Day 28

Everything is coming along just fine.

My cloner box is clear full now. Actually there are only 4 clones in the box. Each corner has one tomato. The remaining holes are filled with seeds that have sprouted. They include tomatoes, cucumbers, and bell peppers.

The tomato cuttings were given to me by a co-worker. They had been wrapped in a wet paper towel for a day and were in poor shape. I started with 5 and was able to save 4. Each one is held in place by a neoprene plug. These are ideal for cloner cuts. I put these tomatoes in the box just two weeks ago. Today I removed one and there was a 10" root mass. It now is in a bucket by itself.

The remaining holes all have sprouted seeds. I have used Walmart polyfill in net cups for several of the seeds. This worked ok and it was cheap. However the rapid rooter cubes which is made of coco fiber worked the best. All of the rooting media was placed in a 2" net cup. Most of those seeds germinated in only 24 hours. I am hard pressed to keep up with all of the transplants.



Tomorrow I will have to start another box.

The top photo is my seed box. It is actually a Sterlite shoe box with about 2" of perlite in the bottom. I saturated the perlite with a weak solution of nutrients.
If you look closely you will see a tomato seedling that strayed from my plug. Also I have some seeds in a damp paper towel. They will germinate, but they are very delicate and have to be moved, so I decided to plant all seeds in a rapid grow plug or some other starter media.