still be planting carrots, peas, green beans, peppers, and tomatoes.

It has been a few weeks since the Ventura Celery was planted.  Well, they just are not doing well.

I looked at the packet of Ventura Celery seeds that were purchased from FedCo Seeds -and discovered they date back to 2010.  Wow, the seed is over six years old!  Initially, about four of the six cups had one celery plant seedling that sprouted.  But, one didn’t make it.

This weekend, I went ahead and planted three more seeds in each of the three cups that no longer had a viable seedling.  There are two that are doing well but the third one may be suspect as well.

The above shows all six cups.  You can’t see any of the sprouts from that view because they are so small.  The black tray the cups are sitting in was completely filled with water a week ago.  Now, all of the water either evaporated or was pulled up into the cups.

The new Ventura Celery seeds that were planted didn’t go through the usual soak treatment that I do with them; I just put them in the soil and put a very light dusting of soil over the top of them.  From what I’ve read in the past, celery seed need light to germinate.  When I first started celery seeds, I experimented and found out that it did seem germination was better when they were pre-soaked and put on top of the soil and not covered up.  So this time, I did just the opposite.  We’ll see what develops from this six year old seed.

Well, what about the Red Bull onions and Copra Onions?  The seed used here was two year old Copra Onion seeds and one year old Red Bull onion seed.  No idea which onions have sprouted since they were all put together.  Last week, I also re-seeded a lot of spots.  As you can see in the tray below, the left side is almost completely empty – whereas the right side has a lot of sprouts.  Really odd behavior.  On top of that, the sprouts on the left side are not going to make it; they look pretty pitiful.

I attempted to try and pick up a few onions and relocate them – but that failed.  The onions are still way too small to be able to even pick out with a spoon.  Unfortunately, a lot of them are growing right on top of one another.  That means I am going to have to thin some out and I’m going to lose some viable onions.  I need a good 60+ onions to plant in the garden each year but I certainly don’t have that amount in the tray.

So, things are not off to a great start this year.  Onion seed simply does not germinate very well if it is over a year old.  I knew that going into it – which is why I put down the entire packets of seed.  Probably 300+ were planted.  I’ve not had a great deal of success with getting decent germination rates out of onions.  But if you purchase the onion sets, they will not grow to bulb out nearly as well as those from seed.  Strange since the bulbs are significantly larger, but that is due to the onion sets really being a second year onion and most of the time will “bolt” and put a flower head out.

This past week, the Ventura Celery and many onions (Red Bull Onion and Copra Onion) sprouted!

Overall, the Ventura Celery sprouted in five of the six containers.  I put three seeds in three of the containers and two seeds in the remaining three containers.  That is 15 total seeds and of those, about six have germinated so far.  The seed is at least three or more years old now.

Of the onions, there certainly has been a much lower germination rate.  While there are many of them that have sprouted, I must have seeded at least 200+.  I did my best to spread the seed over the large tray.  But because I soaked the seeds for a few hours prior to sowing them, they stuck to my fingers and may not have been spread as well.  In the picture below, you can see that they are all bunched together.  That isn’t going to work and I’ll have to thin them out.  Quite unfortunate because there isn’t really enough to even make my year’s worth of produce from them.

On Sunday, I did get another packet of Copra Onion seeds out from the freezer – a new package that I bought from FedCo Seeds very early last year (2015).  Because the seed is a year old, I don’t expect a great germination rate out of them.  I did not soak those seeds and filled in all of the spots in the tray by putting seeds about one inch apart in all directions.  Overall, I need to get at least 60+ onions to put in the garden for the year.

And finally, here is an overview photo of the germination station.

It has been a week since I got the germination station out.  Catchy name eh?

This morning, I got one of the fluorescent lights out and the PVC supports up to allow the lights to be overhead of the seedlings.  I’ve only hooked up one so far, but I suspect I’ll need to get the other one going soon.  Afterall, the onion container is twice the width as the container holding the celery.

So far, no celery has germinated.  The Ventura Celery seed that I have.. is… probably four to five years old.  It still germinated last year so I am hoping it still does this year.  Overall, I have been very blessed with having seeds store for a long time.  I keep them all in their seed packets – then put them in a ziplock bag which is stored in the freezer.  I have some seeds that are fairly old and I still get some decent germination out of them.  But, even with wanting to get about six celery plants, I seed a total of 15 just to be safe.  If we don’t get six, it won’t be a big loss.  Honestly, we are lucky to even cut down one or two celery stalks before they go bad outside.  I am always looking for the best production out of the plants and unfortunately, that causes some of the vegetables to go bad before I even pick them.

Same is the case with the cauliflower and broccoli last year.  We had a few of them but by the time I cut them out, they already were flowered and bad.  Defeats the purpose!

OK, so anyways, we at least have some onions that have germinated in the past week!  The general temperature of the area is probably around 70 degrees, although it can get down to around 62 – 63 degrees at night.  No reason to keep the house terribly warm when we are all sleeping in bed anyways.

You can see the little black plastic container in the middle of the tray.  Why is that there?  Well, that is where I pour the water in.  If you recall, I do not water the trays from the top – causes damping off problems.  So instead, I use that little container to pour the water in – which then distributes the water at the bottom of the tray instead.

The onions… don’t look that great.  In the picture above, there are two.  One of them looks OK but the other looks like a small curled worm.  Usually when I see that, I’m not planning for the best.  With onion seeds, they typically shoot straight up with a little tip that eventually pulls away from the seed.  Then I know they are going to be good.  But if they start out curled up or not straight, they are most likely not going to make it.