When sprouting indoors from seed, quite often the light comes from one direction. My tomato sprouts shall demonstrate:
I rotated them last night when they were facing the other way. They’ll get rotated 90 degrees tomorrow.
Nearly all of the tomato sprouts are up now. They usually appear one to three at a time until the ones that are going to germinate at all have done so. The ground cherries have yet to make an appearance.
The peppers, absent last night entirely, have almost all risen in unison today. Here are two emerging from their seed casings.
The leaves will open more, discarding the seed’s exterior to the soil.
Onions don’t have two seed leaves like many veggies do, and end up hanging onto their seeds for quite awhile.
Onion sprouts start like little wriggly, white, worms.
There’s one in the middle there, blending in nonchalantly, and another along the top edge.
The root end takes a few days to take hold, and as it’s working on that, the sprout elongates.
With the root end more firmly gripping the earth, the sprout musters its wee strength and starts to stretch for the sun.
At this stage, they are kind of comical. Bending this way, twisting around, seed ends getting stuck on other sprouts nearby…they amuse me a fair bit with their antics.
The air is dry here lately. A few weeks without rain, little humidity, and clear nights has the static up and the soil gasping quickly between waterings. I’m watering now by gently pouring small amounts near the sprouts. I don’t want to drown them, or soak the soil, but misting with my spray bottle won’t last 12 hours in these conditions.
I am getting antsy to put the seeds in the garden next weekend. Today was intended as a soil amendment day, but both Plan A and Plan B for adding compost and manure were a bust. Hopefully it comes together tomorrow so I can have it piled and ready as a weekday evening project this week.
Thing I learned today?
– Beets aren’t something to start inside, but should be direct sown like other root veggies. So sayeth the package.
Any activity in your growth this week? Any prep work to be done or planting you’re (im)patiently waiting to do?
plumdirt 
I finally got my tomato and pepper seeds in some dirt last night. Hopefully they’ll sprout in a week or so since they’re on top of the fridge. I have roma, and sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, and jalapeno, and poblano peppers. These were picked up at an end of the year sale I found for just pennies a packet. Since I’ve never grown any tomatoes or peppers from seeds before, and it’s early enough to try, if they all crap out I can still buy transplants in late March (like I usually do) and not be out a fortune on seeds. What varieties of peppers and tomatoes did you plant? Also, if we’re both successful, would you be interested in swapping some plants a few months down the road?
I’d be happy to do a swap sometime! I sowed a bunch of different varieties of each this year, too many to type on this device. Some from a few different seed companies, and some saved from my garden or farmers’ markets. I’ll make a post about them 🙂
Excellent. I saw your post about the trade box so I’ll have to rummage through my leftover seeds. I know I have some underperforming green beans, pickling cucumbers, and possibly carrot seeds to trade. I will let you know.