Pot Luck

Yesterday the weather was decidedly spring-like and I decided that my spring planting could wait no longer. My Digger's seed order is still in transit somewhere in the virtual or real world, so I just had my dusty seed archive box to work with. And a bit of common sense- the broad beans are just setting pods so I won't be planting out in those beds any time soon.

As I pulled out a label to reuse I saw that waiting until late August was very restrained on my part- evidently last year I was planting squash seeds on August 3rd!

I decided to try out a few old tomato (Gardener's Delight and Outdoor Girl) and basil seeds that I picked up in the UK, believing they might be more suited to the Tasmanian climate than Australian varieties.

When I say these seeds are old, I mean really old. I bought them in 1999!

I won't say they're in top-condition, but I managed to get some tomatoes from these seeds last year, so I am fairly confident about more success, whilst the viability of the basil is more dubious, so I sowed them densely. I also planted some relatively young Blacknite eggplants, that expired in 1998.

The four seed types went carefully into the wells of a 2x2 punnet, which I carefully labelled, and carefully placed in the mini-greenhouse, full of excitement about what might eventuate.

Today I stopped being careful. Momentarily. But for long enough to change my mood. As I reached in to check the pot, CRASH!, and out spilled the contents. Oh no!! With my remaining ounce of optimism for the exercise I returned as much as I could of the spilt soil and jumbled up seeds to the punnet. So apart from being more careful in the future, all I can do is hope that I salvaged something.

Fingers crossed!!