FROM SEED TO FRUIT

Cucurbita pepo L. puppets.

Cucurbita maxima duchesne puppets.

Growing organically with compost

For a good start you can collect lots of coffee cups. By picking up waist from the streets like soda cans, milk cartons or other thrown away buckets or pots. You can collect the peanut butter and/or chocolate paste, jam jars you eat and supply yourself with a low buget starter kit by cleaning and washing these items with hot water and cleaning material before use. Plants that are getting used to outside climate in may can root sufficiently in glass jars placed in a greenhouse. Just don’t overwater them. The water will evaporate outside due to the sunny hours it gets in those months. With transplanting just use a box and a hamer and wear some safetyglasses and have FUN smashing them to pieces.

Place the lids or (plastic egg) containers you saved underneath to prevent spills from cups with smaller plants and place the coffee cups inside the lids. To get ahead of time we gave the cups a warm lighted, ventilated spot inside using small adjustable fans to grow stable stems and a firm root system. This will always produce a better and larger crop. In December or January it is possible for early starters to sprout seeds using a heat mat or (small) heating system for plants. Be sure to meassure temperature and humidity.

While the seeds are still very tiny and small at this stage watering the plants by hand, using only root juice additives: cinnamon, bonemeal or water with starge for growing better roots after sprouting, will be good enough.

Lots of things you might already have lying around the house can be used to things you can eat or other usable packages. Sometimes it is better to cut off the bottom of a pot and place the plant into a bigger pot then to transplant. A half filled pot to go through flowering stage would spare half a bucket of expensive soil and fertilizer will go directly to the outgrowing roots if you feed em right there on the lower spots when watering; plus they have no disturbance from transplanting whatsoever. In other words sometimes you have to keep everything in place and let the root system expand downwards. Just cut the cups or pots you can only use once and let the roots find their way into open ground.

When creating a propegator using a round plant pot is a good idea. (if its to deep just fit a pan inside spilled moist will not go onto the floor) cover it with a round glass ovendish which often has 2 handles on the side, When the pot is to deep just fit a small pan inside , it also has 2 handles and spilled moist will not go onto the floor). This way the ovendish stays firmly on top. Cut drink cartons or starter kits will fit in a pan covered with an oven dish as a propegator lid. Plants from seeds do not even need a propagator but for the first few weeks it is a good protected controlable enviroment.

The glass will easilly hold sprayed water that will float above your seedlings so the tiny leaves can take up the condensated water droplets. Tilt the lid and blow in some air with a fan to prevent mold from forming on the soil. The seedlings are still tiny and the dish is about a finger deep. This small setup will let enough light through for weeks and can spray water inside without making a mess. You can even blow in heat from the bottom with a small heater because plant pots have holes in the bottom. You can also lay a blue see-through sheet on top to create blue sky color if your light is more reddish. Be sure to spray water daily when using heated air and do not overheat.

In all cups and cartons cutting soil is used with air permeability by using styrofoam, straw or perlite. Cups and packages are often free and can withstand water without growing bad seedlings for as long as the sprouting period lasts. It is easy to scoop out small plants from the side of a cardboard because you can cut out the sides or tear them open with your hands. Holes can be perforated in them easily with a sharp piece of metal, a drill or screwdriver. After that they can be cut open at the bottom for further transplanting.

After the cotyledons start changing their color to yellow, it’s certainly an indication that you should consider transplanting. When the plants get a second set of true leaves we transplant the best seedlings into perforated coffee cups inserted with a layer of hay or glas/rock wool on the bottom. this will conceal any dirt spillings from the bottom. Weak plants are destroyed and composted or planted somewhere else..in a secret location where we can keep an eye on them.

Try to get some good cutting soil before you start because it is very hard to come by the right kind of clean sand, mulshed cocopeat and /or fine humus that is in there. If you can’t get any, try to get some really good composted mulch, peat or cocopeat and mix with the best soil you can find and some clean crusher sand. It is hard to find in rural areas in Europe. A good trick is to add some perlite or even some crushed styrofoam to create even better air permeability.

At DevilsColors ressearch projects we try al kinds off different systems for watering plants, even hydrophonic systems with misters. We also experiment with grafting project, some projects more succesful then others. Like cloning a Buddleja Davidii or trying to fit a snowdrop on a garlic stem. It lasted a while and opened for 3 days then the stem got mushy.

There is a lot to talk about growing herbs, fruit, vegetables or beans in your greenhouse or kitchen garden. In this blog we are going to discuss some of the topics related to growing outside. Showing you easy to build, handy and cheap tricks to maintain, water, ventilate and light, your plants to get the best yields and harvest out of your seed stocks, even in toughest climates. Surviving the rains and the storms, insect plagues, molds, slugs and plantviruses.
We experienced a few on our green adventure.

Hope you enjoy this blog section and have fun in reading and viewing the art of growing.

Fan of growing veggies and like to try growing your own Dutch cultivated bio pepper seeds, very wel adjusted to chillier outdoor climates??
Some D666’s FEAR pepper varieties from sweet to hot are waiting for you to be sent to your adress from our webshop.