Fast Plants: Day 34

We are nearing the end of these Fast Plants! Just three days until we remove the water supply and let the seeds dry out so we can harvest them. The timing has turned out to be perfect, too. We planted our tomato seeds for the garden last week, so we will have more green things coming up and managed to "schedule" our rhinovirus during a less interesting week. Lots of very interesting seed development stuff going on, I'm sure, but not much to see from the outside.

Fast Plants: Day 29

There has been some new growth with new buds and flowers. We have just left them alone as we will be removing the plants from the water in a week or so. I thought about pinching them off (as we did with the buds and flowers that arrived shortly after pollination), but in the end laziness and a rampant rhinovirus won out.

Fast Plants: Days 23 and 25

We have gone to every other day for pictures as the fast changes are slowing down. The seed pods are growing, but there just isn't as much to get excited about day-to-day. Here is Day 23:



And here is day 25:



And a bonus picture of the seed pods today. Since the progress photos have been sharply focused on the fireplace screen in the background, I finally pulled out my tripod for a detail picture. They look an awful lot like little green beans right now. As if I wasn't already having a huge hankering for fresh, local vegetables.

Fast Plants: Day 19 and 21

Day 19...lots of pods growing!



Day 20...Sunday again. Apparently we are hopeless on Sunday...

Day 21...flower petal almost gone...pods growing like crazy.

Fast Plants: Day 18

The seed pods are growing!



And here is a fairly bad picture of the roots...lots of 'em. They caught my eye as I was refreshing the water reservoir, so I took a quick picture.

Fast Plants: Day 17

We did our third and final day of pollination today! Then we pinched off any unopened buds and will now watch and wait for seed formation.

Here is yesterday's picture:



And today's:



They are a bit spindly post-pinching today.

And a closeup of the flowers, since my little camera tends to focus on the background...

Fast Plants: Day 15

Today was the first day of pollination. We have been reading about flowers and bees and pollination and discovered that the scout bees go looking for nectar and pollen and then come back to the hive, where they do a dance to tell the other bees where the flowers are. With the proper mood music in place, we did a rather rowdy and enthusiastic bee dance. Beeb even got in on the action with Mama's bee. Then we "flew" downstairs and pulled out our plants and started pollinating.



We will be pollinating for the next couple of days. When our bees aren't busy pollinating, they hang out in their honeycomb condo. Amazing what you can do with three blank index cards and a little glue stick, eh?



My bee is not pictured as she is temporarily indisposed behind the barrister bookcase. And our obligatory side view. The tallest ones are over 8" tall!

Fast Plants: Day 14

Whoopsy-daisy! With daddy home over the weekend, things can occasionally get away from us. We forgot to check our plants yesterday. Well, remembered when everyone was finally settling down to bed, but everyone was going to be sleeping late anyway from the change to daylight saving time, so we waited and checked first thing this morning. Lots of excitement to see though! The tallest plants in each grew over three inches in two days and Bean has the first flower. We should have more flowers by tomorrow so we can start pollinating!!!

Fast Plants: Day 12

Today's big excitement was making bee sticks in preparation for flowering and pollinating. We improvised since real bee bodies are scarce this time of year. We used a small yellow pom-pom, a black pipe cleaner, and a pair of stick-on google eyes for each.



Rapid growth continues...

Fast Plants: Day 11

We are starting to get some buds (embiggen photo to see them) and stem growth has really taken off!





And since the plants are a bit more photogenic than either top or side view reveals, a couple of vanity shots:

Fast Plants: Day 10

Fast Plants: Day 9

Fast Plants: Day 8

Getting bigger...



...and growing taller!



Not quite tall enough to be very photogenic from the side, but getting there. The tallest plant in each pot is about 7/8", but Bug's tallest is in a depression in the middle, while Bean's is on higher ground. Yesterday, the tallest in each pot was 5/8"...how's that for fast?

Fast Plants: Day 7

The plants continue to grow. Each kid has several plants with real leaves by now and they continue to grow. I imagine that they will start getting taller very soon!

Fast Plants: Day 5

The plants look a lot like they did yesterday. I suspect that they were putting most of their energy in to recovering from being poked, prodded, and moved around yesterday. They are a little bit taller and each kid has at least one plant getting a third leaf.

Fast Plants: Day 4

We have cotyledons! Bunches of 'em. When we started today, Bug had 11 and Bean had 9.





You can see their planting "styles" here, too. Bug is big enough to be able to listen to me tell him to spread out the seeds and follow the direction, while Bean is a bit short in either the listening or the coordination needed for sprinkling and wound up with all the seed in (mostly) one spot.

After counting and drawing pictures of what the cotyledons looked like, we thinned and transplanted to get six seedlings with decent spacing. I did most of the thinning and moving work and I tried for a balance between picking the largest and healthiest looking seedlings and picking ones that could stay where they started.

Fast Plants: Day 3

We have seedlings! A total of five to be exact. Bug has four and Bean has one. The leaves are just barely peeping up through the soil, so the view should be better tomorrow and I expect these five will probably have friends by then too!



You can click and go to Flickr to see the full sized picture, but the view isn't really that much better. You'll just have to take my work for the arrows pointing to the seedlings for now!

Fast Plants: Day 2

Nothing too exciting today! We checked them and there weren't any coming up, but you could see a couple of cracked seeds with a new rootlet snaking out, so we will get at least a few seedling! We watered them and found some books to put in the bottom of the light box as I had forgotten that they recommend having the top of the plants 5-10 cm below the light. I'm not sure if it counts if there aren't any actual plants, but it can't hurt, right?

Since checking the planters this morning, I have been monitoring the temperature and it dropped down to about 69°F shortly after we had the door open and then has been up closer to 75°F the rest of the day after I got the door flap shut properly. Ideal growing condition is 72-82°F, so I think we will be just fine if we can keep the door closed.

Fast Plants: Day 1

This morning we planted our Fast Plants. Obviously very exciting, seeing as everyone is still in their jammies! Since we will be thinning to six plants per pot, we started with 15 seeds apiece. I'm not sure what the germination rate will be, so we went close to 3 times as many for insurance. I got the planters and soil ready yesterday and today the little farmers put in the seeds and added enough potting mix to cover the seeds:



Then we watered them and put them in the light box. For now, I put our outdoor digital thermometer in with the plants. That way, I can get an idea whether we have enough ventilation and whether they will stay warm enough in the basement!



Finally, we plugged in the light...and we're off!

Bottle Growing System

The second step in getting our FastPlants going was making pots to grow them in. The web resources suggest pots that can wick water from a reservoir to keep the growing medium moist at all time. Fortunately, the provide an on-the-cheap solution for this, too!

Supplies:
2-L soda bottles: swiped from recycling at Daddy's work
Hand Drill: from garage
Wicking Material: Dishcloth cotton yarn from stash
Planting Medium and Fertilizer: $4.19 (plus tax) with plenty left-over for gardening
Water: from the tap

Total Price (for containers and a bunch of extra potting mix): $4.19 plus tax



The only other thing we needed to get started was the seeds:

FastPlant seeds: $10.75 (for 50 seeds) + $6.95 (s/h, highway robbery if you ask me! The seeds would fit in a first class envelope. Harumph.) + tax

Clearly, the seeds were the biggest ticket item of all, but when we are done growing our plants, the last thing we will do is harvest seeds (if all goes well), so we should be able to get lots more plants!