Friday, June 28, 2019

Bean sprouts

Finally. After the third planting. Our spring was cold all the way past summer solstice then boom hot as can be and that's when the seeds could finally germinate outside.

Before that they just pffft rotted away.

And that's such a bummer!

It makes everything late. So here we go. It's on.

The seeds were planted in every pot along the railing, except one, but just a single row in the back of each pot allowing the rest of each pot for some other things.

The other things that were planted were all misgiven and gangly if they survived. Most of them did not. Since they languished so long inside from peat pellets, little bundles of peat. They grew toward the light so their stems are all too long and misshapen. They all look like poo. Honestly if they survive it will be a miracle.

But now they're all in outstanding soil. Their light is half what is optimal. We'll see how well they survive. Most are gangly and elongated and misshapen for being inside under poor conditions.

Live and learn. No more of those peat pellets. It will be cups for now on and started later.

The long beans were separate. They were planted as little beans just now, just less than a week ago. Finally this last round started to pop up.

When they all show up they will form a wall crawling up the vertical railing. When they reach the top then it will be chaos intertwining with what is already up there, going over and past each other along the railing reaching outward, reaching inward, and making a huge mess.

I have bamboo sticks that I can attach to the upright railing but I doubt that I'll use them. I'm not sure yet. I think that I'll just let it be a huge mess. But maybe if they do grow well I might attach the sticks so they go higher than the baskets in front of them on the outside.

The beans themselves are dark red and can reach over eighteen inches but that's under ideal light. We'll see how this goes.













Very many more than this were planted. They're actually quite tight and on top of each other.

The dirt is awesome. It's regular potting soil with crazy abundant organic fillers to 100%. The whole thing is outrageous. As this goes then I'll add living culture, a microbial liquid that works around the root zone that brings available nutrients into the roots. 

See, the whole thing is organic but it's not actually living. Not yet.


4 comments:

I'm Full of Soup said...

I think, we here in Philly, got the same weather Chip....cool cool cool then bam it's in the 90's.

rhhardin said...

I used to sprout bean sprouts in a damp paper towel for salads, but then Kroger stopped carrying mung beans and I stopped.

Chip Ahoy said...

True Leaf Market. I bought a bunch of stuff through them.

But I haven't started yet. For microgreens.

Except I started some seeds for outdoors. And man, the cucumbers took off like nobody's business. They grew a vine from a jiffy-cup that was way too small for it. It's half the length of the balcony with little flowers all along the way. I'm afraid it won't live out there because it was started too early and our season started too late. So I might just start over. It's a single vine with about fifty tiny flowers on it. Each could be a cucumber if it were handled right. But it wasn't. Too bad.

ampersand said...

Rain almost every day here. Lake Michigan is up 6 inches. Also mostly cool until this week.
We had snow twice at the end of April. Europe is going through a heat wave.