The Sunflowers Never Had a Chance
I'm now kicking myself for not photographing the sunflower seedlings that sprouted in the compost bin (where I'd planted them about 10 days ago) this weekend. I went out to survey my kingdom this morning and found every seedling save one (that apparently just came up last night, in a divot) looked like it had beheaded by a weed whacker. Some stems where broken cleanly in two places, and it looked like something had been digging a bit in the corner.
While it's possible that the Beaner could have done the damage when I had my back turned yesterday, I don't think that's the case. I remember giving everything a final once-over before I finished yesterday's gardening stint, and while I didn't notice the sunflower seedlings in particular, I did check all the other plants. The yellow pepper that suffered the same fate—it looked like someone snipped its top off with scissors—was certainly alive, well, and upright when I went inside.
I'm now trying to figure out what could have done the damage. My deck is fairly high up, with six-foot fences separating it from my neighbors' decks. I've never seen any animals out there aside from flies, bees, birds, and one giant cockroach that Al and I each glimpsed once and then never saw again. Could a bird have made the clean cuts? Is the giant cockroach now lobster-sized? Did a squirrel find the bounty? (And if so, why just raze the sunflowers and one pepper plant instead of eating the peas or the beet greens?) It's a mystery.
I'm now wishing I hadn't donated the remaining sunflower seeds to the Beaner's school, so I could have another shot at them. I still have hope for the one growing in the divot, though. I also had an extra yellow pepper seedling still in a yogurt cup, so I just pulled out the snipped one and replaced it with the leftover. If that doesn't thrive, I still need places for all the orange pepper seedlings being hardened off as we speak.
I got a little overeager and planted a few of the second batch of tomato seedlings yesterday, before I'd fully hardened them off. The good news is that they went into much better soil mixes than the first set of seedlings, so I'm hoping that they thrive. I'm realizing that I'm going to need a few more buckets for next week's round of planting, as I've already exhausted my current supply (already about two or three times the capacity I had last year!). I'm also realizing that—*gasp*—I seem to have become a gardener. It might be time to take the gardening posts out of "around the house" and give them their own category.