Last week surgery update

As predicted one patient died and another one is improving. After last week's surgery #74 collapsed within a few hours, while #24 is now showing signs of green recovery.

#24 January 27, 2013. 2 months and 3 weeks old.

As predicated two weeks ago after #15 surgery, it would become a rival to the leaders, here is a confirmation:

#15 January 27, 2013. 2 months and 3 weeks old.

#15 now shot two brand new branches, which can be seen on the picture above, one on the left and one on the right. Both new branches are stronger that the main one in the middle.

I was wrong though, predicting that #15 will take over the top leaders. #15 is clearly among the leaders now, but to say that it's approaching the top two is still not correct. A surprising newcomer is the #15's closest competitor. It's #59. Last time we remember #59 it looked like this a month ago:

#59 December 27, 2013. 1 month old.

Today, it's #15's much younger rival:

#59 January 27, 2013. 2 months old.

 The second place today belongs to #38, which keeps increasing its length and overall volume fast:

#38 January 27, 2013. 2 months and 1 week old.

The new branch of #38 is clearly more dominant than the original trunk in length, which can be seen on the the bottom. However, it appears that #38 is now shooting a new young branch from its trunk close to the top. The seedling is very bent, leaning almost to the container edge. The massive young branch is not helping its balance either. I decided not to interfere since it's adding volume nicely. The only real concern at this time is the color of the new needles, which are turning very light green, almost yellow.

Finally, number one today is undisputed leader #39. It's an amazing specimen, which dwarfs the "plantation":

#39 January 27, 2013. 2 months and 1 week old.

#39 has three branches roughly symmetrical around the main trunk. All three are currently developing equally well, along with the main trunk. It leans slightly on one side, but overall it's one of the most vertical seedlings that do not require any corrections.

There were two deaths this past week: already mentioned #74 and #66. This brings total of vacant spots on the patch of 32 to eleven. With that, I started germinating more seeds. Two months stratified batch had an extremely low germination rate over one month, only 12 out of 100. I will keep it for a few more weeks, but currently there are no seeds showing any signs of future germination. It's odd. I also decided to do another batch of 100, without any stratification.

Newly germinated seeds are subjected to a new technique on their "brown patch". Rather than watering the entire volume of the container, only the immediate seed area is watered. I use a chemical pipet to place the water around the seed/seedlings, then wait until the area is visibly dry on the surface and then applying more water. I do it for all new seedlings before I go to work (around 7:30AM) and then when I come back (around 7:30PM). Some samples retain moisture slightly better than others, probably based on how the starting mix was compacted in the past (since I am reusing brown containers from prior seedlings).

So far, after two weeks, all newly germinated seedlings are doing very well. In fact, the early ones are now repeating some of the behavior of the known successful samples. Specifically, they tend to grow tall fast and keep their needles almost vertical.

#106 January 27, 2013. 2 weeks old.

The intent is to keep germinating seeds and grow seedlings till all 32 vacancies of the white patch are filled:

More Surgeries

Seeing how well the ex-dead seedling is doing after a "surgery", I decided to repeat the procedure  on two declining seedlings. One was selected because of the purple troubles and another one because it was withering away for an unknown reason.

First I extracted #74 from its container, to find an extremely thin medium part of the root. It was much shorter than the previous experiment. The chances of survival are very low, really low even compared to the last time.

Second was #24 with purple. It was well developed before the purple menace hit it and remains otherwise sturdy. It's a much closer match to the first case, so the hopes are reasonably high for this one.

The root of the #24 was a bit shorter than the #15, but what it lacked in length it more than compensated in branches:

Like previous time, I washed it with plenty of water, then poured cactus mix soil on top and re-sealed the container with ductape. This seedling looked remarkably healthy from root standpoint.

Update on other plants. It's a mix of good and bad news.

#38

#39

#15

#44

Dead: 103

More Purple Troubles

Six seedlings developed signs of the purple desease that affected #15 in the past. I am a little less pessimistic than the first time around but the concern is with this dramatic spread of this phenomenon on multiple samples over short period of time.

Here is #34 a week ago and today:

#34 January 6, 2013

#34 January 13, 2013

A week ago, only the very tips of the larger needles had purple color. Today almost entire plant is purplish grayish.

