[ Over 90% of the jagged watermelon leaves are already burned, yet the these stunted growth plants keep trying to survive. I finally decided to let them… FIGHT IN SHADE for once. After all, Spartans look strongest with red colour on them. ]

[ 1. A look on surprisingly vertical stick supports, 2. a closer look on the ceiling support string tied to the sticks and 3. a typical ceiling lamp setting with a hanging-useful hook in the middle. ]

Bluntly put, you can permanently stabilize your sticks indoors by tying a string from them to the nearest ceiling lamp hook. Just leave it slack enough so to avoid both pulling the string and the hook too much and, most importantly, to avoid accidentally, brutally unrooting the supported plants from the root base [ read: leads to a certain death ].

That is all. Peace out.

{ Must… resist… hanging jokes. “For trained plant supports only.” 🙂 }

[ 1. Young cucumber fruit with the withering flower still attached to the fruit-forming base, 2. a weed #1 with unusual, soft spike flowers, 3. weed #2 with jagged i.e. grabbing-for-support style leaves and 4. alpine strawberries finally in non-microscopic size i.e. about 60% there when it comes to flowering and fruit production ]

WEEDS? OOH YEAH! There is nothing you can do about it. I will grow anything that looks funny enough. I will even grow dinosaurs if I want to.

[Potatoes doing some space expansion and taking over.]

If you have seen how big dogs behave, you know what it means. Bluntly put, unless potato finds a spot with a shine-grade sunlight, it will keep expanding, elongating and moving around with its massive plant trunks, knocking over and shadowing everything in its path. If it does not reach a sunny-enough position, it might wither all of the leaves in a single main branch completely if it feels like it, mostly on the darker side. It has tons of main branches — tubers are sporadic, violent growers like that.

The full scale of the plant is nigh-impossible to convey. If you take a full picture, everything looks small. If you take a close-up, it does not show many single overall aspect of the plant. The branches are 0.5″ thick at the base and 4.0′ long. In the picture, it looks like a damn dandelion. BTW, the box measures are 2.0′ x 2’5 i.e. nothing small. The only thing small are the marigold growing underneath the hulking branches.

Potato does not need any looking after as it pretty much does whatever it feels like. In practice, it might sprout in a couple of days or it might sleep for three weeks doing nothing and then make a move just to see if they can sneak half a dozen foot-longs out in the daylight without you noticing. This playfulness is very similar to how shrooms operate — maybe they are related in an evolutionary way, with gene exchange and the like.

These food production potatoes [ read: I picked the potatoes from the for-eating grocery section ] are probably gene-edited to the max, so some additional mushroom genes would not surprise me ( or shrooms absorbing potato genes ). If you do not already know that plants actually move a lot stationarily, you will learn it if you play with potatoes. You could say it is a pet plant of sorts. Try to not mess too much with it or it might eat you. After all, it is hungry ( for shine-grade intense at least sunlight at least ) just like your everyday big dog.

P.S. That brown stuff is soil mushrooms. I just LOOOOVE have the spores in my breaching air. Seriously though, they are harmless if not beneficial and help me to convert this half-raw, $2 compost soil into something half-way useful to anything beyond the low-maintenance herbs, weeds and ” pet dogs.” You just need to remember to mix the dirt afterwards or your plants might get exterminated by root blockages. The shroom hyphae pretty much can have its way with any roots it comes in contact with, so you need to even the odds by gently decimating them all by breaking the hyphae soil blocks. The shroom roots make the soil a bit taffy-like that you can fix by crushing the whole thing.

 

[From the left: 1. sparse planting, 2. dense planting and 3. sparse cluster-planting {a bad i.e. too thick example}, nicknamed “staked cluster planting” ]

1. Dense planting ( w/ less than  2 cm / 1 inch between laid seeds ):

+ Does not require much space and can be done even in plastic cups

+ Very easy to keep tidy because of the little amount of the staining soil required

+ Some small plants prefer this because of the low-cover-short-support-plants combo, e.g. small bush plants

-Gets impossible to take care of and protect from the pests in even medium boxes

-The increased sprout loss because of root and shadowing related reasons, especially with complex, soaring plants

-Do not companion plant with shadowing aka densely leafing plants such as basil.

