Day 26 - Different Starts for Different Plants

I've been thinking about the different ways that I could start some plants off. So far I've come up with four ways:

1. Buying seedlings / mature plants
2. Growing from seed
3. Making cuttings
4. Growing from supermarket root stock

There has to be a better way to describe number four! What it means is to buy food from the supermarket with the roots attached, cut off the top and plant the roots. Yesterday I tried that with spring onions. The tops were cut off with the roots and about 3cm of stalk remaining. These were placed in a glass of water until they were planted. So far the spring onions have grown out from the middle - that is that the centre of the stalk has grown faster than the exterior. In a day they have grown about 5mm. I've planted 11 spring onions and I'll be keeping a close eye on them.

My jalapeno seeds are going well, ranging from 4cm to 7cm tall. I'm not going to thin them out, rather I will see which ones take over, if any. The best thing is that if they don't work, I can pull them up and start again!

I plan to work on some basil cuttings later to create a type of basil 'hedge' in my 40x10 planter box. Much more research to be done on that!

On a technological note, I will be adding photos to The Australian Kitchen Garden shortly. Not only do they illustrate some of my points (much more succinctly than I can), but they will show the growth rates of plants. Fun times ahead.