Tea-LAB

When a seedling lifts its seed coat (aka testa) out of the ground, it's called epigeal germination. If the seed coat stays under the ground it's called hypogeal. These giant pumpkin starts exhibit epigeal growth, as do sunflowers and onions.

Solanum lycopersicum 🍅🍅🍅

The scrumptious tomato was once thought to be poisonous, as it is cousin to Deadly Nightshade, Atropa bella-donna. This fear was further bolstered as wealthy aristocrats would suffer poisoning after eating the plump red berries (yes, tomatoes are berries). Though it wasn't the tomato at fault, but the pewter dishes that the wealthy were eating from. Pewter used to contain lead, which would leach from the soft metal as it was dissolved by the fruit's acidic juices, leading to lead poisoning. Fortunately we're past all of that.

Spring growth at TeaLAB Gardens

It's gonna be a big year

loves organic nutrition

We've all seen transplant shock. Droopy leaves, limp stems, even a little discoloration the first few days after you up-pot, or put that start in the ground. The reason for this is broken root hairs.

Root hairs are made of a single cell. When you transplant, many of these hairs are broken, preventing the plant from taking up water and nutrients. This leads to some wilting. What do you do? Well the best thing to do is just be patient. And definitely don't overwater. If you give the seedling too much water when there's no root hairs you will drown those roots because they need oxygen just like we do. And since there's no root hairs to absorb the water you'll end up with soggy waterlogged soil. It's all downhill from there.

Just keep this soil slightly moist, wait a few days, and when the plant begins to perk back up, you can start giving it more generous waterings.

The perfect flower.... Perfect is actually a botanical term for a flower that has all four floral whorls: sepals, petals, male stamen, and the female pistil. This tulip is indeed botanically perfect with all four whorls, though the sepals on this beauty are highly modified and look like pretty petals.

Fun fact: the most money ever paid for a single tulip bulb was for the Semper Augustus variety during the peak of "Tulip Mania" in the Netherlands in 1637.  The US dollar equivalent today would be somewhere near $500,000. Yes, you read that correctly.

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