Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 2 Entries. Monday, April 6 View Page I'm on Day 7 since I planted my AG seeds into their peat pots! It took almost five days for them to sprout out of the soil but they finally emerged! To note, I decided not to file these and I placed them 1 inch into the soil in the peat pot, the soil I used is Miracle Grow Seedling Starter mix. The leaves look a little curled on the edges but I'm hoping that it's because they just emerged and haven't completely unfurled yet. I had them on a warming pad but removed it as soon as the first seedlings sprouted and applied their UV light, which I make sure to turn off every night and back on the next morning when I'm sure it's been off for at least 8 hours, so I don't think they're cooked or stressed. I've never grown something from seeds like this before so I'm worried about every little thing, but I plan to plant backup seeds next week after I transplant these. My original plan, when I decided I wanted to grow a giant pumpkin last year, was the spend the winter prepping the soil and getting supplies, but something else ended up taking all of my time, energy and money over the course of the winter. A runaway chicken found its way into our yard a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving and since we couldn't find where she came from, no one claimed her and no one else would take her in, we decided to keep her and thus we became chicken people. You can't just have one chicken, you have to have a flock, so all our time and energy went into building a new flock for this newly adopted yard chicken, my pumpkin growing quest took a backseat for a while and before I knew it, it was already April and I hadn't even tilled my patch, let alone started my seeds. Thankfully I had already ordered the seeds and starting supplies last year so I at least was ready to start those, but I completely forgot that I had planned on transplanting the seedlings around Easter weekend and it was one week until Easter when I realized I hadn't planted the seeds yet. Good thing I didn't, though, because we had a very, unseasonably chilly Easter weekend. It would not have been a good weekend to plant. I'm hoping to begin transplanting next weekend (if the seedlings are ready) when the highs will be back into the 80s and the lows in the high 50s, low 60s. It also poured down rain on Saturday night, so it just wouldn't have been a good time all around. Needless to say, we did have to spend this weekend getting the patch allocated and prepared, so we got a tiller and tilled down the patch area 6 inches deep. The area I have set aside is roughly 15' x 30' so I think it'll be plenty big enough for my two plants and it should definitely be big enough when I cull it down to one plant and begin (hopefully) the giant pumpkin process. We went to the store to get some fertilizer to mix and got some Black Kow brand manure fertilizer that is thankfully already composted down and ready to plant in. We only got 8 bags, though, so we were only able to cover the two spots I plan to put my hill Tuesday, April 7 View Page Making progress! I couldn't figure out what was going on with my wrinkly leaves and Google told me it was from overwatering, yet the soil was always bone dry and the plants seemed to be shriveling up. I decided to try and drench them until the peat pots were draining water from the bottom and see what happened. I was rewarded with huge improvements to the leaves and tons of tiny white roots sticking out from the bottom and sides of the peat pots this morning! The leaves of a couple have started opening up and spreading a bit, I can see a tiny first leaf forming in the center of one of them. The biggest one (And I thought the most robust) is still struggling to shake off its seed casing and is growing a lot but unable to spread it's leaves. I debated pulling off the rest of the casing to help it out, but I'm worried that doing that would cause more harm than good. Of the five I planted, four have at least one or two thick roots showing, two have spread out their leaves and seem to be thriving, one is being subdued by its seed casing, one has a complete seed still stuck on top of the leaves but is growing and rooting and one is tall, has the seed still completely encasing its leaves, has no visible roots and seems to have stopped growing. So I think I have four that could be viable, but only two are showing real progress. I'm hoping that the other two that are progressing with their seed casings still on will eventually grow out and become viable, too, but I'm already planning on planting backups, so it's possible that I'll only wind up with two good plants from this bunch.