Saturday, April 17, 2010

Gardening Mistakes

Assumptions are indeed the mother of all F ups ...
                              I planted all my seedlings this year in the little black cells, but didn't label the individual seedlings because I made a an exact replica of where everything was at on paper....BIG MISTAKE....after having to switch and rotate my seedlings (because I only have two grow lights, and am too cheap to buy more) and having to transplant some of the seedlings that outgrew the cells. I have now completely confused myself as to the original placement of everything.
                               It was obvious which herbs were which and what not...but where i'm totally stumped is the peppers....I had cayenne, shishito, fatali, serrano, jalapeno, thai, and bell.....and can't seem to distinguish them. My other problem was the tomatoes...but was able to more or less figure it all out..
                                  Normally I would just take this and stride with it, plant it and be surprised, but because my intention was to sell/ give some of these away...I pretty much just shot myself in the foot...
                  Lesson learned here: ALWAYS LABEL YOUR SEEDLINGS

4 comments:

Diane said...

LOL! That is a lesson I know all too well from my labwork. I'm always preaching "LABEL EVERYTHING!!" to the new students and they say "Yeah, whatever," and label their tubes 1 2 3 4 5... then two days later take the tubes out of the freezer and say "What the heck are these?" Labeling is tedious but totally worth it!

I hope your peppers reveal their identities to you eventually!

garden girl said...

I did the same with peppers last year. I had more seedlings than I needed, and ended up planting a bunch of jalapenos (more than I wanted,) and less sweet peppers than I wanted.

This year I labeled them with popsicle sticks, but the peppers took so long to sprout, the sticks started to get moldy. I took them out and laid them on top of the plastic cover over the seed tray in just the right spots, then I bumped it and they got all jumbled up. I had so many jalapenos last year, I pickled a few jars, and still have some left. So this year I didn't start jalapeno seedlings, only sweet peppers - 5 different kinds. I still have more than I need, and I'll probably end up with a bunch of orange and red ones and no yellow and purple. I used those little flat peat circles this year and they're hard to label when you've got more than one thing in a tray. Next year I'll have to figure out a better system. This year - mystery peppers again!

Mr Brown Thumb said...

LMAO. I do this every year. This, from the blogger who is always blogging about making cheap plant labels. I can never take my own advice and always forget what I planted.

Also, in some cases I will write in codes that make perfectly good sense to me the names and varieties on pots. Of course later, I can never remember what the codes were.

Finding My Green Thumb said...

Diane.. I completely agree with you...TOTALLY worth it...lol


Garden Girl..I'm glad that i'm not the only one that's done this...the way i'm trying to see it is just that..its a Mystery! all part of the fun.

Mr. Brown Thumb..I actually was kicking myself and thinking of your recent post about using old milk gallons as labels when i realized i had screwed up..LOL