Sow There!

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So far, so good.
Five "bloody butcher" tomato seedlings have decided to grow in my windowsill.
I say "decide" because some seeds decided not to grow and I have decided not to hold a grudge.
With seeds, I consider it a gift when they decide to cooperate.
I’m not some sort of purist who thinks everybody should plant from seed. I just personally like the excitement of looking every morning to see if anything has popped up above the surface of the soil.
Seeds take patience, but I like the ritual of planting them as if in some small way I’ll get to take credit if they do well.
I also do not blame myself when the life of my future tomato crop experiences bumps along the way — such as accidentally being knocked off the top of the refrigerator, forgotten during a three-day weekend or drowned by over-care.
I personally like peat pellets, because they’re small and I can fit about eight of them easily in a pie tin. These are quarter-inch circles that expand when you add water.
A lot of people also like peat pots, which are biodegradeable containers where you add your own soil.
Both peat pellets and pots have the advantage that you do not need to go through the ordeal of extracting the young seedling from the container in order to put it in the ground — a process that seems to be inevitably painful to the plant.
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Bottled-up idea
My friend Sally at work shared a great idea for planting seeds in old half-gallon milk containers.
Cut the container in about half, leaving the lid affixed by just a small piece of plastic on the back.
Fill the container with soil and poke holes in the bottom.
After the seedlings sprout, the container can be placed out in the yard. When it’s sunny, the lid can be flipped open. In rain, cold or wind, the top can be flipped back over to protect plants until they are ready for transplanting.
Of course, make sure to remove all the gunky milk residue before you embark on this adventure.
A Google search of the words “soda bottle greenhouse” also turned up several how-to tips about how to use two-liter soda bottles to do basically the same thing.
There’s a fairly detailed Q&A on tomato seedlings at: http://www.selectedplants.com/seedlings.htm.

Beautiful bermuda grass
An introspective reader named Allison sent a note about last week’s column on the pernicious nature of Bermuda grass.
She had pretty much given up the battle against the invader. Then a relative came over and saw her Bermuda grass doing just dandy and commented about how pretty it was.
Allison said this made her laugh because she had spent so much time hating it, and here came her relative to admire it.
She said she’s giving Bermuda grass a second look, and trying not to let the fact that it is nearly indestructible ruin the fun she has gardening.
As Allison noted, there are many ways this same concept can be applied to other parts of our lives.
A weed, after all, is just a plant that is growing in the wrong place.
In a few weeks when the wildflowers are in full bloom in Upper Park, the gentle dabs of color on the horizon are an inspiration. But frankly, if half those plants were growing in my yard I would yank them out.
For example, many of us have wild viola in our yards. Before I had much going on in the yard (when it was basically a mud puddle with some perennials around the edges) I nurtured these garden-crashers.
Right now these wild violas are blooming outrageously, with their dime-sized flowers of purple and white. They also set seed outrageously, starting a whole new generation before I have a chance to get out there and plant something more flamboyant.
But it’s not the wild viola’s fault that it just happens to be adapted well enough to get a jump start on the other prissy plants we buy at the nursery.
Alas, these plants are weeds because they don’t respect a gardener’s boundaries.