After a solid seven days that felt like forever the tomatoes started sprouting! This is what they looked like after about two days:
This is what they look like now, about 5 days after sprouting :
Several of the tomatoes have started first set of true leaves. The artichokes started coming up about two days ago as well, or about ten days after they were planted, which was a few days earlier than the package said to expect them. They seem to have hard seed shells, none of the plants have managed to break out of them, and they are growing much slower than the tomatoes. We'll see how they progress.
And tonight it looks like the pepper plants have just started to sprout, fourteen days after they were planted. I'm just starting to see the seeds start to push above the dirt, so I'm cautiously optimistic. You can kind of see the seed in the middle of the pot.
I'm not expecting the eggplant to start sprouting for another week, so I'm not too concerned that it hasn't come up yet. I'll just keep it moist and see what happens. As I've never started my plants from seeds before I'm not sure what to expect for the success rate. I started three times as many pots as I want mature plants, and in most cases I started three seeds per pot, just to be sure. Now that the tomatoes are up, it seems I might have gotten a little carried away on some pots. . .
I'll use scissors to selectively reduce the plants to just two or three sometime this weekend. Also this weekend, we are going to build garden boxes! I had four cubic yards of dirt that is half compost half topsoil delivered today, so tomorrow we are going to get garden boxes built and filled for planting. With as warm as the weather has been, I'm hoping to get some early spring plants in the garden next weekend.
