Moving outdoors take 2

Was it really seven days ago I planted those new pea plants in plastic cells and plopped them in my window?  A week later I'm planting four outside because they've outgrown their cells!  It's amazing how well the second batch has grown - makes the batch currently outside look lame.  I'll give the older peas another two weeks to get the leg on, otherwise, they are getting replaced.

I'm wondering if I started some plants inside too early and should have waited -- although I was following the general directions of the MG.  It may be that container gardening needs to run on a different schedule than terra firma gardening.

The cucumber plants seem to be recovering from their earlier scare - the white spots dried up and now new leaves are growing.  I've left the bottle cloches off all week and that seems to be helping immensely.  A check of the weather and night time temperatures min out at 49 this week - I'm beyond the frost scare.  I'll also give these two more weeks to recover or be replaced.

I took four carnival pepper plants and four italian style pepper plants and put them outside in my second window box.  A couple of the plants that had been standing strong now are leaning to the side.  I'm hoping a few days outside in gorgeous weather will change things.

Tomorrow I will make a trip to the home depot or walmart and decide how to finish the planting.  I have a few lettuce sprouts that look extremely healthy and need to go outside ASAP along with at least four more pea plants.  I also need to get a deeper vessel, possibly a bucket, for the tomato plants.  I'm leaning towards attempting the self-watering container directions with smaller bins.  I need to find a happy medium - big enough for the plant's roots but will still fit on my patio without being too heavy for me to move around.

Wilting away

So apparently this is what happens when you have soil block seedlings sitting in a hot, dry apartment and forget to water them for the first time before you run out the door to work.

Yup.  I tried some recovery water when I got home, but I suspect all but two are goners.  They were the "italian sweet peppers" from home depot and had been doing great.  Until today. 

There really isn't much I can do to control the heat or humidity in my apartment.  I live above the main entry way so the temperature in the lobby determines the temperature in my apartment.  Attempts to cool down the place short of leaving the windows open all day are unsuccessful.  As for humidity, I have a bedroom humidifier and a small one in my office.  Neither is big enough that it would be able to treat my whole apartment.

A check on my other seedlings.  The orange blossom tomatos are doing lousy independent of whether they are in the plastic cells or seed blocks.   The valley girl reds are doing marginally better, but not fantastic.  The eggplants are finally getting tall enough that they are at a do-or-die stage this weekend.    To the left are the other peppers, the "carnival" peppers, or full size non-green bell peppers.  Those seem to be doing better in their tupperware containers.  I think it retains moisture better than the regular plastic trays.

My peapods outside seem to have had an identity crisis.  While some of the plants are growing up the bamboo stake two of them decided to flower and bud peapods much too early.  The plants are so small they can barely hold the weight of a three pea pod.

My cucumber plants seem to have caught some sort of a disease or are dealing with sun-stroke.  While the soda bottles work wonders at keeping plants alive during the cold nights, remembering to take the bottles off during warm days (especially last weekend when  I wasn't home) seems to have doomed half of my cucumber plants.  I'm assuming they got steamed too much over last weekend and developed a white blanched look; I'm going to guess that recovery is slim at this point.

I guess the good news is that I still have plenty of seed soil (from dead plants) and some seeds that I can try again with most of the species.  I don't have much tomato seeds left though - the "mini" packets from Johnny's didn't leave much room for error.  The rest I am going to give another try, including the lettuce seedlings that failed last month.