20/04/2020 - A Spanner In The Works

Obviously a lot has changed since the last blog post. Unfortunately, focus on the morning glory vineyard has fallen to the backburner somewhat due to the current pandemic. Dealing with a lack of potting soil, vegetables have been getting priority during this period. Sourcing the soil should become a little easier soon though. But we also don't want to overwhelm the garden centers (nor delivery services) so might wait a little longer until things quieten down a bit. Unfortunately only the Heian no Sora seeds managed to germinate successfully last month. Both Tsukiyono and Seiun seeds suffered from damping off despite using the peroxide technique. Next time we will try planting them directly into soil. Some varieties don't seem to like the more "wet" germinating methods.  Sadly we can not predict which ones before trying. In the meantime the Heian no Sora plants have started producing flowers. I've not been keeping up with taking pictures of these too much. The gallery already has quite a few of them and the flowers tend to be rather uniform. I still caught a couple pictures of the first two flowers though.

As an experiment we did not use perlite in our soil mix this time. Since the plants are in small pots they already dry out fairly quickly. But even though I might have to water slightly less I still feel it was a mistake. The root systems seem a little less developed at this point and growth seems slightly less vigorous. Another example of why trying to cut corners isn't the best idea. At least we did some science.

A new small batch of seeds will be planted soon. We have not decided on the variety yet. We'll also start germinating some Ipomoea purpurea for the garden. Mostly Purple Shibori as I'd like to produce a little stock of relatively stable seeds.

At this point it is hard to predict what the future will bring for the morning glory vineyard. At this point it is becoming clear we will probably have another relatively quiet year. We'll mostly be growing small numbers of "kirikomizukuri" plants on the side for now.