It’s been three weeks since I filled 10 containers with dirt and a light dusting of seeds and more dirt. The turnips, you may recall, were the real early bloomers – already reaching for the sky a mere three days after sowing. The mache was the last to show – it is just now beginning to poke tentative shoots through the dirt. The Russian kale above, sprouted about a week and a half after sowing. Although the fully mature kale plant will look quite different than a rutabaga, their shoots look nearly identical: a slim stalk (purple-colored for the kale, green for the rutabagas) with two tiny round leaves on top.
I imagine, at some time in school, I studied the lifecycle of plants. The memories are no doubt stored in the same dusty, old neuron cluster in the back of my brain (along with quadratic equations, most of chemistry*, and what exactly was compromised in Missouri in 1820). Fortunately, watching over my new seedbeds has been a new education for me. And, this being my first season of growing everything from seed (rather than well-established seedlings), I am a typically anxious first time mother. Did I water enough? Did I water too much? Are birds picking out the seeds? Or squirrels? Are they getting enough sun? Or too much?
To be perfectly honest, I’m actually a pretty crap anxious mother. Once the first turnip sprouts appeared, I figured the rest would follow suit and stopped worrying about them. Aside from a nice sprinkling of water on dry evenings, I don’t spend much time fussing over the plants.
After a week or two, the stalk begins to sprout mature leaves. Not full-grown leaves, mind you. Just mature ones with a unique shape and veins, like the parsnip leaf above. All of my plants have moved on to mature leaf production. Well, except for the mache. I had read that mache has a long germination period (10-14 days) AND that it preferes cooler weather. And I still found myself occasionally frequently standing impatiently over the mache container, wondering when it was going to stop playing in the dirt, get on with life and start making some nice, tasty leaves.
That’s right. I am a mother who eats her children. But only if they’re good. Quite honestly, I’ve had to refrain several times from tearing off a leaf of two from the radicchio below, reminding myself that a nibble on it now will cost quite a few bites of it later. Sigh.. parenting is such a pain..
*Except for the time the cockatiel that normally sat on the chemistry teacher’s shoulder throughout every class decided to fly right at the one girl in the class who was terrified of birds. In fantastic kneejerk survivalist fashion, she smacked it down out of the air with her spiral notebook and pinned it to her desk. The bird was fine, if a little dazed. Unfortunately, that incident never appeared on any of the tests.
1 Comment:
Such precious tender greens!
Posted by Terran on 2 September 2009 @ 00:54am