-You cannot pick and crush caterpillars if they infest you plant because of the ton of cover for those underleaf-hiding living planticides , also a personal inspiration for discarding this planting style

Applications:

• Throw-around seed planting method
• Small-seeded plant varieties, especially turnips
• Hobby planting, e.g. watching things grow
• Window-sill aka flower-pot planting, with limited planting space available
• Herb farming
• Small-seeded and cheap species with small leaves
• “Sacrifice planting style” i.e. cull the edges and the middle space by eliminating the weakest plants if not replanting them to a spare box
• For thin-leaf-profile bush-type variants
• In larger plantations, very effective for sunlight ignoring species like dill and chives, stinging nettle seems to grow very well even when shadowed and almost never withers its shadowed leaves unlike most economically significant species.

2. Sparse planting ( w/ over 12 cm / 5″ between laid seeds )

+ Maximizes the sunlight and the growth per sprout

+ High seed growth rate from minimal rooting issues

+ A lot of vacant space for the plant to build its massive root networks, especially important for big-seeded beans and other legumes

+ The most practical planting style for high-production commercial plant farming (they use stringed-together pre-grown/greenhoused young plants and a planting trailer (for a tractor) that takes

+ Makes de-weeding and de-pesting easy as those things are easier to spot and pre-emptively eliminate with stuff like mulch

+ Sparseness makes the spreading of plant diseases a non-issue and makes it easier to collect data about the nutrient state of specific parts of the field by inspecting the growth of the plants on it ( with comprehensive root networks probing their dirt patches )

-Planting takes a lot of time because of the space management and the ton of soil-preparing work required for just a tiny amount of seeds

-Planting dirt-cheap seeds this way such as basic herbs or Brassicaceae / radish this way is a colossal waste of time.

-Small-seeded i.e. slow-sprouting ones become very vulnerable to leaf-eating caterpillars when planted this way as entire plantation can get de-leafed and exterminated in just a couple of hours

Applications:

• The meticulous, one-by-one finger-planting method
• Greenhousing rare plants, i.e. farming them under particularly controlled conditions
• Big-seeded plant varieties such as corn
• Fruit-bearing species, heirloom species (that tend to be extra sensitive to diseases)
• Double-seed planting to not have empty spots even if one seed dies or grows at a stagnated rate
• Valuable or low-quantity seeds
• Potatoes and other big tubers. Those things can easily take over even wide and deep soil boxes.

 

3. Sparse cluster planting ( w/ over 12 cm / 5″ between the CLUSTERS of laid seeds )

+ Very resistant to seed related issues

+ Planting is very easy and fast as you do not need to cover every inch and can plant a whole bunch of seeds at once

+ Very easy to take care ( e.g. fast to water few dense patches ) of and protect

+ Managing supports and re-positioning leaves and branches is quick-and-easy [note: leaves get messed up all the time just from watering, the bush beans especially so ]

-Might be too tight for some frail and big species such as watermelon

-The increased risk for root blockage and competition by adjacent sister plants still remains

-Big-seeded species lose their fast initial rooting advantage in this planting style and can even cause massive root blockages very early on if bunch-planted, big seeds are too good for this

Applications:

• Pinch/bunch aka amass-a-bunch-and-press-to-the-dirt seed planting method
• Trap plants such as radish and other Brassicaceae that you need to de-pest from things like plant-threatening cabbage looper caterpillars. The space in between the clusters helps with finding the underleaf pests and enables you to gently shake the whole branch cluster without damaging the leaves to drop and locate the hiding leaf-eater worms.
• The support-requiring soaring plants such as cucumber. The one stake close to the plant bunch can support them all and save you a ton of work and minimize the supports’ shadowing effect, maximizing the crops somewhat
• For the people who get tired of staking and de-pesting [ a guess: almost everyone ]
• Small-seeded i.e. grain seeds such as alpine strawberry
• You can spread out the tall bush species by using the stakes to maximize the sun light and to not over-shadow the possible companion plants

 

Off-topic: Like usual, I feel quite drained after extracting the list from my top-of-the-mind expertise and experience and probably left out a ton of stuff. Generally, it is not a good idea to fix writings, I am afraid. No one really cares besides you and by changing things you break the initial impression for no gain, see the Han Shot First meme about Lucas making his vain movie re-edits. People like you because of the rough stuff you make, not the polishing that is essentially for clarity and audience-catering. Speaking of catering, I am hungry & have a decimated [ I love these destruction adjectives 🙂 ] turnip box to dense-plant marjoram in, among many things.

Off-topic supreme: Man, it takes hours to compile these stupid lists. No wonder I make no money in general. Caring about information is not a pathway to wealth and glory. Man, I would have acted out my early years (30 or so ) so much differently if I knew that. Then again, the employers would have seen my natural anti-bitch mentality and hired bigger shills instead for the jobs that ultimately do not matter. Comic book characters throwing fireballs out of their fists in King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match are more genuine than that fake crap. Oh well, I am still 102% fine.

