Smelly Melly,What did you do with all those seedlings!
Oh MY!!
great JOB!
Blooms the first year!
Very good. I bet you have many that you are anticipating thier blooms!
Butterfly weed (*flower) still hasn't bloomed!
At what point did you take the tops off?
Using the milk containers the caps would come off once the temp rise, and if they are in full sun, otherwise they would cook in no time. I took the caps off when I saw the soil was drying out from the sun. At which point I watered. and recapped until about June6th.
What is planted is another point to be made. If you are doing veggies they need to be in the sun once they sprout and therefore need lots of tending, once true leaves are growing they need to be transplanted.
I was speaking of using way less soil (only about 3 -4inches) you use about a quart, that shouldn't completely dry out but the top 2inches would, and needs tending. Also would depend on how far down from the top the soil is which would make a difference in drying out. Where in relation to the sun, how long in the direct sun and the medium that was used.
Also we didn’t make those drainage holes in the bottom. We wanted it to be the least amount of tending. Once you see the dew lessen you need to water. I took the caps off at first briefly, watered and capped off . Moved them to indirect lighting (about 1hour sun) and they were fine for another few weeks. But by then, the tape came off and I found them soaked or dried out .It was a terrible trial. Ended up with just a few annuals that year.I didn’t do many in those milk containers I thinkI did 5 and out of them 2contaienrs made it through ,mostly due to the tape between drying out and getting wet.
I bet if I filled my containers with 4 cups of soil they would have done better. I may try it again using way more soil, not sure.
I like my draw method nearly everything germinates and I can just scoop out some rain water and water them and not worry about them. I did wintersow last year and added ½ gallon actual pots, I bagged them in a large zip lock ,they stood in full sun. I just sat them on a rock or something and put too much water in each bag. I had the water sit to the side of the bag lower then the pot. The bag was a bit bigger. If you need a pic I didn’t take one but.. can make the set up I had and take one.
KyaD,
As far as the Markers I believe those are the ones I tried. About 3dollars a marker (may-be more) I bought red and black against my desire to spend that much *lol “If you need it to label get two” Hubby said. I said, “ I don’t know if they work I’ll just get one”!. Hummm .I just looked but don’t even know where they are.*LOL
I was going to take a pic to see if that is what you speak of. They have a ball in them like a can of paint; you shake then press as you start the writing, and then just write. Most of the letters faded less then 1 season , I used them to Number my Wintersowing, that worked ok..
Just a big number drawn over and over again (indoors) out doors in the cold Im guessing you can forget it. I let them warm up to adhere and they worked thru the winter on blinds too but, depends on the blind material and temp of the blind. Met a gardener, she cut milk cartons for labels and claimed they worked well, but when I did it on containers I didn’t think so, I had to put masking tape and wrote the numbers on that because they faded too soon on the containers.
I got tired of faded labels
So for my BD “07 I received a Brother Labeler (recommendation from someone that has one and stated the labels last for 3 years outdoors in the sun) good point and bad. One is to get the thing to actually do what you press brings on a moment of silence as you fill yourself with glee. Then you just type out what you want and peel and stick. They stick well on pots and containers and sticks and blinds; as long as they are not cold or moist. I do not know how well the results will be, this is the first winter we are going through; I will know once the snow melts.
I hope I am not repeating myself here I have been leaving my train of thought and editing this over and over again..
Hope I don’t bore you*LOL
Kale