Busy Day for the Mater Matic

I had quite a list of things to accomplish, so today I hit the ground running. I needed to transplant the maters from the flats to larger digs, and that also meant that some of my maters would part ways. Given this was my first time trying to grow anything from a seed, I planted all thirty seeds expecting that most wouldn't make it. To my surprise, from 30 seeds I ended up with 24 seedlings - much better results than I expected.

So the first task was to make new homes for my maters. Given the success of my 'soil wicking' approach, I enlisted the help of Team Mater Matic (which now extends to several of my co-workers) to collect some 2 liter plastic bottles. Steve and Ryan came through big time ...

These went from recycle bin refugees to 'mini-SIPs' as follows:

1. Drill a half inch hole in each of the plastic caps
2. Strip off the labels
3. Drill 8 small holes around the crown of the bottle to allow for soil weeping
4. Measure 6" from the mouth and cut around the bottle, and set the top part aside
5. Trim about 2" from the original cut line off the bottom part
6. Cut a 1 1/2" by 1 1/2" piece of landscape fabric, and place over the mouth of the bottle
7. Screw the cap down over the landscape fabric
8. Turn the top part upside down and sit it into the bottom part ...Voila!

So the idea behind these is that the bottom acts as the reservoir, holding about a cup of water, and as the potting mix and plant use up the moisture in the top part, the water 'wicks' up through the hole in the cap and replenishes the top part. And given they are portable, I can bring my extras to work and my colleagues can sit these out on a sunny window ledge indoors until it warms up enough to transfer them outside.

After building the mini-SIPs, I had to do some surgery on the Mater-Matic. The mid-shelf supports had been used to hang the reflector, but now the plants had outgrown the space and the supports had to go. So using my angle grinder I removed the four bars of the shelf support, and rebuilt a fresh diffuser that hung down from the top shelf supports. The refab works nicely, and should now have enough room for the plants until it's time to move them outside.

Nate and I then took a drive out to Tractor Supply and picked up some spagham moss, perlite, dolomite and some organic fertilizer. I mixed up the moss and perlite with water, and added a little bit of the composted manure I had left over from planting the flats. SIPs require this type of mix due to the need to wick moisture. In packing the mix in the mini-SIPs, I added a little of the dolomite in the bottom, then added more mix. I used a couple of shims to extract the seedlings from the flats. Then I added a teaspoon of the fertilizer around the perimeter of the container, and gave each one a good watering to ensure enough moisture to keep the wicking going.

Here are all the seedlings that are destined for backyards of Team Mater Matic. The picture is a bit dark given the sun had gone down and this was all my garage lights could muster.

And here are my final five - the five largest and healthiest of the bunch, all tucked in their modified mini-SIPs - modified in the sense that the bottoms have 1/2 holes drilled in them. These are going back in the Mater-Matic, so I needed to come up with a way to use the existing reservoirs to feed the water to them. The holes allow the water into each bottom to draw up into the wick.

Tomorrow I'll be up to my knees in pickle buckets - wait to you see all the SIPs! I'll post some pics when I'm done!

MM