Graduation Day

By Grammy Green

We guess there won't be too many graduation days happening this year across the country.  But it's that time at Grammy's house, so today the girls were transplanted to their final homes in pots in the backyard.

Climate change has manifested itself in San Diego with colder, wetter winters, and hotter, more humid summers.  The most recent cold, wet and windy storm finished up a couple of days ago, and after a glorious 76 degree day yesterday, it was time for the girls to get some real sunshine.  They've been under a grow light for the past two weeks, and are a little spindly for it, so some are still wearing their braces.  It should be a matter of a week or so before they don't need those anymore, and they'll be off to the races.

This year we tried something different.  Reusing the same pots as last year, we removed about half the soil, then poured in some water with EZ Wet to leach out any accumulated salts.  After fluffing up the remaining soil, we topped it with some Sul-Po-Mag fertilizer. Then the pot was topped off with fresh organic soil, with a light dressing of bat guano in the top layer.  The roots of the sprouts haven't yet found the outside of the peat pot, so they are protected from fertilizer burn until they're strong enough to find it.  As usual, we topped the whole mess off with some bark to help keep the soil cool once the hot weather arrives.  We plugged in a drip line to each pot, and have set up the watering schedule for 10 minutes, three times a week.  Wish 'em luck!