Stevia Success!

After reading all of the nay-sayer articles about the difficulties with germinating stevia, I am proud to say that I actually got two plants growing!  You can read more about stevia in my previous post (scroll to the bottom of the post). In reality, it was only a 50% germination rate, since I planted 4 seeds, and only two came up.  I wondered for a while if I ever WOULD get anything to sprout, since they took so long,  but I was happy to wake up one morning to see a hint of green pushing through the soil.  Go Stevia!

March 2, 2012.  Stevia, along with various brassicas. Look how tiny the stevia is.

Meanwhile, I checked out greens that had overwintered in the garden - they were looking pretty good!  The kales, collards and mustards were getting bigger and bigger - time to thin!

March 17 - thinning (a little late)

Greens - Feb. 17, 2012

Greens - March 10 , 2012

Of course, between all the travel, I neglected to thin them until last weekend.  Oops - think those spindly ones left will survive without the support of all of their siblings?  Well, at least we had some delicious micro-greens!  The rest of the over-wintered greens looked pretty good!  Some Swiss chard was left in the front bed, and in the back bed, I had sowed some mezclun greens - all that had survived was radicchio.

Swiss chard from last year - 3/17/2012

Radicchio from last year - 3/17/2012

Meanwhile, during the St. Paddy's day weekend, it was time to transplant the brassicas out into the garden plots.  I was actually able to find space for EVERYTHING I had started.

March 17, 2012, clockwise from bottom left: Box 6: Garlic, brassicas and sugar snap peas; Box 7: overwintered greens and some more transplantedbrassicas; Box 8 (top left): all transplants; Box 1A (top right long box) - overwintered swiss chard; Box 3: garlic, transplanted greens, and sugar snap peas; Box 4: Asparagus (close-ups later); Box 5 (bottom right): transplanted greens and sugar snap peas.

And finally, the wondrous STEVIA!!! It has really started to take off - I'll be transplanting it this week to larger containers.  I had a little scare when I cam back from travel - the jiffy pots had dried out and my poor stevia plants looked very withered.  Thankfully, it wasn't too late and they were saved by the copious addition of some H2O. The one on the right still looks a little parched, but I think it will bounce back.

March 20, 2012 - the Stevia is growing!