 

UPDATE: GREEN CATERPILLARS AND THEIR ADULT CABBAGE LOOPER SEEDERS: KILL THEM ALL. I GOT TONS OF MY TURNIP AND RADISH SPROUTS COMPLETELY DE-LEAFED IN PLACES I NEVER HAVE HAD ANY CATERPILLARS BEFORE, JUST BECAUSE I DESTROYED THEM IN TWO PLACES. THESE EXCREMENT PILES MOVE FAST AND EAT EVERYTHING IN JUST A COUPLE OF HOURS. I AM GOING TO END THEM ALL BEFORE THOSE F-ERS TOUCH MY FRENCH BREAKFAST RADISH. THE GREEN, STICKY LOOPER FLUIDS WILL BE SPILLED UNTIL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEIR SPECIES IS VIOLENTLY VANQUISHED. I HAVE ALREADY KILLED HUNDREDS OF THEM. THE ADULTS ARE QUITE DURABLE IN THE FACE OF MY ROLLED NEWSPAPER AND F-ING STAIN THE PLACES BLACK WHEN I HIT THEM. WELCOME… TO DIE, LOOPER SCUM! NOW I NEED TO GO DEFEND THE LAST REMAINING TURNIP SPROUTS AND TO SATISFY THE LOOPER BLOOD GODS SOME MORE.

Fleas and flies are nothing to the mighty radish. Caterpillars are and they will quickly defoliate (aka remove leaves from)  plants in mere weeks. They eat more of the leaves than the smaller eaters, all the way to the stems. One particular plantation has only ONE (1) mature leaf left that is not half eaten. Clearly I needed to start exterminating the ‘pillars.

Caterpillars come from many kinds of complex insects including butterflies and cabbage loopers. Mine are looper ones. Unfortunately, I discovered that they are attracted to the sweet smell of their ‘pillars, live and dead alike. In practice, in the proximity of its worms, the adult, winged loopers become super-docile to the point of you being able to grab them. If you know how difficult it is to grab winged insects besides dumb fly ants, this is a big change. Even weirder, one of them landed on the hand stained with the fluids of dozens of crushed spawns. Even bugs become perverse when procreation hormones kick in. Apparently the sweet fluids attract other bugs too such as flies too. You could use the caterpillar fluids to attract flies towards your flowers. That is the power of super concentrated radish, I guess.

I concluded that even a small box had hundreds of caterpillars. I now have two bigger boxes that I need to do some extensive bug-crushing with. Here is my detailed looper-crushing guide for small-scale bench clearing. For any bigger DENSE plantations ( i.e. over one m2 or over 30 plants ), buy some insecticide as you would be there there crushing the ‘pillars for days as their numbers would start to approach four digits. Anything with four digits is extremely straining. Using insecticide on the radish is reasonable as the underground payload is not sprayed and you most likely are not going to eat the generic bland-tasting leaves. Especially if you plant outside.

Manual Bug Crushing Guide Tailored for Cabbage Loopers:

1. Lightly rub your palm and fingers against the underside of a leaf to blindly get most pest bugs out. Crush any bugs that fall onto your hand before you move on to make sure they will be dealt with.
2. Look for danglers like loopers that float under the leaf if you make them lose the grip to it. Collect the danglers and crush them between your fingers to save yourself from messing with containers these fast-moving bugs tend to escape from anyway. Know that loopers can move almost cockroach-fast when messed with. You won’t catch them if they fall onto the ground and start running. Kill them before they figure out that you are going to.
3. Check the underside of the leaf and when you find a leaf-eater at work, put your fingers pincer-like on the both sides of the leaf and crush it against the leaf. This will not damage the sturdy radish leaf if you avoid ripping it, making it a safe and secure way to kill those little parasite spawns.
4. Prioritize both big semi-intact leaves  – usually a ton of young loopers to end early – and heavily damaged ones – house the big looper larvae that do most of the major leaf damage to your radish, your radish will not recover before these big targets are dead and gone. Either way, check every leaf and the ground to maximize the damage. Smallest ones you can ignore if they are too much work to grab and you can decimate them later when when they grow up a bit. You will know where to find them later i.e. the undersides of ANY leaves, even the half-withered and severed ones.
5. Kill everything you can. If you want to go pro and  eliminate the root cause, kill the greyish flying adults too. Get a fly swatter i.e. a rolled newspaper. I swear these things lay eggs constantly , based on the huge variation of the larvae size. You will save yourself a lot of work later down the line if you keep killing any kinds of cabbage loopers you find.
6. If you want to use the cabbage loopers to do your pruning for you, let them half-eat your biggest obstructing leaves until the sunlight can reach the soil again. After that, exterminate them all. You will not find them all, though killing all of the big larvae aka caterpillars should greatly diminish the unwanted leaf-eating. Repeat whenever the caterpillars start to get to the visible size again. For best results, eliminate the lower-level leaf infestations especially clearly so that the shadowed plants get the best chance to finally grow up and have any chance of producing payload. Loopers like to eat the lower level leaves once the leaves start to sunlight-starve. CRUSH THEM ALL.

