Water Melon and Tomatoes

Back onto it! Currently I have a medium size plastic greenhouse, bought at the Reject shop for around $25. This is really handy for getting plants up from the seedling level without snails eating them when they are young and vulnerable and also the trays you use in it wont have encroaching weeds building up in them.

One of the more recent experiments is growing watermelon plants from bought seeds. The germination rate wasn't good - only two plants out of about ten seeds tried. However, you get quite a few seeds in a packet and if you keep the seeds from any melons grown (which you will if you want to be good with money!)

Also took dried tomato seeds from paper sheets and planted them in a tray inside the green house. These seeds were taken simply from when you cut up a tomato on the chopping block and seeds seep out onto the block. Use a knife to lift them and place onto paper, then leave the paper to dry. Latter after they are nicely dry, scrape off with your finger nail and put into the soil.

At the moment I put in a small piece of cardboard next to each seed, so as to get an impression of where to look and the sucess rate for every single seed I've put in! Also I'm experimenting with this tray, to simply put the seed on the surface and let gentle watering with a watering can do the work of pressing it to soil. If you can skip sticking each below the soil, why not? :)

I actually did a smaller tray and was so heartened by how many cardboard markers had a tomato plant sprouting up (from seeds that I had dried months ago) that I set up a bigger tray. Though according to a chart I have, for this location planting tomatoes ends at the end of december. Should be able to set up a patch easily before then, though!