Your houseplants and gardens - Yellow leaf means underwatered AND overwatered?! What a country!

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Look at you, running sensible experiments. I have a leggy pothos that needs an ol' chop and prop, and I'm plotting to run a "how much Monster Lo-Carb can I add to the water before it won't root?" experiment.
It has what plants crave.
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Layton Mysteries dijo:
I wonder if it could have been from different levels of moisture retention.
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Honored guest dijo:
On a side note make sure you moisten your seed starting mix before you add any seeds
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I didn't moisten my seed starter pre-seed planting, so that could definitely be it. The only odd thing was the other type of onion seed didn't seem to care. The commercial tray had 5 pots of one onion and 5 pots of another, and both got soaked sitting in the same basin. After I planted the seeds, I was worried about the hydration part so I watered close to a gallon of water through the bottom of the pots and over the next couple days sprayed to top of the soil as well. As well as keeping a little bit of water in the tray under the humidity dome. They were black and very moist to the touch. under the dome for a week easily 80-90% relative humidity.

I know what it's like trying to wet pure dry peat moss, and that does take forever, however this stuff did have wetting agent added, and noticeably sucked up water I would pouring into the tray which I would add a quart at a time. I was relieved to see this. I would honestly redo it, but I have planted all my seeds, so I'll have to wait until next year. I've got some other things to plant, so maybe I'll do some more head to head comparisons.
 

My pothos got too cold and started dying!
That's bad.
My new pothos is long enough I could replant some.
That's good.
The part that died is REALLY dead and I need to prune it back.
That's bad.
But I can take this as an opportunity to repot and rewind the vine.
That's good.
 
Onion Update 2: It's been about 3 weeks of time between the last pictures.
Previous pictures and setup discussed here.

The only thing that's a bit different, is that I have fertilized the onions in the commercial seed starting mix once, because the mix has no added nutrients of any kind. I have NOT fertilized the onions in my homemade seed starter. I have been watering the onions when they are about 90% dry, and the odd one is just starting to wilt. I have a standard oscillating fan on low blowing the onions when the lights are on. I really like it, the movement of the fan is nice. I used to use computer case fans, but they don't move around. This breeze from the oscillating fan seems more natural to me, and very aesthetic to look at. The periodic breeze over hundreds of onions is mesmerizing, and helping my winter blahs.

Bunching Onion
Commercial Mix (pictured below)Homemade Mix (pictured below)
bunchingcomsoil.JPG bunchinghomsoil.JPG
The bunching onions in the homemade mix have really grown a lot more than the ones in the commercial mix. They are taller and have more leaves.

Storage Onion
Commercial Mix (pictured below)Homemade Mix (pictured below)
storcomsoil.JPG storhomsoil.JPG
We can see the growth is better in the homemade mix. The denstiy of onions in this pot is much higher as well. The commercial mix pot is supporting only 6 onions vs. 13 in the homemade soil pot, and this was due to the imbalance in germination rates in this onion species (even though each pot got the same number of seeds at the start).

I wanted to finish off with some closeups of the tops of the soil in each type of pot.
comsoil.JPG
I noticed there is either an algae or cyanobacteria bloom on the top of many of the commercial soil pots. This is definitely related to using the soluble fertilizer, but also the commercial seed mix really doesn't drain very well, and I've noticed it stays wetter longer. I want to post a video showing the drainage speed between the two, although I have to look up exif stripping of videos before I do that. I can actually smell the algae when I freshly water these pots (uh-oh stinky!). I don't notice any real adverse effects on the onions, they are just growing slower.
homsoil.JPG
Here we see the homemade mix up close, and there really isn't any noticeable blooms of any kind (maybe a few patches of fungi?). There probably is many more species of fungi and bacteria in the homemade soil, so I imagine they all compete with each other and things stay more in balance. This isn't the case for the more sterile commercial seed mix, which is only inoculated with one kind of fungus. When smelling the homemade soil pots I don't notice any "off" smells.

I'm really pleased with how things are going so far, I trimmed the onions down a couple inches after these shots were taken, because they were getting close to my lights. Then the whole room smelled of fresh onions, yum!
 
Just finished putting in a very simplistic 'living wall' in a lean-to that has a transparent corrugated roof. French cleats on the wall, planters are random containers found at thrift (plus a few handmade) with cleats added to the back and bits of trash bag* stapled inside for waterproofing. Working pretty good so far, and has turned a fugly transit room into something a bit more interesting.
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Thinking about adding tank fittings to each container and a pond pump to circulate water from a container on the floor. Ghetto hydroponics sorta thing. I've got a spare mini 12v solar panel but the pump for it is pooched, so might need to nig-rig something together. Being able to dump water and feed into a container and have it sort everything out sounds pretty nice, and a water leak in this room wouldn't be a huge problem since the floor is just decking.

