Project: Sprout & About

Sprouts deserve to be heard, so it is unacceptable that there has not been any news on their eventful journey until now. There is no real excuse for that, or well, I HAVE worked towards Sprout & About as a whole, not just on the Sprout part. And a lot has happened since the last post. The road has been full of joyful moments and happy sprouts. There has also been the first low. Yes, I cried a little (almost). A little while back, I mentioned a Sprout that took a head start in the game (/art) of growing, but since then, things have not been the same anymore. Now, we have new candidates for the strongest grower trophy.

First and foremost, it has been such a positive surprise how fast all varieties of seeds germinated. All the seeds were having such a great time in the comfy coco-beds that their roots were starting to grow out of them after only a few days. To my luck, there have been nice sunny days, too, to give them a good grow boost.
The first six days were the most exciting, I suppose. Rucula was the one who took only a few days to show above ground. Yet, in no time, peas, tomatoes, and some others showed up too. Like, can you even believe it? Little tomatoes growing, the ones I was most worried about. Maybe I will be able to make Caprese salad after all!

Since this is a personal blog and a months-long diary of anything-greenhouse, OF COURSE, I kept a tiny diary during that first week of Sporut growth.

Here is a short recap from my white A4 diary paper from day 0 until day 6, originally written in old-school pencil.

DAY 1 – First day after sowing, obviously, nothing yet to be seen.
DAY 2 – … same… (I guess I must have been worrying that something was wrong)
DAY 3 – Rocket salad showed signs of growth. Or like written in the diary “Rocket Salad”.
DAY 4 – Oh no… oh YES! (A) pea, tomato (veranda), lettuce, basil (marseillais) pushed their first sprouts out of their coco-beds. What a day. This discovery proved my guess wrong; I had thought that the watermelon would be the second one to sprout… But it’s alright, whatever it takes for the Sprouts to sprout.
DAY 5 – Wait for it… The first watermelon started to push out! Buddy, you almost did it. This was probably the most exciting day. I wrote in my A4 diary: “basil aromatico is clearly trying to race basil marseillaise. It’s three to one. Even the soil-mix pots showing growth!”. How profound, hahah.
DAY 6 – “Tomatoes are growing surprisingly strong, the strongest sprouter seems to be veranda (also the early sprouter)”.
This day, I also experienced a small setback in the sprout journey. The first bump on the road had to come sooner or later, right.
I was so emotional it’s funny. I wrote: “There was a tragedy at night: a puzzle was put over my peas :´(.” Yes, I even drew a little sad face there. But let me explain; this pea was the biggest little sprout at the time. It was an unfortunate event because it was dark, and apparently, I had hidden my little seed tray so well that they could not be seen under the table where I was keeping them. The next line in the journal goes, “Luckily, only one got damaged/crushed…”.
The story may still have a happy ending because, after the incident, the same seedling is showing new growth. It’s just a bit smaller than it’s friends. It seems like it survived. Phew…
DAY 7-9 – (stopped writing, but observed Sprout grow very, very closely. Even dreamt about them… don’t ask). Repotted some of the Sprouts to bigger pots.
DAY 10 – Organic chili FINALLY germinated. The wait was long but now that it decided to come out, in one day, it has grown almost 2cm, crazy.

Now, even though most have already sprouted by the time I am writing this, I must add that I was expecting more success in terms of germination. In my head, every seed I sowed was going to germinate, and they would do it so excessively that I would have a hard time fitting them into the coco-beds. Well, on a positive note, I didn’t have to do much work with replanting them, so I guess it’s alright.

What next, one might ask? Well, next week, it’s April already. And that means (drum rolls): I will do more sowing! Yuhuu! The only problem is, where do I put all these brave Sprouts… (and so, imagine if more had germinated…)

The reason it took some time to do an update was that I had been cleaning the greenhouse. It is starting to look so FABULOUS, really! The before and after pictures are going to be so cool. I even cannot wait for that.

But until then, be like a Sprout, grow at your pace ❤