What now?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfWW1gWyMoo

     Brooke has kindly shown me this commercial. I apologize if you cannot see it, but I'm not going to go through all the trouble of downloading it from YouTube and uploading it on Vimeo. (Not that I know how. I also think I remember agreeing to some sort of "original content" thing on Vimeo, so it might be taken down anyway.)

     For those who cannot watch, it's a Miracle-Gro commercial that basically rips off my gardening story. It even shows the dead plant in elementary school. Unfortunately, this woman got my happy ending, and I'm left with radish stems.

     Maybe I can put the stems in a salad, once they grow enough. Maybe a soup. Or pesto? There are tons of not-disgusting-at-all recipes that I can make to dispose of my useless radish stems.

Yummy yummy radish stem soup. Looks delicious.

     I'm trying to be optimistic, in case you can't tell. I'll admit, I expected at least one radish, but I never thought this many sprouts would grow. Sprouts are pretty cool, right?

     Honestly, I'm just sort of at a loss for what to do now. I know I learned a Valuable Lesson from this experience, but couldn't I have walked away with a lesson and a radish?

I JUST WANT A SINGLE RADISH.

     Actually, I don't think I'm too upset about the radish itself. I'm just sad that my little sprouts didn't get the treatment they deserved. I suppose I grew more attached to them than I predicted. I was rooting for them. (Pun slightly intended.) I wanted them to do well, and it seemed like they were, but to learn that they were doomed from the start? That's tough. But hey, they're not dead yet. As long as they keep growing, they still have a chance. Maybe. If not, I have plenty more radish seeds... Summer might be a good time to try again.

Surprise!

     So... Apparently a week can make a big difference. This was what I saw when I came back from vacation.

     Remember our friends, sawdust and compost? There is now visible growth in all five pots. Honestly, I almost gave up on the ones outside, especially after the control pot started growing when I moved it inside. And I heard there was snow while I was gone? These radishes confuse me. Maybe I should just stay away from them from now on. I think they hated me so much that they didn't want to grow until it was way, way too late. I'm not sure whether to be grateful or annoyed. I'll admit, I'm glad that the gardening methods actually worked, to a degree. I always thought the sawdust method was cool.

     In other news, the stems and leaves of the pebble pot have grown much sturdier and more radish-like (although the snipped off ones didn't grow back), yet there's still no sign of actual radishes. Drew agreed that the radishes aren't getting enough sun and kindly offered to recommend lighting supplies, which I'm afraid I have to decline. At this point, I feel like it would be beating a dead horse. I wanted this to work out, but I can admit defeat.

I suppose I'm just doomed to a life of plant killing.

I accept my title with grace.

P.S.- The Google image results for "plant killer" are surprisingly dissatisfying.

Quick Update

      Brooke has pointed out this thread. I actually found it before and just chose to ignore it (I don't want to cut my radishes!), but desperate times call for snipping my babies in half. I'm going to cut a few of the radishes in the pebble and plastic pots and see if that makes a difference.

Confused

     If you watched the vlog, you'll know I've been having difficulties. And by difficulties, I mean that I have grown radish stems without the radish.

     According to everything I have read, I should be able to harvest the radishes on March 22, which is in two days. I should definitely be seeing bulbs poking through the soil, but no physical changes are visible except for vertical growth. I pulled one stem each from the plastic wrap pot and the pebble pot, and this was the result.

     In case anyone is confused, these are not radishes. They are radish stems that should be radishes, but they ARE. NOT. RADISHES.

I have only three guesses:

1) The radishes are not getting enough sun. Nothing I can do about that. I might have been destined to fail from the start.

2) Human error. I'm pretty sure I've been watering them the right amount and thinning them correctly, but who knows?

3) My house is too warm. This shouldn't be a problem, but it's the only other issue I can think of.

It's hard to figure out the exact issue. Shockingly enough, nothing useful is yielded from Googling "why dont my stems have any radishes on them." GardenWeb is no help at all. I'm closely monitoring their growth, but I don't know what else I can do without knowing what's wrong.

Ugh. Onto the status of each individual pot.

From left to right are the pebble, plastic wrap, and control pots.

