15.12.09

(kind of) new seeds ordered and temperature data soon

I received an email today from the Seeds of Change Customer Service Coordinator informing me that the Herbs de Provence seed collection had been discontinued as a result of the company being unavailable to acquire a number of the included seed packs. The main disappointment of the email was that it removed the possibility that the seeds would be waiting in my mailbox when I got home today. They´d already refunded me the money for the purchase, and so I quickly put it toward six seed packs that should round out the herb garden nicely. Hopefully arriving before I leave for the holidays are:

1 PACK, DILL, DUKAT
1 PACK, MARJORAM, SYRIACA ZAATAR
1 PACK, OREGANO, GREEK
1 PACK, SAGE, GARDEN
1 PACK, ROSEMARY
1 PACK, THYME, GERMAN WINTER

The Rosemary and the German Winter Thyme are both on backorder, but if Seeds of Change ships to me as quickly as they did before, then I stand a good chance of having the rest of them planted and germinating over winter break.
I´ve never grown dill or marjoram before, and this marjoram is supposedly quite different from the sweet marjoram that was a part of the Herbs de Provence collection. They say on their website that the Syriaca Zaatar Marjoram has a flavor that combines the tastes of sweet marjoram, thyme, and oregano, which definitely makes it sound like it´d be interesting to cook with. The other main decision I had in picking out seeds was the dill. They sell four different varieties: Bouquet, Dukat, Goldkrone, and Mammoth. They say that the Dukat is "Delicately aromatic, never bitter or overly pungent. Perhaps the sweetest of all dills. The preferred commercial variety. Stays leafy longer than others." All of those seemed like good things, especially for cooking. I also liked that it´s only supposed to grow to be 18-24" tall, as opposed to the Mammoth which can get up to 5´. The Bouquet Dill was also a smaller plant, growing to be 3´ tall. The website said that this variety was the best to grow for the production of seed, though, and since it is the leaves of the plant that I use most frequently for cooking, this didn´t seem like the best option. They didn´t have any information on the Goldkrone Dill, so it wasn´t really in contention.
In other non-seed-related news, I used a portable thermocouple to monitor the temperature and humidity of the top tier of the greenhouse for almost four days last week to get an idea of how accurate the thermometer and hygrometer are that I have placed on the shelving structure. I also wanted to know how much the temperature varied between sunny and cloudy days, and how much heat and moisture was escaping when I open the flaps for watering and photographing. The quick summary is that the PetCo terrarium meters do a pretty good job of representing the conditions (of at least that shelf) of the greenhouse, and that I should really be keeping the greenhouse warmer, especially at night. I´ll upload the data once I have the graphs processed so that they can be presented in a more accessible form. In response to this new information, I´ve increased the setting of the heater on the bottom shelf of the greenhouse from 70F to 80F (still on the low setting), and that appears to have resulted in an increase in temperature of about 6-8F on the top tier. How it will increase my electric bill, is yet to be seen.

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