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'Wealthy' is no longer politically correct. The proper term is now, 'feature rich.'
Will Rogers never met me.
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Certainly not a programming questions and probably KSS:
My eggplant (two varieties, one oriental, one white) are have a problem. About 1/3 of the seedlings have their Cotyledon die before they even get partially out of the seed. The little stump, left behind, has nothing at or above an initial leaf node so it's alive but useless.
Online searches turned up various plant diseases and even how to remove seed shells stuck on the leaves (from living leaves). Very frustrating.
Anyone know a cause? Maybe it's a genetic problem? I'll be planting a second round of seeds, there being enough time, yet, before planting - but if any of you have this arcane knowledge, it would be nice to know what I'm up against.
Habanero, Thai, and Jalapeno peppers, sprouted in identical environments, not so afflicted. Jalapeno from home grown ripened peppers. Sprouting environment: heating mat and moist covered vermiculite. Growing lamps when they meet the surface - where they're soon transplanted to fine new soil.
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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I assumed that a Cotyledon was a dinosaur, probably with big teeth ... are your eggplants carnivorous? 
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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OriginalGriff wrote: ... are your eggplants carnivorous?
carnivorous not so much, but they will scare small children.
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Lopatir wrote: care small children.
Just disguise your home as a monastery next Halloween - that'll scare the kids away!
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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OriginalGriff wrote: are your eggplants carnivorous?
Interesting concept.
You may have noticed (or not) that I never, not even on the SoapBox, type in "bite me". Being cognizant of genetic engineering, I may find out the a recent development will give me cause to regret those words.
Generally, however, when you are dating eggplant, it's safest go for Italian food so they can order what they want.
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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just a wild guess but is the air too dry?
I've seen other seedlings fail because the water got sucked out of them faster then the tiny roots could supply (capillarity action has it's limits too).. could be sun/lights too hot, or air-con (even low temp coldness) will also dry the air, even a fan if too strong will increase evaporation. (Yes plants, particularly young soft new leaves sweat a little for the same reason humans sweat - to cool & moisturise.)
Try bagging the seelings (good size bag, not totally enclosed - a little air still needs to move around)... if warm avoid young leaves/shoots getting too wet - leaves literally drown if too much moisture on the surface (looks like rot but it's actually starts as drowning) the leaves/shoots need water AND air.
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Good try about the drying - but the seed sprouting is done in a covered Chinese takeout tray. Clear top, too. Internally, nicely moist (condensation apparent). I take pains to make sure it's not too moist (causes rot). I'm a really good seed-starter. Cacti are easy; succulents, with seeds you can hardly see - I've managed a few. The eggplant seeds are starting - yet "this one, but not that one" just does this previously unseen behavior. Better the eggplants than the peppers, but I do like eggplant. Goes well sauteed w/hot peppers, garlic + other nice things.
I'm surprised, pleasantly, to find that someone around here knows plants do a full respiration cycle. Typical leaves have respiration pores on the edges of their leaves - up to a point, it's quite interesting how different types and climates adapt these openings.
Right now, I'm leaning towards a genetic anomaly. It's likely that the seeds in the package (the eggplant are all store-bought commercial seeds) are from a small gene pool, thoroughly inbred. It may, in fact, be these "Casper [^]" eggplant - seeds of which, bought at earlier times from a different source, proved to have a very low germination rate - or perceived germination rate. I'll be replanting only the Oriental variety, so I'll be getting somewhat of a test on which (or both?) type is a fault. Yes- they were sorted - but - an oops rearranged the starting tray quite a bit.
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Thanks - I found similar articles - but none seem to discuss what I'm experiencing, which is the shoot emerges from the soil with the seed containing the cotyledon - but they die a at that point, leaving just the shoot. Since the first node hasn't developed, no true leaves would ever come out, either, should I care to keep the stem alive.
Again - thanks. While the mystery remains, I'll plant a lot more and hopefully maintain a half dozen survivors in the garden.
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Might I suggest that you call your local garden supply store. I have done this in the past with some tree issues and it ended up solving my problem.
Just a thought.
Sometimes, the internet actually doesn't solve anything. 
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Certainly worth a call - but I don't have high hopes.
My son was studying generic engineering of plants and has quite the background in how they do what they do. Not quite his specialty but he knows an awful lot of 'trivia' in this field. Nada from him. (Alas, after getting the degree, he turned to the dark side and didn't pursue it).
As mutations go, it couldn't be common since it's absolutely lethal in terms of ever producing offspring. It may be that some of our vegetable varieties will need a little gene-tinkering to fix accumulated ills from husbandry/breeding the "old fashioned way".
My disappointment with my son's change of fields is considerable: I wanted him to develop the "Salsato" - a tomato variety genetically enhanced with hot-pepper genes. What a magnificent accomplishment!
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Are these the first round leaves, and do you get two proper leaves starting to grow? If so I seem to recall, from growing melons in France, that you have to remove the round leaves.
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In this case, they're thin skinny and pointy - when they come out which is normal. But they never make it out of the seed (or barely so) - and just turn up withered and dead.
Your thinking about short time in the future when the true leaves appear these these leaves are vestigial.
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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W∴ Balboos wrote: Your thinking about short time in the future when the true leaves appear these these leaves are vestigial.
Yes, exactly.
W∴ Balboos wrote: But they never make it out of the seed (or barely so)
They do sound plain f***ed.
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Munchies_Matt wrote: They do sound plain f***ed
Absolutely exactly.
I'm about to head out and put more seeds in to sprout.
It'll be these[^] as I've a lot more seeds of this variety and they were my first choice of the two.
Having had problems with those white Casper eggplants before, I'm thinking they're the problem.
