A Second Chance

 “For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again, but the wicked shall fall by calamity.”  Proverbs 24:16

I like that proverb.  It's all about not giving up.  It's about rising after you've fallen (everyone falls), dusting yourself off and moving forward, learning from your mistakes and trusting in God.  God uses imperfect instruments to accomplish His purposes.  He uses the foolish and weak so that He gets the glory and not man.

Second Chances.  I'm glad God is a God of second chances.  Many times things don't work out the way you planned, but we trust in Him that He has the best plan.  I was thinking about this today and how this plays out in nature as well as in our lives.

On January 1 of each year, I plant tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant from seed into little six pack seed pots.  I plant them into a seed starting mix that I make with equal parts topsoil, composted wood chips, and composted chicken litter.  As the seedlings grow, I water them with diluted fish emulsion.  I plant two seeds in each pot and as they grow, I separate them into individual pots prior to transplanting in the soil.

Some of the seeds don't germinate.  That is to be expected, especially when I'm using saved seed or seed that's a few years old.  I dump all the rich dirt from those pots in which the seeds didn't germinate into a bigger pot to reuse later.  In fact, here's one now:

I'll use that dirt for planting other crops in.  In six pots, I've got some herbs growing, specifically French Sorrel.  The leaves on this plant are so tasty!  This afternoon while watering the sorrel, something caught my eye.  I'm pointing at it, in case you don't see it.

It's a tomato seedling!  And it's doggone healthy.  These were seeds that were planted on January 1 and for whatever reason, didn't germinate.  But here we are almost six months later and conditions changed that allowed the seed to germinate.  And it's growing!  And here's another one:

And another!:

And two more!:

All in all there are seven tomato seedlings of unknow variety that were unsuccessful in growing the first time they had a chance.  Their peers passed them by, seasons changed, their time was up...  And yet, they got a second chance and by golly, they're growing.  A new lease on life.  There's a lesson there for us.  Maybe we're late bloomers, maybe we have failure after failure, but don't give up.  Stay rooted in the fertile soil (of God's Word) and grow!

I'm going to re-pot these tomato plants and nurture them.  It is a little early for the fall crop of tomatoes.  If nighttime temperatures are above 75 degrees, you run the risk of the pollen being sterile and the fruit won't set.  I generally plant my fall crop about a month or so later.  But these plants want to grow.  We'll use this as an experiment and see how our "Second Chance" variety of heirloom tomatoes fare.

A Brief Work Excursion AND Planting More Protein

I was out of pocket for a few days.  Russ, our oldest son, looked after the animals, fed them, gathered eggs and everything else that needs to be done around the homestead.  Tricia and I journeyed out to Baton Rouge for a couple of days for a work conference.  The Company put us up in a hotel that overlooked the Mississippi River.  We watched tug boats push long lines of barges stacked back to back up and down the river.

I attended meetings, but there was some fun intermixed and good eating, of course.  One adventure was a bus trip to TopGolf.  Let me be clear - I am not a golfer.  Back in the 80's, I went golfing for the first time in my life.  I teed off and the ball sliced or hooked or whatever you call it.  I knew that you needed to holler something, so I yelled, "Fore!"  A gentleman on the next green got out of his golf cart, looked my way and yelled, "What?"  Just at that time, my golf ball hit him square in the forehead.  A lump immediately grew on his head like in the cartoons.  He was very angry.  I realized that golf was a sport that required a lot of practice AND that I was dangerous at this thing.  Someone could get seriously injured.  I have not been on a golf course since then.

TopGolf is different.  It is more like bowling than golf.  A ball comes out, you hit it and you get points if you land the ball in lit up circles.  There is some sort of computer tracking of the ball.  It reads your score on a computer screen.  Food is served and everyone has a nice time.  Here is Tricia teeing off.

There are hundreds of bays and hundreds of people playing.  We were on the third floor.  The smile on my face shows my relief in that I didn't hit anyone with an errant ball.

While a golf club is a strange implement in our hands, a garden hoe and rake is not.  Last week once the rains came through, I got busy and planted two more 45 foot rows of Ozark Razorback Peas and Blackeyed Peas.  With threats of food shortages and inflation, I figured we'd get some more protein planted.  Rice and Peas with a little smoked tasso for flavor is a nutritious, quick, hearty, tasty meal.  

This planting was an experiment of sorts.  I was checking the germination in some OLD seed I had saved many years ago.  Both of the containers of saved seed were labeled with the name of the seed (Ozark Razorback and Blackeye - both Southern cowpeas).  They were also labelled with the year I saved them.  2012!!!  You read that right.  I saved them ten years ago.  Counting on diminished germination, I planted them one inch apart rather than the normal four inch spacing.  Look what happened:

The germination on the decade-old seed was pretty doggone good!  There are a few gaps, but they'll fill in.  Not too shabby.  Once the peas were up three inches or so, I pulled the mulch around the plants to discourage weed growth and preserve soil moisture.

