Good News/Bad News

First the bad news. After getting of to a great , spinach seedlings have all withered and died. The unusually cool summer had helped them grow at first but the increased heat of the past couple weeks was too much for the fragile seedlings.


The above picture is from two weeks ago. It's a little difficult to tell but the seedlings are already showing signs of trouble. With each passing day they seemed to become more and more shriveled. One week after the above picture was taken almost all of the seedlings were gone as seen in the picture below:


A couple days after the above picture was taken the pot was completely empty. All the seedlings disappeared, it was almost as if they had evaporated.

Although the snow peas are not completely gone, these too have been greatly affected by the heat. A few weeks ago the seedlings were growing very rapidly and appeared green, sturdy and quite healthy. That has all changed. They are now slowly withering and many of the leaves are shriveling up and dying. I tried cutting the sickly looking leaves but that didn't seem to help much. In the picture below the seedlings look much healthier than they look up close in person.


After speaking to various people as well as some online research, it appears there is a very simple explanation for the failure of these seedlings: the weather. The lesson learned here is DO NOT GROW SPINACH OR SNOW PEAS IN THE SUMMER. Actually, do not grow any leafy vegetable in the summer is what I took away from my research.

On to the good news. The wooden box where i planted the sweet william flowers, oregano and the powderpuff asters (again) has come alive with activity the last couple days. To be honest, I do not recall which side of the box i planted what in, but judging by what has sprouted, I can take a good guess. On the left side of the box is where the seedlings sprouted first. I believe these must be the sweet william flowers. The middle has a good amount of seedlings as well; these are the oregano seeds. The right side of the box...well...nothing is really happening, which leads me to believe is where i sowed those pesky powderpuffs.




For some reason, whenever I try photographing any of the pots where the seedlings are in the early stages of sprouting the picture ends up blurry and out of focus. I've tried changing the camera settings but nothing seems to help. So if you can't really make out what you're seeing in the pictures above, you'll just have to take my word that there are quite a number of seedlings growing in the wooden box. I do not want to get too excited as the seedlings are still quite young, but it's looking as if I may be able to grow some flowers after all.

I have not had time to post much the last couple weeks and there is a lot to report on. For now though, this mini-post will have to do and hopefully by the weekend I'll have a longer post with additional updates and pictures.