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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I think some seeds get damaged, and never even germinate, depends how old they are I seem to recall.
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Yeah - dead is dead. They're laying beneath the surface and will remain there.
However, this is not just a single seedling. I could attribute that to an accident during emergence. Also, since I'm using vermiculite as the medium, they're having a very easy time of it coming to the surface (vermiculite makes transplanting extremely gentle on the little folks).
If the tops just disappeared, I'd suspect insects.
I've been starting my garden from seeds for nearly a score of years - this is freakin' weird.
Well - thanks for thinking about it. I'll probably need to just plant more as a botanical version of a Kludge.
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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First off: Damn you for making me look up a word!
Secondly: Horsesh1t!
The second one's serious. If you set a layer of horsesh1t (saying "manure" is just not so much fun) about an inch beneath the seeds before they start to germinate, the vapours from the horsesh1t (I might go for the CP record for the number of times of saying "horsesh1t", in this thread), as they filtrate up to the surface, take care of many of the nasties before they get a chance to breed, at the same time as being good for the seedlings.
I know this because my missus told me, and she's become a severely good expert in growing stuff, over the past ten years -- her not-the-normal-colour aubergines (I forget what they're called) do incredibly well, even in a country that doesn't have the weather for them.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Interesting - and also should be taken with a grain teaspoon kilo of salt. Many plants, such as carrots, do very badly in freshly manured soil (which could mean months). It may work wonders for her aubergines (vengeance for you - I had to google it to be sure of what they were).
Fresh manure is not so great an idea, either - as my brother's had a multi-year infestation of white flies thanks to its "charms". Availability for gentry such as myself, of anything but composted manure is difficult. Only dogsh!t is available, with difficulty, thanks to the quality of neighbors (and their fear of a fine if they don't clean up).
OK - back to being fair - I don't doubt her acumen at sprouting her seeds. I've got some skills, too, including peppers from starting tray to flat in six days. It's mainly anecdotal. Tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants are all the same family (nightshade).
A bunch of these plants suggest "compost tea" soon after transplant - for those of us with abundant compost. Compost and sh*t and sh*t ain't compost. Although they could be.
An inch below the seeds? The entire layer's ca. 3/4" deep in the tray - once they get erection fully emerge with their Cotyledon, they get gently removed (trivially easy w/vermiculite) and put in nice comfy fresh soil. However, by then, it was really just too late for some. Actually, a nearly 40% mortality rate - easy to establish as I have six and have replace four of these.
But every hints a hint - I'm beginning to think i has something to do with Stackoverflow.
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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W∴ Balboos wrote: my brother's had a multi-year infestation of white flies thanks to its "charms"
That's not from the horsesh1t, it's from the horsep1ss. You have to get it from somewhere where you don't get a mix of it (i.e. not from stables, but from where they move around).W∴ Balboos wrote: The entire layer's ca. 3/4" deep in the tray - once they get erection fully emerge with their Cotyledon, they get gently removed (trivially easy w/vermiculite) and put in nice comfy fresh soil.
She made me build cold frames, for germinating the trickier (i.e. the not native to cold countries) stuff. Maybe you could knock one up.
Another thing she's been experimenting with is compost boxes, where you put a few inches of soil on top of your compost, and germinate seeds there -- and if you throw a glass or polycarbonate shell on top of that, you're talking tropical plants!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mark_Wallace wrote: hat's not from the horsesh1t, it's from the horsep1ss
Oh my - gourmet flies where you live!
As for building a cold frame - not that useful for me at this time. I have experimented with compost and it is like magic - but not as a seed-starting mixture. From the description, you have a lot more space than I do. We're not talking about a farm, here - I've roughly a 3x3m plot and a number of huge rubber-maid containers as pots. I can squeeze in 20-25 plants. Food production greatly exceeds our needs and even give-away is difficult.
None of this, however, explains the suddenly weird behavior of the eggplant seedlings. HOWEVER, as you can see, I'm not the only one who sees a genetic link to this problem. The Lounge[^]. This is a failure of the seedlings at a fundamental level. Clearly a recessive gene as it's too lethal to exist as dominant.
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Hi,
I actually know a little bit about this. I've been growing tomatoes, squash, eggplants and peppers for over two decades and managed to learn a few things.
I highly suspect that this is a genetic problem. Seeds contain all of the energy they need for germination and breaking through the soil and producing cotyledon and root stem without much external energy.
W∴ Balboos wrote: My eggplant (two varieties, one oriental, one white) are have a problem
Are they ichiban? It sounds to me like your seed source sold you F2 seeds that were produced by a F1 eggplant generation. You cannot use the seeds from a F1 generation and expect a uniform phenotype. The seeds will also very likely contain errors and undesired traits.
Check the variety name online... if it's a F1 hybrid then your seed source probably sold you F2 seeds from a F1 parent. I don't recommend buying your seeds from local farmers. Most of them will not understand genetics and sell you F2 or unstable seeds.
Btw if you are looking for the 'codeproject' for farmers it's over at Tomatoville. Don't let the simple site layout fool you... there are dozens of university professors and agriculture experimentalists on the site. Oregon State University got credit for producing the OSU blue tomato but we were working on it for many years prior over at Tomatoville in cooperation with Tom Wagner.
Best Wishes,
-David Delaune
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At last - someone else thinking it may, indeed be a mutation. Possibly recessive in the species but becoming more entrenched. The "White Casper" eggplants are from a major seed supplier and they're not hybrids. The others are Asian style[^]. I've suffered F1 pain when I let some Sweet-millions seeds grow from the previous years dropped tomato crop. Dramatically crappy.
I'm going to be heading over to that Tomatoville link -
THanks.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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