kylaluaz said:Rick, bless my soul, that post is a work of art.

Bless YOU, thank you! (I think.)

... umm, did you mean "I like to fiddle" is a work of art, probably understatement ...

... or did you mean the seven page treatise on how someone else could do years of Rube-Goldberg research to satisfy my idle curiosity and desire to make the simple complex, and make the complex even more complex, was interesting on some level other than its content?

I just like to put seeds, and soil, and water together, and see what happens!
Sometimes cold, sometimes cool, sometimes warm and sometimes hot.

That sounds about right to me, Caroline !

Rick, I am just always impressed with your attention to detail. I myself don't have the patience I guess!

As well, I've observed that while such detailed analytics can be helpful, pretty often plants surprise me by doing things that don't quite fit their profile, as it were. I basically garden in part in order to invite such surprises. Which didn't occur to me before now!

Yep! Mother Nature knows what she is doing!
We are just there to assist her.

>> pretty often plants surprise me by doing things that don't quite fit their profile, as it were.

I totally agree - plants are complex enough that the desire to understand and predict them is doomed to fall short. That just makes the challenge more enjoyable to me! I know there will always be more complexity than I can unravel.

Kind of like unwrapping a gift that has infinite layers of wrapping.

So all my summer wintersown jugs are sprouting beautifully now. Next experiment is whether the spinach will be happy enough to grow a nice little mini-crop in the heat of summer. Could do! Will be the third sowing if so. I may try to catch seeds from the first sowing as they are flowering pretty right now and did SO well here.

Coming into the last few days before the Garden Walk. I wouldn't have a garden worth showing were it not for winter sowing.

>> I may try to catch seeds from the first sowing as they are flowering pretty right now and did SO well here.



I always figure that the plants that survived in my garden are better adapted than those that fell by the wayside. Saved seeds are self-selected for your beds!

That's my understanding too, Rick, though this particular spinach could hardly be better than what I got from the seed packet.

Still, why not give it a whirl?

So, I summer-winter sowed some kale, the last of that spinach (seeds from the packet because the ones on the plants rotted in the rain) and mizuna -- those seeds I did save from that one plant I had and they did really well! Planted out three kinds of kale, mizuna, and three spinach starts that made it this far.

So I may have some winter greens. Would be nice.

That's great. And EASY.

Karen

Yeah except many of the plants are getting eaten up by cabbage white caterpillars. And the spinach by somebody. I do hope I have enough to share! I love those little white butterflies.

I probably should just get more spinach seeds. The mizuna is surviving better than any of the rest of it, and I ate the thinnings from the kale, so, there's that.