It may have been asked before, but I couldn't find it in recent posts, but how many folks here start their own plants from seeds (or cuttings), whether veggies or flowers? If you do, have you noticed that germination rates seem to be low in recent years? I have been hearing of lowered germination since the pandemic started, and have experienced it myself this year. Even seeds ordered from reputable places and purchased for this year's season seem to have much lower germination rates than I have ever seen and I have been doing this for 60 years. On a side note, a man I correspond with in Nebraska wrote that almost none of the corn crop in his state has been planted yet, and normally half the crop has been planted by mid-April. It bodes ill for this fall.
I've noticed I have several starter pots where I have even overseeded veggies or flowers and nothing comes up - not even stray grass.
It's early for planting most crops here but they have started planting corn on the big farms down east. Just looking at the fields from the highway, it looks like they have a 100% germination rate.
I grow onions / sliver beet / tomatoes / capsicums/ egg plant / pumpkin / zucchini from seeds I buy from cheap as chips, seedlings are to unreliable cause I was getting way to many that were not as labeled …….especially tomatoes / capsicums
I am working on starting a small garden for us. I usually start the seeds in the aerogardens, and once they are growing well, then I transplant them into containers and then replant the aerogardens. Now that it has warmed up enough, just about all of the plants I started are outside and doing well. I use my calendar on the iPad and have a green Gardening Calendar (shared with Mr. Bobby, of course), and when I plant seeds, I write what I planted and in what aerogarden or container I planted it. My mini greenhouse should be here tonight in the mail; so tomorrow, Bobby gets to set it up in a sheltered area next to his shop where it is protected from wind and storms. I set up my potting shed in a small corner of his workshop, so everything will be close together for me to work on my gardening. I am hoping that we do not get all the rain that we had last summer. My garden barely grew and what did grow , was tall and scrawny, trying to get some sunlight.
Normally plants. We have planted our own bell peppers, onions, a couple of things from produce we had. That was a first. Basil we h ad grows really fast and we just cant use enough of that fast enough. We live in apt. so only had one big plater he made earlier on. But worked out fairly well.
We usually start some things but we haven't this year. I plant beans directly in the soil outdoors beginning any time now, I suppose.
I planted climbing bean seeds , ( blue lake ) yesterday in my raised garden bed as it’s getting quite cool here as we head into late Autumn
this is purple corn which i'm planning on sharing with some caring people (less work for me that way). i assemble phytonutrient rich synbiotic nourishment systems... a fancy way of saying i cook up some strange tasting recipes. phytochemicals such as butyrate, anthocyanins, flavonoids, antioxidants, minerals, etc. make up the payloads delivered over disparate systems. depending on the target (i.e. colon) employing synbiotic (pre, pro, and postbiotic all-in-ones), liposomal, or even via microtubules.
Well, that is cool, but be aware that much commercial produce is hybrid, so, although you get plants and fruit, you may not get what was in the store. Good for you for seed saving!
I bought a seed safe a few years ago and before I replaced it I wanted to see if it were still viable. I planted s few watermellon, cantelope, broccolli and a few others. The only no shows were lettuce. Mostly, I grow the beans . Daughter does most of the other stuff and I do the canning. The seed safes have heirloom seeds in them. A decade or so ago I found the walmart seeds stopped producing well--Burpee? anyway, I got some at our Fleet Farm and they weren't much good either. So I started buying Livingston seeds which are good. And pound bags of beans and peas.