Day 40–Has it been this long?

As I was looking over my past posts about growing these fastplants I was a little taken aback at how much time has passed from my last post back on Day 27.   It is now Day 40 and as you can see from the images, the seed pods filled nicely and the plants are now drying out.  I guess the long hiatus from posting reflects on how much attention I’ve given the plants over the last couple of weeks–pretty much no attention.

I’ll harvest seed next week or so when the plants are dried out completely and yellow.  The drying process would be further along but the plants were growing so well that I left them on water a little longer than I normally would.  Could be that my fertilizer mix was a little too rich which might account for the lush growth.  I also suspect that I could have pollinated another day or two to increase seed yield.  I last watered the plants last Wed, on Day 32.  I travelled to upstate New York over the weekend so the timing was good.  All the plant reservoirs were dry by the time I came back on Monday.   One more thing to note.  I trimmed my seed pods and flowers on the plants that were selected for hairiness, forcing more of the plant energy into fewer pods and seeds.  Note how large the seed pods are on the selected plants compared to the remaining plants that I did not give the same level of attention.  There appears to be a big difference between the two populations.