My Pet Plants

I've been following a flower farm in the Pacific Northwest on Instagram for about a year now and when their seeds went on sale, I decided I was going to grow flowers from seed. I ordered sweet peas, cosmos, zinnias and dahlias. I read the back of the seed packets and the sweet peas said they needed to be started before being planted in the ground. I had some helpers plant the seeds and then I took them to Grandad's office where he has a light and starts some of his garden seeds.

 Meanwhile, I picked up the book from the library published by Floret Flower Farms and read up on growing sweet peas and realized that they take a bit more care. So I dubbed these flowers my "pet plants." After a couple weeks under the light my sweet peas looked like this:

 And I was pretty sure I killed them before I even got them in the ground! Look how skinny those stems are!! After more reading I realized the light was too high so the plants grew up too fast to reach the light. The light should have only been 2-3 inches away from the soil to encourage the plant to grow strong instead of tall. So I brought them home a couple weeks  later and by then they had grown tall enough that they could not stand up.

Mom thought I should let them go. I was thinking of maybe buying another seed packet and trying again. Janell always has an idea. She told me to tie them up on skewers. I did and they looked like this:

 A few weeks later and they are still growing and looking a bit stronger. Most are taller than the skewers. They definitely like a lot of water. Roots are spreading out the bottom of the containers. And I can't believe they have not been destroyed by the humans living in the house. The plants are literally on the floor in front of the sliding door--the sunniest place in the house.

I've become rather fond of these scrawny little plants. Hopefully they will make it until I can get them in the ground and maybe produce a flower or two.