I’ve been wanting to start seeds for a couple of weeks now. It’s time. But, every year I have certain trepidations about creating life only to destroy it. Every year, I go through this exercise. I plant seeds, following instructions to the letter, only to watch the baby plants wither and die a few weeks later. Aside from the waste of time and money (two massive peeves for me), I am just not in the Shiva headspace. That, and I’m finding myself dancing around notions of the future, aging and death with my three year old, who just wants answers. A mass extinction of his plants would be less than ideal.
I’m not new to starting seeds indoors. I’ve been doing that home-gardening tango of hope, regret and failure for 10 years now: I’ve had trouble with damping off, over watering, under watering, temperature control, expired seeds and just plain hard-to-start seeds. Neither am I new to spring in Toronto, when the most squirrelly people tend to get even more squirrelly. And they ALL love me. There are a million diversions throughout springtime in Toronto to keep the most well-meaning from tending to their plants, and then there’s the bizarro shit I encounter when all I want to do is go home. I don’t know, maybe the Shiva vibe would actually help me combat that out-an-out weirdness.
Each year, I learn from the previous year’s horticultural mistakes and vow not to let life’s random acts of WTF was that? distract me from my leafy little lambs only to encounter some other issue that spells fatality for my plants. Just like we need to breathe, plants need to grow, right?
Sure they do, but I suspect they would really like it if I would stop trying to help.
Last year’s mass herbicide was the perfect storm of baking in an oven of a greenhouse and utter neglect.
My man had built a new garden shed that included a top-shelf cold frame with lovely, old, paned windows on hinges in the place of doors and a clear plastic roof. Attractive and useful, just like its designer. Also, much like the designer, utterly maddening to navigate. About this time last year, a few weeks after quitting my stupidly stressful job, I was still feeling chewed up and spit out, and nursing an injured back. I decided to ignore my usual misgivings and plant seeds to boost my spirits. When it came time to move the trays outside into the cold frame, a major problem presented itself the first time I attempted to water my tender seedlings.
Here’s how it went down:
In order to reach the trays, I climbed onto a rickety stool. The lovely old windows are hinged at the top, so they swing up and open, which means you have to hold it open to get at anything on the shelf. With one hand holding on for dear life and the other one hefting a 5-gallon watering can, that left my head to prop the window open. In this pose, I then had to twist and stretch with a 5-gallon weight at the end of my arm to reach the trays.
My whole house is full of design treasures like this. Hmm. I wonder why my back hurts.
So, this week, trying not to think of last year’s poor seedlings that died of thirst scant feet from the their own little Eden, I climbed on the stool to take stock of supplies, then drove with my son to the garden centre. All we really needed was No-Damp, a fungicide that keeps seedlings from “damping off” – succumbing to an invisible killer fungi. At Home Depot, we were told they no longer carried the product and had nothing to replace it. At Plant World, I got a little more information – they don’t make it anymore. I panicked. To the sales associate who delivered the death knell, I said, “I better not plant then, because they will die.” Then I remembered my son, pulled back on the melodrama and thanked the very helpful associate.
We planted all of our seeds and had a lovely time doing it. We made a hell of a mess and the mess remains because we had trains that needed playing with after we were done with the seeds. My son checks every couple of hours for progress and is disappointed every time even though I’ve explained it takes at least a week for anything to happen. I am doubt-ridden about the viability of our efforts, but I have decided to be more creator than destroyer. I have a back-up plan.
Simpl●City 