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They are so cute when they are young.

This was not planned very well. Actually, it was not planned at all. While sorting through the seed for a vegetable garden, I found a can of seed for winter squash that was a few years old. They might be close to five years old. I really do not remember. I did not expect them to be viable, but did not want to discard them without at least trying to test them for viability.

Rather than just put them in damp rag for a few days, I plugged a few seed into a spider plant on a windowsill, and forgot about them. I really did not expect to see them again. When the first one emerged, I though it was a weed, so plucked it out. When I realized what it was, and that it came out intact, I felt badly for it, and like the original seed, could not discard it.

I do not remember why, but at the time, I did not want to go out to can it in a real pot. Nor did I want to plug it into the garden while I was still getting other seed situated. I therefore planted into an empty eggshell from those drying for coffee. I scraped a bit of medium from a potted bromeliad. It was happy on the windowsill for maybe a few weeks.

The other seed germinated too, but were more carefully removed and plugged into the garden. Since the seed was still viable, I sowed more around the junipers outside. Somehow, in the process, I neglected to put the little seedling in the eggshell out into the garden with them. It has not been happy in here, so has not grown much at all.

Now that the winter squash are already growing well outside, and the summer squash are already producing, this unfortunate seedling still needs to go out to join them.

If I were to grow seedlings inside again, I would do so in some of the cell packs that we recycle from work. They are more efficient, less wobbly, and they do not look so ridiculous.

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Now it wants out!

15 thoughts on “Horridculture – Neglected Seedling”

  1. It looks like it is trying to fly off in the last picture, but I have no room to talk. I was given a free kid’s cress set. It had six seeds in a tiny peat pot and when they germinated they didn’t look like cress so I didn’t fancy eating them. They were super peppery when I tried one. The others went long and spindly then I accidentally let them dry out. I’m glad it wasn’t my first experience of growing seeds.

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    1. One of the advantages of sowing seed directly is that they are not so likely to dry out if not watered on time. The other squash seedlings are doing quite well now out in the garden.

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    1. The eggshells get left out a day or so to dry, then get smashed up for coffee. There is a coffee . . . machine thing contraption at work. I think the eggshells are a buffering agent, but no one seems to know.

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      5. Now you had me curious and I had to google. Says it’s supposed to take some of the bitterness out of the coffee. The bitterness is part of the taste of good coffee. No eggs shells in my coffee.

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