Germination, Continued

I’ll spare you the continued pictorial of the baby plantlings, but I did want to share their ongoing march toward being full-fledged seedlings.

The score so far: Hollyhocks have two tallish sprouts, and two are just starting to pop. Lemon Basil is slow going, with two seeds just barely starting to grow. Sweet Basil has had the lead until today, with all six pellets having good (if still small) growth, and two pots having two sprouts apiece. Parsley isn’t budging yet; that’s OK, though, because it still has to make a few more visits to hell before it’ll start to grow for real. The catnip has been the come-from-behind sleeper hit, though, with five of the six pellets having at least one plant, and most having two or three. This is a recent development — as in, the catnip grew a quarter inch *today*.

I’ve propped open one corner of the lid of my mini-greenhouse, to improve circulation amongst the almost-seedlings. Some of my hollyhocks have a white fungus starting to grow, which I understand is commonly known as damping-off disease. Supposedly, improving circulation should help, as should misting the seedlings with a peroxide solution. We’ll see how that goes. For now, I’m just propping the lid to see if that makes any improvement.

I’m documenting all of this mainly so I can look back later this spring and summer and remember that there was a point at which I was actually growing things, instead of just neglecting and killing them.

[Andrea? Do you have any hippie gardening nuggets of wisdom to share?]