We're still picking purple hull peas, ozark razorback peas, and blackeyed peas from the current garden.  When those play out, these will be ready for harvest.  It will soon be time to start planting the fall crop.  I'm looking forward to that!

Tomatoes, Peppers, and Eggplant - 3 Weeks Later

On December 29th I planted tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant into seed pots.  I always plant those crops from seed at this time of year and raise indoors until the chance of frost is minimal.  This year I also planted some broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage seeds since the hard freeze back in November killed those seedlings in the garden.  So, to plant, I put two seeds per pot, labeled each container, watered and waited for germination.  After the seeds all germinated, I moved them inside and placed beneath a grow light.  (Really it is just a shop light with two fluorescent bulbs in it.)

Let's check in on the plants now that we are three weeks down the road from plant date.  Here are the tomato seedlings:

Probably this weekend, I will thin these out, breaking the two seedlings apart and planting each in its own larger pot so that they don't get root-bound before it is time to plant in the garden.  Now that they have their 'true' leaves, I've begun to water with fish emulsion diluted to half of its recommended application dose as I don't want to burn them.  I want to give them some nutrients to feed on.

You can see my amateur grow light apparatus below.  Nothing fancy.  The light is positioned just a few inches from the seedlings so they don't get too "leggy."  We keep the soil moist throughout the day.  Each day we turn the lights off for 10 hours.

The Cole Crops are below: Several varieties of broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage.  Since this photo was taken, I've separated the cole crop seedlings to allow for only 1 seedling per seed pot.

The peppers and eggplant always germinate slower than the tomatoes.  In the bottom left below, you can see some jalapeno peppers growing.  In the bottom right, there are some eggplant just sprouting.

We will continue to baby these seedlings until it is time to carefully transplant them into the garden soil after hardening.  Speaking of hard, it is hard to imagine that spring is not far away.  The Farmer's Almanac tells me that the last Spring frost is March 2nd.

Germination (and then Termination)

Back on January 12th we posted THIS BLOG POST describing how we started our tomato, pepper and eggplant seeds indoors.  I thought it was time that we updated you on the progress of the seeds.  I keep the seeding trays on top of a cabinet in our utility room.  Hot air rises and to spur germination, you need moist AND warm soil.  Obviously light is a non-factor until the seeds sprout.  My main concern is to keep the soil moist, so each morning and evening I climb up on top of the washer and dryer and spray the soil in the seed pots with water.

On Day 10 after sowing the seed, this sight greeted me as I watered the soil:

Tomato Seed Germination!

Prior to sprouting, I keep the seed pots covered with plastic wrap in order to keep the soil moist while I'm at work.  When sprouting occurs, I remove the plastic wrap. Things were looking great so far. All of the varieties of seeds sprouted.  I calculated the germination statistics for each variety that we planted and it appears that we experienced a 100% germination rate on most of the heirloom tomato varieties that we started.  Fantastic!

Popping out of the soil, eager to grow

Now that we have tiny green leaves, light is needed.  I moved a four foot long fluorescent shop light that normally hangs over the workbench in the garage and propped it up with four canned goods on each side and turned it on.  The light provided will give the plants the 'artificial sunlight' they need to grow.  I once tried to just grow them near a window, but they grew so "leggy" that I decided that the plants just grew better under fluorescent lights.  You can see the spray bottle of water in the photo below.  I use it to water the seedlings.

Seedlings under the grow light

The peppers and eggplant have a longer germination period than do tomatoes, so I keep plastic wrap over them until they sprout.  

Peppers & Eggplants not sprouted yet and still covered

Looking back a bit, you can see the grow light up on top of the cabinet in the utility room.  As you can see this is a first class, professional organization (sarcasm!). You can also see the 3 milking buckets lined up ready for tomorrow morning. Daisy, Rosie, and Amy each have their own bucket.

The Seed Sprouting, Milk Pouring, Bucket Washing, Clothes Washing & Drying Room

Back to our discussion on seeds and their germination.  It would be nice to sit here and tell you that everything always works.  That would be a fat lie.  It doesn't.  I normally water the seedlings every evening and every morning.  Yesterday morning I forgot to water the seedlings as I dashed out the door on the way to my "real job." Last night when I hopped up on top of the washer and dryer, I was met with a sad sight.  About half of my tomato seedlings were dried, died, and laid to the side.  A hopeful post that began optimistically talking about germination has taken a 180 degree turn for the worse and now we're talking about termination!  Poor shriveled, dried out remains of what was once healthy vigorous tomato seedlings until my forgetfulness...

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust...

But as Winston Churchill famously said:

Image Credit

I've started my seeds early enough to allow for such miscues.  It's not too late to start all over again. I'll simply replant tonight and hopefully, armed with knowledge gained from the results of my oversight, I won't repeat the same mistake twice. Happy Growing, Y'all!