Will Little Sprouts Bravely Enter My Garden?

by Lorri Leigh

I really wish I had a green thumb. Unfortunately, every year I manage to do something the plants don’t like and they end up folding their little leaves and hightailing it to the big vegetable garden in the sky.
Earlier this month, I planted roughly 40 seed pots with tomatoes, spaghetti squash, honeydew melon, acorn squash, and carrots. I thoroughly watered them.

I didn’t bother watering the day after I planted the seeds. I thought they needed a chance to dry out. Mistake number one! Less than 48 hours later, to my despair, every single pot and planter had dried out. There was a hard crust on the soil.

I almost tripped over the hose in my haste to quench the thirst of my newly planted seeds. How much damage could I have caused? We shall see.
Every morning after that, I religiously watered the pots and kept looking for signs of life. I had false hope at one point. I saw small green spots in a couple of the pots. I got all excited, thinking they were sprouts. They were buds off my Star jasmine vine. The lawn crew pulled some from the vine and buds landed in the pots. I disappointingly plucked them all out and hoped for the best.

With the price of supermarket produce skyrocketing, I’m bound and determined to learn how to grow my own fruit and vegetables, even if that means dumping out all the little pots and starting over.

About 10 days after planting, all of our neighbors’ dogs started barking when I let out an excited screech from the garden. There they were—tiny, bright green leaves poking through the soil and reaching for the sky! I didn’t kill them after all! It’s like a garden fairy flew in overnight and deposited little sprouts in ALL my pots.

I wish I knew which pots had what growing in them. Mistake number two. I forgot to label them.

My neighbor has a garden. I’ll be asking her to identify the leaves. Maybe she can figure out what’s growing in my pots.
More on the sprouts and my foray onto vegetable gardening coming up in future editions! Stay tuned!