Well, it’s been three days since we planted the seeds, and the squash have gone absolutely feral. The package said they’d take 5-10 days to germinate, so I figured I had some time to sit back and relax—wrong. The first little guy popped up Monday morning, and now there’s no stopping them.
I feel like a new mom with a premature baby… totally unprepared for the next steps and frantically googling how to keep them alive. Meanwhile, in the same seed tray, the tomatoes and peppers are taking their sweet time. A few tomatoes are just starting to peek through, but for the most part, they’re still just tiny mounds of dirt.
So now I’m in a bit of a dilemma—do I take off the humidity dome and turn on the light, giving the squash what they need but possibly messing with the cozy, humid environment the other seeds are enjoying? After some deep-diving (and a long chat with ChatGPT), I’ve learned that while the humidity dome is helpful for germination, it’s not essential. What is essential is getting the sprouted plants out of the humidity ASAP so they don’t grow fungus or start rotting.
So here we are (photo below): humidity dome off, lights on, fingers crossed. Now, I’ll just have to keep a close eye on the seed tray to make sure the un-sprouted seeds don’t dry out while the squash bask in their newfound glow.
Honestly, I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that everything would sprout at different times—because, duh, of course, they would! But lesson learned: in the world of gardening, expect the unexpected.
After all the chaos of my squash sprouting way ahead of schedule, I figured my blog needed a feature image that really captured the moment. After my google search for “frazzled gardener clipart” came up blank, I turned to ChatGPT to make me an image, which is a feature of AI I haven’t tried using yet. The first image that was spit out to me was a boy in a greenhouse looking quite overwhelmed. At this point I realized I should have probably been more specific with my picture request, replying to the first image with a request for a girl with brown hair, a ponytail and glasses – much better!
