Gardening Mega-fail, Followed By Signs Of Success

I was so proud of myself to buy the grow lights and figure out that I could start lots of seeds early so they’d be ready to go in the ground nice and earlyyy so that I could have lots and lots of flowers and veggies, like, ASAP.

I failed. Really failed. First of all, Dad called approximately 13-minutes after the seeding post was published to tell me that (well, first he said he loved it but…) he really only thought I should have planted tomatoes (which I wasn’t planting at all), because everything else would be ready for the ground much more quickly. While 14-year old me would have bet my allowance that he told me to start the seeds in late February (tomato seeds, I over generalized) what he really meant is, mid-March.

So, not only was I trying to force lots of different plants to spout early, I also failed by keeping my house too cold. I like my low heating bills, but my seeds did not, despite having those little heating bulbs hovering over them. And putting them on a radiator in the sunlight.

Upon realizing after 4 sad weeks that nothing was going to sprout (yes, I continued to try and prove my dad wrong), I called it a day and stacked the egg containers and paper towel rolls into the basement stairwell (you know, far enough away that they wouldn’t haunt me, but positioned nicely so that maybe if they sat in the sunbeam through the side door, some kind of magic would happen and suddenly the seeds would be healed).

No such magic luck ensued, so I started over again with the basil, cilantro, chive, and zinnia seeds a few weeks ago.

It’s warmer now; the sunroom acts as a nice little greenhouse, and of course would have been a great place to just let the seeds veg out, except one warm sunny afternoon shortly after I reseeded, I thought it would be nice to let them out on the back deck to get direct sunlight…

…And direct wind, because about 20 minutes after they were placed out there, the whole plastic container was launched across the deck and landed upside down. Oi vey.

I almost called it quits, but I salvaged what I could, devistated because I had used the rest of my seeds on this second chance at having a nice little herb garden. I have no idea how many fell out, or how mixed up the containers got, but mostly I wasn’t sure what I was going to find in that big pile of soil that I ended up scooping straight off the deck. I just left that random scoop in the middle of the plastic bin, which you can see in the next picture.

Back to the non-windy sunroom it went. Happily, just this week there were signs of survival.

At first just a little, not even enough for me to distingish what was growing out of what egg carton, but slowly, the plants started to show more of their distinctive identities. Hello there, baby Zinnias! Clearly you shifted into one little pocket in the egg container during your tumble, but I’m going to love having you all summer long. (Have I mentioned that last year my Zinnias bloomed for 5 months?)

I can’t quite decipher between the chives and the cilantro yet, but I do know that the basil made it into the round plastic container filled with paper towel tubes. Hopefully no other seeds fell in there during the spill. Whatever it is, it seems happy in there, albeit a little moldy. Humph.

It’s been a warm week, so they’re growing quickly and will soon be ready for a transplant to someplace with a little more leg room before heading out into the garden.