Savage Garden: week 3

Sadly, most of my spinach seedlings, which I loved so much mostly because they were my first sprouts, succumbed to this:

I have gathered from online that problem is that the seedlings, despite being underneath a damn skylight, are not getting enough direct light (12-14 hours per day).

Evolution’s solution to this is to have the seedlings put all their energy into growing vertically really fast so that they can shoot up above whatever other plants are blocking their light and block their light. However, when the problem is less other plants in the way and more the poor planning skills of an amateur gardener, the non-direct light just causes the seedlings to grow really, really tall – so tall they can’t support themselves and fall over.

My other seedlings didn’t come up as quickly, so I’m hoping there’s still time for intervention before they get all Jack Skellington on me and fall over, too. I am trying two things:

Intervention 1: Plant field trips

Hopefully it’s not too chilly out there on the roof…

Intervention 2: Moving to a south window

Apparently even a north-facing skylight is still not as effective, sunlight-wise, as a south-facing window. Who knew? In any event, I moved my parsley downstairs to the window as an experiment a week or so ago. I chose the parsley mostly because it balanced pretty well on my bike seat, as I only got a little table a couple days ago.

It’s been doing waaaaaaaay better than all the others. It’s the only one thus far to put out true leaves (most seedlings look kind of the same when they come up, which is to say a stem and two flat leaves called cotyledons; the leaves that look like the plant’s leaves will look like come after). And look, there they are!

So I’ve moved as many plants will fit onto the teeny IKEA table I found in hopes that they will not get freakishly tall and fall over.

This is one of them, in an Arizona Iced Tea self-watering container. If you’re trying this yourself, remember to label your seedlings; I have absolutely no idea what this is.