Today I did some garden cleanup and started tackling my to do list. I moved around all the potted plants getting them ready for winter, dragged all the clean empty pots to the shed, put the gas preserver stuff in the lawnmower, and cleaned out the water barrels for next year. Some of the old seeds I tried germinating proved themselves trash, though others I thought might be bad sprouted fine. I'm still waiting for the peppers to do something. Temps tonight are forecast at 39 F, here's hoping that the tomato plant doesn't die, I can't figure out a good way to cover it. I did chop down some coleus to root just in case the temps get too low.
I did take apart the two crappy tomato plants and realized I need to stick to my ideals. I dug up the roots to trash, and couldn't believe they barely filled half the pots. When I dumped the potting soil I found the culprit. I planted these with the coir pots still attached. I assume the roots were growing through the pots so I decided to keep the pots so I didn't disturb the roots, which I normally don't do. I hate coir and peat pots. They do not break down, and the coir ones obviously don't break down much. I'm kind of angry at myself for not removing them, and really mad they say on the package not to remove them at all. These plants are barely the same size as the freely rooting monster I have in the yard, yet they had a month longer to grow.
I've been browsing through my Plant Propagation book and checking when I should be splitting and moving all the plants I have to move. I looked up day lily seeds since my two just put out seeds and saw you're supposed to just sow them as soon as possible. I don't know where I looked it up before, but I thought day lily seeds needed to be stratified and needed more specialized handling, so never planted any (likely mixed them up with asiatic lilies). Turns out they're easy. The first one came up today, I have 5 or 6 more I planted a week later. I'm still waiting for some hostas to come up as well.
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