    

     The pebble pot is growing as usual, except for the whole missing-radish thing. The stems are now so long that it is difficult for them to hold themselves up.

     Going against my original plan, I ended up not using fertilizer on the plastic wrap pot. I mentioned that I could not find the correct type; the stems were so weak that the wrong type might just kill them. I've grown more attached to these plants than I expected. If it has a chance at life, I'm not going to ruin it just for an experiment.

     Covered in plastic wrap, the control pot grew stems within a few days, just like the original plastic wrap pot. Even if they grow correctly, they won't be anywhere near fully grown by my TED talk, but I'm glad I fixed that mistake.

     As a closing note, I'm going away again, for a week this time. Oops. At this point, it doesn't matter much. Either they'll grow or they won't. My hope is that there'll be some progress by the time I return. Really, any kind of change is all I'm looking for. And if they shrivel up and die... well, at least it makes a good story.

Vlog

https://vimeo.com/62140128

Now that's a nice tripod.

*Sigh*

      This is awkward... Remember that system I had for identifying the plants outside? I didn't need it. The outside ones didn't grow at all. At the beginning of this project, I kept reading (even in the "official" gardening books) that radishes flourish in cold-ish temperatures, which was the type of weather we were having. I certainly did not count on snow. I just now brought the control pot inside, after two weeks of waiting and hoping. Tomorrow, at some ungodly hour, I will cover it in plastic, as that seemed to make the seeds grow faster. I will revive this pot.

      On Wednesday, I thinned the pot with the pebbles. Unfortunately, I have no "before" picture, but here is the "after."

      At the moment, they seem happy, healthy, and vertical. I wasn't actually sure how to thin radishes, so I read Jane Tunks's quick article in SFGate, an online San Francisco newspaper, to figure out exactly what it entailed. She said I had to pull out the thinnest, most fragile sprouts, which felt to me like killing my babies so the strongest could survive. I obeyed, but quickly ran into a problem: I didn't know how many to leave. A piece in the website of Louisiana State University's agriculture center recommended leaving about two inches between each sprout. The process was difficult, but I eventually narrowed it to the ten you see. I probably shouldn't have planted the seeds so densely, but my resources said not to worry because I could thin them. What a joy that has been.

      Yesterday, I removed the plastic wrap from the other pot and thinned that one, too. Below is a before and after.

                                                                                                        

      For some reason, the sprouts and soil inside the plastic wrap pot are much weaker than those inside the pebble pot. The soil was crumbly, even though it wasn't dry, and the sprouts broke at a touch. The few plants I decided to keep cannot support their own weight. This could be because I waited longer to thin them (I was scared to take the plastic wrap off) or it could be the environment in which they grew. Maybe it was my planting. I'm trying to research the results and how to revive the sprouts. No luck so far. At the aforementioned ungodly hour tomorrow, I may adding fertilizer to this pot as per the directions on eHow. However, I could not find the correct fertilizer**, and am not sure whether I should use the closest substitute I could find. I'll let you know what happens.

      This week, I discovered something interesting about  my sprouts: they lean toward the sun. In all of my research, I never realized that radishes were phototropic*. There is a chemical inside the stems that slows growth when exposed to the sun, so they lean towards it in order to provide more shade. I rotate the two pots every day to provide even sunlight.

      Speaking of daily care, I seem to be in an unfortunate situation. I am leaving for Georgia in less than twelve hours, and my plants will be left alone for three and a half days. This could have been better timed. I will return to either massive growth or yet another garden graveyard.

* http://www.thefreeresource.com/do-all-plants-have-phototropism

** Fertilizers are categorized by number, which corresponds to the ratio of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. You probably know this if you are an adult. Apparently, 5-5-5 fertilizer is impossible to find.

Actual Progress

      Firstly, I would like to thank Drew for telling me about the green things. They're called perlites, which help regulate moisture. They would have come in the potting soil, although I stand by my claims that 1) I did not see them in the soil before, and 2) they're not in the pot with plastic wrap. (Not that I'm doubting him.)

      Although the mystery orbs were not, indeed, seed growth, I have found something that is. Say hello to my first definitive sign of progress.

