Plantbreeding@home Update #2: Sowing the seeds

All kids agree, Playing with dirt is fun! 

Since yesterday, I am running a slight cold, with my fever ranging from 37 to 38 C. So, today I started my day with  gardening which is scientifically proven to be the best method to fight any sickness! And not just any gardening! 

As I told you a few days ago, I received my seeds for the steemit exclusive, "plantbreeding@home" experiment, organized by @dysprosium. I will leave more info about the experiment at the end of the post in case you want to learn more or maybe even participate!

So, I woke up at 8 o clock, headed to a place I call the "storage room", looks more like a dump actually, and picked about 20 seedling pots:

And then I started filling them up with soil, duh:

By the way, they say real men don't use gardening gloves:

Wish I was a real man though. The sad reality is that I am just a poor Greek that can't afford gardening gloves. So make sure to upvote this post at 100 %! I promise, I will only buy beers and drugs XD

It took me about 15 minutes to fill enough pots to fill this big plastic beer box thing that I don't know how is called in english:

At this point thanks to my fever I was exhausted so I went upstairs, took a nap for half an hour and returned. 

I headed down again as it was time to start planting the seeds. We are using two types of seeds for the Plantbreeding@home experiment. A  variety that produces super small and super chilly peppers and a small sweet bell pepper. I started with the latter and decided to place one seed per pot. 

Normally, I would go for 3-4 seeds per pot to save time but since this is gonna be a science experiment we are required to take scientific measurements and stuff. One seed per pot will make things like calculating germination percentage and shit so much easier. Plus, transplantation will also be so much easier as I won't have to break the root ball. 

Before starting, I went out and bought a greek Frappe to help me with my cold since it has anti-bacterial and anti-viral properties. Again, 100 % scientifically proven, no BS!

So, I started by making a small hole in each pot, placed the seed, covered it with soil, watered it and placed a whole toothpick next to each of them:

8 pots, for 8 seeds :)

At this point my dog was getting really curious and wanted to eat and pee everything so I chained him. That will teach him:

His response was "fuck you human, I will just chill in the sun":

And then it was time for the other variety. God... these seeds were truly tiny:

They were so small that the best way I found to plant them was to just water the pots first and gently push them inside. And by push, I mean barely touch them. The one you see in the photo above was actually the biggest one!

11 pots, for 11 seeds :) 

This time I used a toothpick broken in half to distinguish them from variety no.1.

At this point I was starting to get cold and dizzy again but there were some more pots with no occupants inside :(

So, I grabbed some luffa seeds:

Now, these seeds are big and don't need much care. Water and love is more than enough! And they are not part of the experiment so I don't care about doing everything perfect. So, I just watered the remaining pots and pushed 3-4 of them per pot:

And now all pots were ready and happy :D

The nights are still a bit cold here in my small corner of Greece but the days are at 20 C or more, so I will be moving the pots indoors after 7-8:00 pm and get them outdoors when I wake up, around 7 o clock.

And that's pretty much my update #2 for Plantbreeding@home. I hope @dysprosium is happy with my work. I know I am :D

And to paraphrase a steemit friend...

~ Beer and out!

What Is PlantBreeding@home?

PlantBreeding@home is a community project run on Steemit to enable everyone willing to participate in the creation of a new plant variety. @dysprosium is the one who came up with the idea, inspired by Gridcoin which awards people cryptocoins (gridcoins) for running BOINC on their computers. 

After some thinking, it was decided that for the first round of Plantbreeding@home the participants will grow (or at least try) a new pepper variety, one that is small and sweet. 

@dysprosium is also kind enough to offer steem and gridcoins to the people participating in the project if they successfully follow all his instruction :D

Here's the first parent, a super small pepper with a flavor that is more intense than a typical Jalapeno. The fruits are barely 1 cm long. The chilliness is something we hope to remove:

And here's the second parent,  a sweet variety producing  small bell peppers:

Hopefully, we will end up with a variety that is  small and sweet. Will we succeed? Time will tell :)

And that's pretty much the summary for the plantbreeding@home. For even more info, just read the official updates by @dysprosium:

• Plant breeding with the Gridcoin-Community: Project "plantbreeding@home"
• plantbreeding@home #1 - The Beginning
• plantbreeding@home #2 - We will breed peppers!
• plantbreeding@home #3 - it is decided!
• plantbreeding@home #4 - Meet the parents!
• plantbreeding@home #5 - Small setbacks
• plantbreeding@home #6 - Let's grow!
• plantbreeding@home #7 Spring is here, spring is heeeeere!

Feel free to contact @dysprosium if you want to participate in the experiment!

P.S: Fuck you @jamezz :)