There are some items I grow from seeds that go directly outdoors when they reach a certain size. Onions and peas are two of those (beans would be a third). Regular onions I plant directly outdoors since they have a large seed onion. Bunching onions, on the other hand, are tiny seeds and seem to work best if I start them indoors. These are onions that you would grow for their stems - green onions. I love green onions and eat them on a lot of things. As such, I try to grow at least two window boxes of these every year.

More and more true leaves are popping up everywhere. I can tell it's getting pretty close to time to transplant some of these seedlings. When I lift up the pots in order to put water in the watering tray I can see a lot of roots hanging down. I can just imagine what the root system must be like inside the pots. Don't want to let those roots get too crowded - that is a good way to kill your seedlings.

Every year there are two plants that worry me the most when I grow them from seeds - peppers and eggplants. They always seem to take the longest to grow. All of my other plants are popping up and putting on inches while not a bit of soil disturbance is seen over in the peppers and eggplants. It never fails that I start to worry - did I over water them? Under water them? Was it not warm enough? Too warm? Did I get bad seeds? Every day I worry about them until they finally start popping up.

I was so happy today, as a little piece of Texas popped up in my seedling garden.

Today I started noticing the first "true leaves" are starting to open on a number of the plants. That's amazing since it's only been 8 days since I first planted the seeds. When you figure the germination timetable on most of these is 10+ days, it's so surprising to have them not only germinated but also first true leaves in only 8 days.

So today my first artichoke popped up. I've never grown these before - never even cooked one. But I do love eating them. I hadn't even planned to grow any, except that I got a free packet of seeds from the place I ordered my Asian Fingers Eggplant from. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to grow something new, so I decided to give the seeds one set of 6 pods to try growing it.

It seems like every morning when I get up there is a lot more growth. Today there's lots of tomatoes popped up. Yesterday a few had just barely broken the surface and now there are more than a dozen standing over an inch tall. What a difference a day makes. I'm growing a few varieties of tomatoes this year. I always do Roma Tomatoes, as they are great for sauce. I love making fresh spaghetti sauce. And of course I need some slicing varieties. I like tomatoes on BLTs and hamburgers and it's always nice to be able to use a nice big fresh tomato from the garden. But I also like to make salsa.

It's amazing sometimes to see how quickly plants can grow just in a matter of days. The plants that just popped up two days ago are already about 2"+ tall.

I like to take pictures of them each day - often times once in the morning and once at night. This helps me next year when I look back to compare growth, germination, etc. I also have the plants in a busy area - the dining room table - so I walk past them a lot. This allows me to check on how they're doing.

I woke up on the morning of the 26th to find that my Baby Bok Choi had sprouted. By later in the day so had my Little Gem Romaine lettuce, and Straight Eight Cucumbers. The funny thing is that their germination times were 10-21 days, 7-10 days, and 7-14 days, respectively.