PROJECT > HORTICULTURE > 002-02 THINNING

POV you planted more seeds than you can realistically manage.

If you've seen the pic of the seeds I've planted, there may be a chance you clocked that I planted a ton. Each seedling has the potential to become it's own, massive, time sucking plant. Many of them are getting pretty established in life, and I have to start thinning them.

Thinning plants is the process of choosing the plants with the most desirable traits and tossing the rest. I struggled with this part in the past. Who was I to decide who lives and dies yknow? I got to feel kinda attached to everything that grew. It eventually came back to bite me in the ass though. In my case, the more plants I had made me not pay close enough attention to them individually - leading to pests gradually moving in and destroying a bunch of them in waves. It's also just generally difficult to keep on top of all them and their needs.

This time around, I'm a bit more jaded and seasoned. Most people look for the plants that are doing the best, having a farmer mindset of choosing a plant who looks like it can prosper through anything. I'm not them though. I may end up choosing some of the slower, smaller plants. I live in a small 1 bedroom, and have a habit of skipping a watering or two. I'm not the min-maxxing type when it comes to this.

In classic shapesandconcepts fashion, I didn't really take too many interim pics - or pics of me actively thinning them.

>> click here to open gallery <<

I did thin the giallo peppers for this though!

Going from this:
→ → →

Kept 3 of them so far. I'm going to wait until they have about 3 or 4 true leaves.

If you need a refresher or never knew - when plants sprout, they actually make a special set of embryo leaves called 'cotlyedon' leaves. These are kind of like the baby teeth of plants, the leaves they grow after that can look entirely different.

In this picture, can you pick out which leaves are cotlyedons?



If not - it's the thin and super smooth ones. The next set of leaves get the veining you're probably used to. Eventually the plant will kill off the baby leaves. You may have notices the weird looking cotyledons the golden pippen peppers have - all twisted and weird. I have no fuckin idea what that's about. It's either a seed batch or species issue, I havent grown them before. While it doesn't matter much that they are like that, it does impact their initial growth which is why they are still so small. They are weird. I'll be keeping an eye on those.

It's also interesting to me that the nasturtium cotlyedons barely differ from their true leaves. They also have pretty prolific aspects to each of them. There are a couple different types of nasturtiums which is why some of them look so different. I have a few 'trailing' and 'climbing' varieties that I'm gonna have to figure how I'm going to accomodate properly. Right now, the vesuvius are my favorite. They have a nice color and are growing in a very polite upstraight and sturdy type of way that I respect.

It's a shame the strawberries and cream nasturtiums never sprouted. Can't win them all. I'm feeling pretty good with everything's trajectory. I'll take another round of pics in a week or two.