Can We Eat These???

“Can you eat these Sprouts?”  I could just imagine this coming from an inquisitive 6 year old (if I had one around, I don’t though thankfully) pointing a menacing, chubby little finger at the delicate stems of my toms and peppers…. Heck no! I would reply, these sprouts are not for turning into a stir fry for dinner, they are the sprouts of yummy goodness that is to come this summer!
                            Tom Tomato

Tom Tomato

I now have an abundance of little green shoots that are almost 4″ high in various little pots crammed onto the ledge in my living room window (think high-density, low-rise town homes) and they are thriving with relatively little attention.
Thank goodness I don’t need to babysit them all day, like my kids when they were younger…I can still hear the ‘HE HIT ME’ or ‘SHE’S HOGGING THE TV’ in my head that makes me want to run for the bathroom, lock the door and enjoy a much needed Calgon moment.  Instead, they hang around in their peat pots soaking up the warming rays of the sun and all I need to do is occasionally rotate them so they don’t become the leaning tower(s) of Pisa when they should be like the CN Tower or the Space Needle.
Most of the hard work in raising vegetables and flowers from seeds comes in the beginning when you have a million little peat pots, seed packets, bags of seed starting soil mix and popsicle sticks spread out on the kitchen table (if I had a potting shed, I would utilize it, alas, the kitchen table will have to do), filling peat pots and then painstakingly inserting 2-3 itsy-bitsy-teeny-tiny seeds (after you put your glasses on) per pot being careful not to tip over the opened seed packets and sending them skittering all over the table only to be hopelessly mixed with others and then you end up tossing whatever seeds into whatever pot and hope for a tossed salad (hmmm..new idea there!)….but I managed not to knock over any, so all is right with world…for now…
Keeping the soil ‘moist but not soggy’ while the seeds germinate is truly an exercise in self-control though.  I have already drowned some habanero seeds and am now on to batch # 2, let’s see if I can do better this time.  Meanwhile, everyone else in my miniature plant world is coming along fine.  The tomatoes are growing the fastest, they already have their 3rd set of leaves unfurling with the Poblano peppers not that far behind.
The Cilantro and Parsley are doing so well that if I wanted some ‘micro greens’ (culinary term I keep hearing on Iron Chef) I could use them as garnishes for my…ahem…lavish meals ~ hahahaha!  But I will wait for them to get bigger, no sense in mowing them down too soon.  My chives though are being quite shy and have not poked one teensy stem forth yet and I am worried I may have drowned them too….but on the positive side, my Iceland Poppies have popped out all over so that at least has made me happy.
I can’t wait to get these little guys into the garden…but I still have some 6-8 weeks to go before they can safely be planted without fear of a Canadian Spring Frost coming along to numb their little roots (hmm…maybe I can knit little scarves for them??)
Until then, keep your thumb green and don’t let those little dudes dry out!

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