Personally, I would not mind a few, cute loopers eating my radish, though the dozens of radish-attracted flying loopers constantly seeding more wormies to extinct my radish (and possibly other, more vulnerable species once the trap species is gone), I need to do some crushing. Farming is clearly not suited for fundamental Buddhists. Besides the pest-disliked herbs species like dill, I think.

My cucumber flowers are starting to full bloom soon and I already have one mature flower. Watermelon are either not far behind or getting its leaves burned-and-dried by too much sunlight. I suggest investing in some protective foam or stuff if you plant watermelon, to regulate the intense sunlight. It might like the shine, but definitely cannot take it, no matter how much you water it. For comparison, radish can take direct shine with no problems. Tomatoes are slow and behind as usual.

[ Four-inch cucumber and radish leaves ]

Stuff’s growing, despite the radish leaf-eating. It is very clear that the bugs do not like the radish located near the disliked herb plants such as dill. Those radish are barely touched by bugs.

I am continuing my efforts to plant spare seeds into the sparsely planted /  vacated boxes. Some species have not been mentioned much recently for that reason. For the record, the alpine strawberries are one of the slowest growers I know — many weeks later they are still tiny sprouts. That must be the combination of being an alpine species and a small-seeded one i.e. grows roots super slowly. I have no idea about how my crushed anise is doing as I did not mark it well. So stuff is growing so well that it does not matter that there is still no lady bugs out there because of the late spring of mid-May.

Now you have had your moment of optimism. Next time we will return to my favourite topics of death, pestilence and mushrooms. Just kidding. There is only one or two boxes with very iffy future prospects based on how the plants are acting i.e. di… umm, choosing unorthodox growth strategies.

[ The photo emphasis is on the vast amounts of DEAD radish and citrus basil sprouts. ]

Here is some evidence how still-decomposing soil is terrible for new sprouts and only the most robust plants can strive in it. For example, stinging nettle. That plant can find the little patch of soil among infertile sand and still manage to grow a big plant there. I feel like making some nettle tea. Not the mild fertilizer one, my shrooms indicate I have already plenty of fresh organic stuff. That grey solid part is made of sedimented spores. The shroom itself is normally WHITE, only the dusty spores are yellowish brown.

Honestly, I collected the above data to sneak in my mundane expansion of turnip and thyme plantations. In thin boxes, of course, to make it hard to infest for fungi and leaf-eaters. I want to take advantage of the 21-hour light time days. After all, sunlight is the source of all growth. I’ll keep planting my mostly tuber seed stockpiles. I have not updated the seed catalogue recently.

Oh yeah. My cucumbers are getting a bit tall, almost 3.0′ / 90 cm. Maybe I will document something not-dead next time. 🙂

I found earthworms Bob, George [ a reference to the great video game webcomic ] , Sephiroth and Muhammad. They will be working on the suicided two watermelon boxes, Experiment Box (with Frank who is already working at it) and the massive bush bean one.

As you can tell from the picture, earthworms like (much like snakes) to wrap themselves around one other to conserve moisture and stuff. That is also how this genderless/ omnigendered species ends up mating. They probably do not even notice the exchange of gender cells. Have fun with that mental image.

If you cannot tell, a ton of my main radish box plants look like as if someone unloaded a couple Tommy gun bullet drums at them. Basically, my normal options would be to let the radish die. Nothing else.

I have a ton of heavily-eaten radish leaves. These flea beetles multiply so fast they are very likely to defoliate and kill my radish completely. In the current setting, the radish cannot re-foliage fast enough to take the damage and the bugs keep multiplying at a seemingly exponential rate.  The only practical solution is importing some predators and planting their favourite plants so that they stay around once they get bored of feasting on fleas. Thyme, catnip, marigold and mint seem to be common flea-predator-friendly plants. I would rather plant some extra plants I do not care about rather than losing progress with the existing ones including the low-value radish.

