Growing seeds…not very well! – Mummascribbles

You know when you think about doing something that you wouldn’t normally do and it turns out you’re a bit crap at it?! Well, we recently discovered we are really pants at growing things.  Keeping things alive. I mean, we’ve done a pretty good job with Zach so far, he’s here, growing big and strong and intelligent. So we’ve done pretty well at growing and nurturing a child. But give us some seeds and water and we fail. Miserably.

It all started a few weeks back. Zach and I were in the garden and I mentioned how the weeds had grown  (oh we are pretty good at growing weeds!), and suddenly Zach was fascinated with the thought that these were growing. Only to him, the growing process is supposed to be visible. So he got me to sit on the floor with him to watch one specific weed grow. It was cold on the paving but he wouldn’t let me get up. I explained to him that even though weeds were constantly growing, we couldn’t see it actually happening. He wasn’t happy and wouldnt accept it so we remained in place. After about 20 minutes he finally got bored (hoorah), gave up and we went inside. He didn’t forget though and for days he kept asking about that ruddy weed, staring out the back door to see if it had grown and disappointed that it hadn’t. Then I had a brainwave.

Cress.

Cress grows really fast. That’ll keep him happy I thought. So the next weekend we took a trip to Homebase and bought some Cress and Basil seeds along with some planting pots and set to work when we got home.  Reading the instructions we discovered that the best way to grow the Cress was on some damp kitchen towel and the Basil could go in soil.

What we didn’t realise was that we’d popped the top bit of tissue on too hard and so when we checked them the following day some of the seeds had stuck to it and were useless. We tried to move them to a separate pot to nurture them but they just didn’t grow.

That said, the ones that were OK were growing within a day and that’s all that really mattered.  And so we kept watering them and they kept on growing. Zach had forgotten about the weeds and was focused on watching the Cress grow (the basil is a slower process). He helped to water them every day and he was happy to see them changing. Or so I thought! 

It was at the point of the photo directly above that Zach changed his tune. There we were, all proud that we had provided him with what he wanted, to watch something grow, but one evening after nursery (he was very tired), I suggested watering them and he had a full on meltdown because guess what – he didn’t want them to grow anymore!  

Nooooooo, he wailed.  I don’t want them to grow mummy.

This happened a couple more times and it seemed he was well and truly over the need to watch them grow. Then the Cress pretty much frazzled. We’d left it growing too long and we couldn’t even sample it because it was all dried out and feeling sorry for itself.

As for the basil. The growing period for that is two weeks. It’s been a month now and it still looks like this…

Notice the failed cress up there too and the fallen cress that we over grew!

I’m not sure I’ll be attempting that vegetable plot any time soon!

That weed in the garden though…That is thriving!  But Zach has forgotten about it! Which is fine because it means I’ve got a nice warm bum!