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Starting Seeds Indoors

We have a pretty short growing season in the BSide. If we’re lucky, we get from June to September.

Sadly, 3 months doesn’t give you a lot of opportunity for abundant crops. And trying to grow anything directly from seeds outdoors? Forget it. Not an option.

Enter the indoor greenhouse setup. I bought some pods (I honestly don’t know what their actual name is) that start out as rock-hard disks, and turn into mini-planter pots when you add water. They’re kind of like those plastic capsules that turn into sponge animals when you soak them, only these are dirty and smelly instead of cute and dinosaur-shaped.

I’m very proud of my makeshift greenhouse: a grocery store-purchased plastic container that once housed yummy pastries. Delightful snack, and repurposed container? That’s a win in my books.

Planting the seeds

In the first part of May, with 3 plastic container greenhouses to use, I planted 3 types of seeds:

  1. Black-Eyed Susans: I absolutely love these perennials. They take a while to bloom, but they last for a long time when they do bloom, and their colours make me so happy.
  2. Sunflowers: I so badly wish these plants were perennials instead of annuals. Sunflowers are my favourite flower, and they are so hard to grow here because of the cold weather and voracious rabbits. It’s a real challenge to get them to survive to adulthood.
  3. Jalapeno peppers: A real shot in the dark, frankly, with the super long growing period, so expectations are low.
seed pods with jalapenos

The hydrated pods containing jalapeno seeds. This picture is taken before the seeds were submerged in the dirt. Don’t worry; I’m not that dumb.

How the seeds progressed

The 3 mini-greenhouses were placed in front of our patio doors, which receive the most sun during the day. I popped the lid and watered them every other day, and within 3-4 days I saw seedlings poking through on all of them.

black-eyed susan seedlings

The Black-Eyed Susan seeds popped through very quickly. See how lovely and green they are? Irresistible, apparently.

However, it was still much too cold outside to even consider moving them out for a few minutes, let alone transplanting them. So I left them in the mini-greenhouses…for far too long, as it turns out.

Seeds gone bad

Some of the seed pods started getting moldy. I propped open the lid to let out some of the steam they were creating. Since it was still too cold outside, I left them where they were.

And they pretty much all died a horrible death.

The sunflowers, originally shooting up to 5 inches, wilted and turned brown. The jalapenos completely crapped out. The only saving grace were the Black-Eyed Susans. I had about 12-15 of those that actually kept their shoots without wilting.

Determined to get something out of this effort, I transplanted the BES pods to 3 locations in our yard: our front flower bed, our side flower bed, and our fire pit flower bed.

Within 2 days, the pods were torn out of the ground.

Every. Single. Pod.

They had the tiniest shoots possible, and yet, they were apparently so irresistible to some GD animal that they felt the need to haul them out of the ground and leave them laying there, abandoned and useless.

Seeds suck

These are my takeaway lessons from this endeavour:

  1. Indoor seeds are a waste of time. There is NO point in even attempting this process.
  2. Animals are jerks. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
  3. Seeds suck. Buy established plants, and let someone else do the hard work for you.

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