I sprayed all plants, affected and not with Chlorothalonil. Other affected plants have varying degree of the purple blight, with just a bit on the tips through most major needles completely covered. 

On a positive side, strongest seedlings show very minor signs of the desease at this time while growing at a brisk pace. The two leaders #38 and #39 both formed branches from which new needles grow. #38 formed only one branch (lower one in picture below) but it is so large that it now rivals the original branch:

#38 January 13, 2013. 1 month and 3 weeks old.

#39 on the other hand formed three new branches, all of which are smaller than the main, but they form a nice ball-shaped body:

#39 January 13, 2013. 1 month and 3 weeks old.

#38 is taking a very slanted position, while #39 remains mostly vertical. In both cases they apparently look very healthy.

There is also a nice cluster of seedlings in the 70 range at this time:

The "dead" #15 continues to grow vigorously beginning to catch up with the most of strong seedlings in the 30 and 40 range:

#15 January 13, 2013. 2 months and 1 week old.

At this rate #15 will become a rival for #38 and #39 in a matter of days.

Finally, my younger daughter requested that I would give her one of the sequoia seedlings so that she could take care of it all by herself. I gave her #44. It is the tallest one to date, with a reasonably developed core of secondary needles but without any new branches yet. It was also moderately affected by the purple blight. I decided to do an experiment with this one because the young girl would not be able to wait and most likely will subject #44 to frequent waterings. I explained to her how to use the moisture meter and asked her to keep it in 2 region. We separated #44 from the rest of the group in its own little setup:

The three original needles are purple while the rest is green:

#44 January 12, 2012. 1 month and 3 weeks old.

From the environmental considerations:

I decided to change this week watering to top watering from the side syringe injections. The soil on top of the plants was getting extremely dry and hard and I figured that's also not a good thing. It's a far fetched conclusion that it's causing plants to be unhappy and turn purple, but will see what happens. I added 150ml of water on top of the soil for all plants except #4. #4 which has original black and very dense soil still shows 3+ reading on the  moisture meter at 3 inch depth, so I left it alone.

I also added about 20ml each to all seedlings of the Fish plant food.

Finally, as noted above I sprayed all samples with Chlorotholanil as can be observed on the #44 close-up picture above.

More mortality statistics: #102 which had a fairly long but very thin root, died. #103 and #104, which I predicted the former would live and the latter would die, still both stand. Against my prediction #104 looks better than #103, now forming first appearance of secondary needles. #103 looks like it would collapse at any moment. #61, #89 and #90 also died.

The story of survival

This is the first and only time that a "terminally sick" seedling has made a complete recovery. It is also interesting to note that a surgical intervention made a huge and immediate effect.

#15, the ex-leader of the pack was pronounced dead on December 7 2012:

It remained unchanged for next two weeks when I decided to open it up and examine what's going on:

After examination, I filled one half of the PVC tube with some Cactus mix, leaving the other half to its original soil. It was unclear what it would do to #15.

Per the observations during the surgery, I changed how I water this (and many other) seedlings. Rather than pouring the water from the top, I was injecting water with a 30ml syringe into the sides through pre-drilled holes. For #15, knowing that the healthiest part of the root was at 6 inches and below, while the top 4 inches were thin and sickly, I was injecting water only through the lower holes:

It appears that the simulation of "ground waters" applied to the lower part of the root was appreciated by the plant. The fuzzy purple residue disappeared within a few days completely, and two weeks later we have this:

#15 January 4, 2013. Two months old.

In other news, today the second lamp assembly arrived from the High Tech Garden. Now both 4x4 grids are complete with 100% lighting:

The second grid (on the right) has 13 out of 16 vacancies filled. Out of two remaining brown patch samples either one or none will survive. Also, a few seedlings that I moved to the white/clear patch will surely die judging by their under-developed roots:

My biggest problem still seems to be overwatering of the seedlings that leads to the root rot. I also discovered that 7-10 days in the peat moss will determine whether a seedling will survive or not. Most brown patch seedlings are dead on arrival after that time. Those that have just right amount of water show well developed root. Here is an example of a10 day old seedling with a good root. Compare this #103 with the #104 above:

I will bet a lot of money that #103 will survive and #104 will not.

#102 is a somewhat an interesting case because it had a long root but it was very thin:

All three samples are now on the white/clear patch with plenty of light. Will see what happens next.