The trap crop term has been mentioned about radish. Another one is mustard.

I am not completely sure what these bugs are, though based on the mechanical leaf damage, small bugs are definitely involved. Good. The smaller they are, the bite-sizable they will be for ladybugs. I am going to go abduct a few of those things. “Pestmageddon” is upon us.

Here is the full evil plan:

1. Plant trap crops to concentrate the pests.

2. Plant some pest exterminators ( once the pests have properly pruned some of the trap crop growth).

3. Grab some pop corn or other munchies and watch some ladybugs rend some bug flesh.

I planted another five sacks of soil for citrus basil, spinach and black radish. I felt a bit excited about having a beet-sized radish and ended up having two boxes of sparse 48 plants and a third “salad farm” one with about 350. That ups my big box plantation count to almost two dozen and the projected plant count is approaching multiple thousands. Watering is starting take longer, though it is still only 10 minutes. Accessing the plants for watering is not a significant problem yet because of me being able to shoot thin, pressure-propelled water streams from repurposed ketchup bottles.

Once you start having at least semi-mature plants [ usually 20 – 30 days old sprouts ] , the amount of newly generated biomass will start to overtake your expectations. For example, one of my cucumber leaves is comparable to maple leaves and overall that cucumber plantation is already a leaf wall. Although I am a hungry sucker for maximally big projects and doing things big, the big picture of my plantation is that it is already, you guessed it, BIG. I obligated myself to buying enough soil and getting the boxes for planting the remaining plans. Based on the stocked seeds count estimates, I have 1300 miscellaneous seeds, 980 rutabaga seeds  (just one bag) and 1680 turnip ones (one bag). Holy…

The scale of the turnip and rutabaga seeds is godly. You cannot hand-plant anything with over 200 seeds without spending a whole day on it. Now, let us imagine that I somehow fit those turnip plant boxes and they started growing. Turnip, much like radish, grows like crazy on its own. Imagine the effect of 1000 rutabaga seedlings growing in tandem in a closed space — that is how jungles are born. Just imagine the amount of flies they would draw in with their plant gas emissions. My premises already emit special gasses because of the irrigated soil.

I need to manage this jungle before it materializes in bad ways. Alright, I need to plant only a box for both the rutabaga and the turnips and then shelve the remaining seeds to move on to the other stuff. One five-sack soil batch would be turnip-rutabaga-3-cucumber. The following batch: corn-alpine-strawberry-radish-(partial bag)-2-spares (left-overs: 2 radish, rutabaga and turnip). That is already 10 extra soil sacks and a 50% increase in plant boxes. Additionally, I need to have some spare boxes, soil and SPACE left for my pre-sprouting-stage radish and bush beans.

A spoiler, it is going to be busy next three-four days.

The macabre, funny thing about this home plantation is that I might lose even if I win i.e. become a jungle dweller. I am going to need all of my advanced breathing techs to brain-power through this thing. Alright, I probably will not run out of space for plantation boxes. Boxes I can get almost practically infinite amounts of. I DO need to buy a lot more barbecue sticks for staked supporting for my countless young soaring plant sprouts, five 100-packs should do it. I do not have to plant all of the rutabaga/turnip seeds, a single, sparsely-planted sample box for each one is enough. The real bottleneck is my own persistence. Once my inventory is down to the three big seed bags, I will discontinue Batch 4 planting and proceed to taking care of the soaring sprouts and tending to the shallow box radish, bush bean and strawberry. I will keep five spare soil bags  and half a dozen boxes stacked in reserve to facilitate transplanting etc. efforts. That means I need to acquire about a dozen boxes, 15 soil sacks and a bunch of BBQ sticks.

A prepared plan and things in order. Everything’s good, right? Right? Ye– oh no no no NO NO NO! If you analyzed my character even a bit, you know how it will end (if it ever does). You see, I did mention shelving the remaining radish-rutabaga-turnip seeds. I am a the-bigger-the-better kind of a person who does not store anything even technically spoilable. The original reason for farming was that my 2-tomato twins and a carrot pack were about to expire in 2019. Even without spoiling issues, I simply cannot shelve anything I can even technically get over and done with. The dark idea is that I am likely to actually try to plant those radish and turnip seeds. Rutabaga I do not care about because its root tubers taste horrible even at their best, so it might get relegated to being either an overstuffed leaf salad box -er or a filler plant to fill the empty soil spots left by dead seedlings.

