Well, the title gives it away, dunnit. This year, I have the exact opposite of the problem I had last year. At least as far as pumpkin seeds go so far.

My mom watched a TV show about gardening where they said that lufa has a low germination rate and very long germination times. She then encouraged me to watch it, and that spurred me to put 9 lufa seeds to germinate on a wet paper towel a few weeks ago already. 8 of them germinated in three days. Now I have trouble finding a space for the plants that is not so warm that they grow too much, not so cold that they stop growing completely, and also light enough so they do not get thin and stretched out.

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After last year’s debacle, where butternut and Hokkaido squash seeds did not germinate for weeks, and had only about 50% germination rate when they did, I put a lot of different seeds to germinate this year, and early. I had an over 90% germination rate so far, including for the leftover seeds from last year, which were 1-after expiration date and 2-from the same supplier that was so troublesome. I only put those to germinate with the assumption that they most probably will rot anyway. WTF???

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I had to relocate some of these squash seedlings to the only south-facing window in our home, which is in my parents’ bedroom. The hibiscus flowers that were there will have to do with a few weeks of inferior lighting. I will have to put cardboard with aluminium foil behind them so they do not stretch towards the window as much. But I had to do it, since I needed space under the grow lights for tomatoes.

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And there are 20 butternut seedlings in the greenhouse, near the pepper plants, which are in the soil already. I am doing my best to keep temperatures above 10°C in there. I built a miniature charcoal burner from an old T chimney pipe segment that I had lying around in my scrap metal pile. Every evening I burn about 1 bucket of charcoal to heat 40 l of water to steaming hot, and I put it in buckets near the plants. So far, it seems to work; the pepper plants seem unbothered. We will see if those 20 butternut seedlings amount to anything. We have right now a bout of rainy and cold-ish weather, so even during the day, the greenhouse is still a bit cold. However, I am not going to complain about that, the rain was sorely needed.