(*I started out using pond liner as widely advised, but it was way too stiff to work into the correct shapes and staple. These thick garden trash bags are holding up really well and can take some abuse)
 
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Nook Figures dijo:
Just finished putting in a very simplistic 'living wall' in a lean-to that has a transparent corrugated roof. French cleats on the wall, planters are random containers found at thrift (plus a few handmade) with cleats added to the back and bits of trash bag* stapled inside for waterproofing. Working pretty good so far, and has turned a fugly transit room into something a bit more interesting.
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Thinking about adding tank fittings to each container and a pond pump to circulate water from a container on the floor. Ghetto hydroponics sorta thing. I've got a spare mini 12v solar panel but the pump for it is pooched, so might need to nig-rig something together. Being able to dump water and feed into a container and have it sort everything out sounds pretty nice, and a water leak in this room wouldn't be a huge problem since the floor is just decking.

(*I started out using pond liner as widely advised, but it was way too stiff to work into the correct shapes and staple. These thick garden trash bags are holding up really well and can take some abuse)
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It's so beautiful!
 
it was over 50 degrees today. in previous years it has been a blizzard or 10 below at this time of year. the 10 day forcast is all above freezing and frost.

I am pretty much killing myself not going out and planting the 50,000 wildflower seeds I have sitting here looking at me.
 
No one would care if I bought like 50lbs of various native wildflower seed mixes from reputable companies designed specifically for my area, and planted them along the roadside and trail and irrigation ditches where they clearly don't maintain shit?

All the freaking birds have left the area since they expanded various building developments.
 
bliblblblbbllb dijo:
No one would care if I bought like 50lbs of various native wildflower seed mixes from reputable companies designed specifically for my area, and planted them along the roadside and trail and irrigation ditches where they clearly don't maintain shit?

All the freaking birds have left the area since they expanded various building developments.
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I seed bomb roadsides etc all the time. go for it!
 
one_time_user dijo:
I seed bomb roadsides etc all the time. go for it!
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How do you go about it? Mix the seed with anything? Scatter them? Bury? How much do you do per area? Is it good to do it at a specific time, like the day before or after rain?

I have found surprisingly little detailed information on this topic. When planting wildflower seeds in a large area I was always taught to mix it with sand for better spreading, but I'm not sure that applies to seedbombing, for instance.
 
bliblblblbbllb dijo:
How do you go about it? Mix the seed with anything? Scatter them? Bury? How much do you do per area? Is it good to do it at a specific time, like the day before or after rain?

I have found surprisingly little detailed information on this topic. When planting wildflower seeds in a large area I was always taught to mix it with sand for better spreading, but I'm not sure that applies to seedbombing, for instance.
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sorry, I didn't realize that the term actually was something real! by seed bombing I just mean that I scruff up some of the soil and throw a handful of seeds at it and scruff again (if it's packed). If it's not packed I just throw some seeds. I am more of a wildflower bomber- most wildflower seeds do NOT need to be covered so throwing some into a bunch of dirt and scrub grass is fine! I would guess about a 50 percent success rate.
 
bliblblblbbllb dijo:
How do you go about it? Mix the seed with anything? Scatter them? Bury? How much do you do per area? Is it good to do it at a specific time, like the day before or after rain?

I have found surprisingly little detailed information on this topic. When planting wildflower seeds in a large area I was always taught to mix it with sand for better spreading, but I'm not sure that applies to seedbombing, for instance.
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I've never done this but I love the concept. If the council won't do crap might as well liven up the place yourself, indeed.

I'd do it on a rainy day or a day after it has rained, preferably when it's not windy. Wildflower seeds don't need much of anything though, so even if you do it on another day you probably can't go wrong. I've used wilderflower/honey bee mixes before and you don't need to cover them. But no wind will help them not spread throughout half the neighbourhood (I'm not sorry lol).
 
I buy basil plants from the shop and leave them on the windowsill watering them and picking leaves off them as needed. One plant when it got down to just four leaves left I decided instead of just buying another one I'd see if I could resurrect it. I put it under a sun lamp and gave it a bunch of plant food and it's come back gangbusters, nice large bushy plant in a few weeks. I noticed recently it sprouted white flowers, which I've never seen on any of my basil plants before. A bit of research says this means it is going into reproductive mode, the flowers will bear seeds and it will die.
A bit more reading says that if I prune the flowers off, it will continue to make more branches and get bigger. The flowers have been there over a week now. Anyone know if it's too late to prune them back? If it is I'll just let it run its course and get the seeds from it when they appear. Don't want to prune them then be left with a dying plant and no seeds.
I tried one of the leaves from it and it has a bit of a chemical taste from the plant food so I've put it on a flush cycle of just water to clear it all out.
 
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