Sprout progress

This week's seeds have been planted, and with this birds-eye view you can see the progress of the last two weeks' seeds. As you can see - last week's tomato planting has it's first two leaves, which aren't actually leaves at all...they're the cotyledons. They were all curled up inside the seed, and act as the first food source for the developing plant. Before long they'll shrivel up, having given up all their resources to get the plant started. The tomato seedling started two weeks ago has the original cotyledons still (the large green, non-descript leaves), and has just started forming it's first two "true leaves". These leaves will start photosynthesizing, turning light into the plant's food.


Behind the Brandywine tomatoes are last week's and this week's Black zucchini peat pots. So far there's no externally visible progress with the zucchini seed sprouting. I was a bit concerned that this part of the experiment wasn't going to go well - say if the seeds were no longer viable. That would be a bit odd since I'm sure I've used squash seeds older than a couple of years before.


So I dug around in the soil and found one of the seeds, and it's juuuuust starting to have a sprout push through the edge of the seed pod. I tucked it back under it's cover of seed starting mix, told it "good night", and I bet in just a couple of days it's peeking up through the soil!

If you're interested in more information on seed starting, About.com has an excellent series of pages on the subject.

And for more interesting pics of the basement sprouts growing, check out these two pictures of the spinach growing in the basement! I actually took today's picture to compare it to yesterday's just to see if I noticed any sprouts MISSING. It seems we've had a mouse in the basement, and while it doesn't appear to have touched the leek seedlings, the other side of the very same seed starting tray has been STRIPPED of parsley seedlings! This has made me a bit paranoid - "Are there fewer spinach seedlings than there were yesterday? I'm sure there are! It seems like there's less!" So - remembering about where I took one of yesterday's pictures, I took another one there today. See for yourself...

Taken Monday, March 8, 2010

Taken Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Well whaddaya know!? Looks like these spinach seedlings are doing just fine! In fact, I set up a humane mouse trap on the table, and there's been no new evidence of mouse activity today. Over the last three days he's been moving Christmas cactus pieces I've been trying to root (and eat them), but today - nothing's moved. Maybe he's realized I'm after him? Either way, it's cool to have the daily pictures of the spinach progress!