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  • Hi, I’m Emily

    Emily Fazio

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Gardening Mega-fail, Followed By Signs Of Success

April 29, 2011

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.

Desperately trying to warm the seeds to grow. No success.

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.

Oops. Lots of spillage. This was not staged, this was really what I found when I lifted up the flipped plastic bin.

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.

Signs of seedling 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.

That's basil. Pretty sure. 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.

 

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Gardening

Emily
I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle. I've been a freelancer writer for 10+ years and you can find my work on popular home and garden sites, like HGTV.com. Follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note.

2 Comments


Jordan @ White Bungalow
April 30, 2011 at 7:52 am
Reply

I’ve been faced with the same battles these past few weeks (here). I thought I could keep mine in the basement as well but soon realized it was way too cold. Now they’re in the office. I did tomato & green pepper. 8 out of the 15 tomato pods have germinated but not one green pepper seed has sprouted yet.



    Emily
    May 1, 2011 at 2:45 pm

    My Dad’s a seed-germinating-machine and even HE has had nothing but trouble with the peppers. I have no idea why they would be more finicky than other veggies; wish I had any advice on that topic. Hope your tomatoes that make it turn out to be awesome! I plant 5-8 tomatoes a year (delivered from Dad’s basement) and between my sandy soil and his little plantlings, I can eat BLT sandwiches from July – November… daily. No joke. If all 8 of your plants keep on keepin’ on, you’ll be giving fruit away.

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  • HI, I’m Emily

    Emily Fazio

    I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle. Follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note if you'd like. I love notes.

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🧄 65% of the planting is in a new plot in the country. 🧄 Seeing if NR grows bigger with more sunlight. 🧄 Big @chasefarms cloves from 2021 were really productive in our home garden; can’t wait to see how they can show up next year in the new space. 🧄

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