I have a special role for my radish seeds. I am going to make another experiment box. Non-urgent plan involves harvesting canine feces, a determined attempt at capturing fungi and, of course, worms. The mud/clay preference from the moisture sheltering makes it quite effortless to find worms near mud pits that are common by minor roadsides.

So yeah. My place is going to get very filled with turnip sprouts. They and Experiment Box #2 will initiate Batch 5. To recap, B1 = (April starts) later-marginalized carrots, B2 = initial tomato, cucumber and watermelon plantations, B3 = first radish and herbs , B4 = (May starts) a ton of new planting because of the available cheap soil such as multiple tomato and watermelon plantations and B5 will be an attempt to stuff my place with one practical self-fertilizer box and and a ton of turnip plant boxes and some radish and rutabaga. My plant farming workload is slowly but surely shifting towards support-building, watering and other plant tending work by B5 and my only approved new acquisition option is a $0.95 orchid plant. I want to get one with especially messed up flower leaf colours. Just look up different orchid photos and you will get what I mean. I wonder if there are black-and-white flowers.

I did find white orchids. Of the messed up variety, I found this one (it looks like a spider):

A random note #1: my batch 2 watermelons (the first ones) have developed the support tendrils much like B2 cucumbers. Based on that schedule, B2 tomatoes will get them a week or two later, or in two-three days during the current heatwave i.e. the shine galore.

I cannot summarize the ton of things I got today, so here is a crappy list of merely the farming related stuff.

1. I got a 20-buck, 100kg / 210 pound capacity wheelbarrow. It frankly owns. I transported a giant load of boxes AND soil today with it. It is a great tool for me. Everyone hauling major stuff should get a wheelbarrow.
2. I discovered that worms like clay and sticky mud and I accidentally caught one. It is in the experiment box now. Based on the ravine dug by an excavator operator, I noticed that the clay (or whatever it is) layer is at about two feet deep. So if I want to get some wormies to munch my semi-raw compost soil, I simply need to dig deep that deep and get them. They eat everything dead and decomposable.
3. I want to try decomposing feces for fertilizing purposes. I figured out the simplest way to do that would be to bury both the newspaper-covered feces and the worms and then pile a few inches of soil to make it a kind of future nutritionally-enriched spot for the later deep roots. Worms can eat the newspaper because it is digestable dead wood to them. They will eat the matter and fertilizer-grade stuff comes out from the other end.
4. I want to transplant wild plants at some point. My main interest is forest berry that is practically extra flavoured, miniature strawberry. Other berries, too, interest me and do not require much space or soil for being tiny bush plants. European blueberries and lingonberries are my main interests. I wonder if they produce extra crops in indoor farming. Lingonberry aka red bilberry has waxed leaves, making it a great for a shine spot. It is also a great source of the best natural food preservative out there known as pectin. That stuff makes things mold and bacteria proof. As a keen food preservation veteran, I can confirm that that is a huge feat.
5. I am going to plant some watermelon and beefsteak tomato with the new soil to take advantage of the upcoming, extra long heatwave. These two are heat-sensitive and a considerable amount of heat makes them sprout in just a couple of days. That or my misunderstanding of priming as a sprouting aid (as it seems to greatly inhibit sprouting) made the first batch bungled up the A. Some of those watermelon sprouts slept for month before surfacing. Anyway, I am going to keep getting new soil to plant the rest of my seed inventory.
6. I am going to make listing about all the species and variety names I can find to build a picture of what I have. Some people call it a catalogue or sth.
7. I thought of transplanting some wild mulch-rotting shroom dirt onto my plantations to grow help get extra nutrients out of it and possible aid in my ad hoc composting needs.

So if you now have a picture of me, outside, foraging for clay mud, worms and dog feces, you are right on the money. “What the f– are you picking that up?” “I am a tomato farmer and my worms love it.” “What the… Okay. Whatever, carry on, I guess. Jesus, man.”

I just uncovered a ton of cat feces and cat sand. Here is my plan: some cat sand in the bottom, some soil, all the excrement, a big chunk of fungi growth, a ton of soil, radish seeds and the finish with some soil and watering. Needless to say, I am going to put a ton of extra newspaper paper and taping to make sure none of that stuff comes out. I will leave the result in the hands of the fungi.

So… Do not send me crap. I am likely to use it for farming. Threatening letters make great moisture guards.