      I didn't deny it yesterday, and I'm not denying it today: I planted many seeds too close to the surface. (There was a little mix-up in the planting process, but it's all good.) I am now glad for this mishap because it allowed me to see the growing process. In the plastic wrap pot, many seeds on the surface have cracked open and sent out whiteish-greenish tails. (They're definitely the seeds this time.) At this rate, I'm on track to be thinning them by the end of next week, and definitely by my next "official" blog post. Progress!

P.S.- I apologize for the quality of the picture, as it was taken through plastic wrap.

3/1 Update

      I found this little green ball in the control pot. In fact, upon further inspection, I found many of these in the control, pebble, and manure pots. I'm sure they were not in the potting soil, as there are none in the plastic wrap pot. They look like teeny tiny grapes. I took one out to feel it; it had a hard shell like a nut, but popped when I squeezed it to reveal a hollow center.

      My theory is that these are radish seeds that were not covered by the soil. That they have already started to change demonstrates the rate of growth predicted by my sources. This could be a very good sign... but then again, it's only day one.

Planting!

      After a week of research, purchases, and trying to find nearly impossible materials, I have chosen and initiated five different methods of radish growing. I am utilizing a variety of materials and environments in an attempt to grow at least one pot correctly. These were planted on the evening of February 28 at about 7:00.
 

1) Straight-up potting soil

Following the instructions on the seed packet, the Northeastern Garden Book, the Complete Book of Houseplants and Indoor Gardening, and wikiHow, I simply planted the radish seeds in potting soil. All resources assumed that I would be planting in a garden, so this pot will be outside. This pot is the most basic way to grow radishes, and will therefore be the control group in my little experiment.

2) Pebbles

Kiddie Gardens suggests you cover the base of the pot with glass shards, pebbles, or hydroponic material (a gardening aide that retains moisture). It also describes a specific method of planting the seeds on top of wet compost and under a layer of dry compost. Unfortunately, I could not obtain compost even if I had fifty-two weeks to do the project. I still thought the pebbles were interesting and different, so I planted the same way using regular old potting soil. The directions were specifically for indoor plants, so this pot is in a sunny room in my house.

3) Plastic Wrap

For this pot, I combined the directions from gardenguides.com and eHow. It's inside because, like the pebble pot instructions, gardenguides.com and eHow assume that my pot will be indoors. Both sites told me to make another control pot and cover it in plastic wrap to create a greenhouse effect.  In a week, I will take the plastic wrap off to thin the batch and apply liquid fertilizer (this is the only one that gets fertilized). I have the highest hopes for this one because I see how it could potentially work.

4) Sawdust

If you read my first blog post, you may remember the link I posted to the GardenWeb forum in which a novice gardener asked about the effect of sprinkling sawdust on top of the soil. An experienced gardener helpfully gave instructions on how to utilize sawdust. It looked easy, so I thought, "Why not?" In addition to being outside with the control, this pot is exactly the same as the control pot with some sawdust sprinkled on top.

5) Manure

Most of my resources recommend mixing compost into the soil, but I don't have access to compost. Cornell University's gardening resource website suggest that a layered pot of twigs, leaves, manure, grass clippings, and potting soil (called the Hugel method) can provide the same effect as compost, so I decided to try it. This pot is outside because it has the highest risk of smelling bad or being attacked by bugs.

      As per my brother's suggestion, I labelled the pots with chalk. I then realized that three of the pots would be outside, where rain would wash the chalk away. Paper would have the same problem. I didn't want to mark the pots in case they could be used again. I decided to put colored marbles in the water-collecting base, but quickly found that we do not have marbles. I came up with the idea to use Monopoly pieces, which were distributed as follows:

Pebble Pot - Thimble (it looks like a pebble)
Plastic Pot - Hat (it covers the top)
Sawdust Pot - Wheelbarrow (for carrying sawdust)
Manure Pot - Dog (think about it)
Control Pot - Iron (it's a classic)

In the photos, the Monopoly pieces are sitting next to the pot, in case you want to look for them.

      If progress is as fast as my resources suggest, I should start seeing growth within a few days. If not, I have about five weeks to fix it. Wish me luck.