For weeks, I've been coveting a pack of peat-free sprouting pellets that I saw at the hardware store, but they cost a fortune and I had nothing to sprout. Then I got my new baobab seeds in the mail, but I had nothing in which to sprout them. Actually, I wasn't going to sprout them until March. Then I realized, if I had peat-free sprouting pellets, I'd have a good excuse to sprout baobabs; and if I have baobabs, I have a good excuse to buy peat-free sprouting pellets.
Hmmmm...
Well, it's a rather circular reasoning, but it works for me. Of course the pack I coveted was gone from the store, so I went to the other hardware store, which has more selection and better prices anyway, and there, they had those huge seed-starting trays for people who grow vegetables and genuinely need to sprout things indoors in multiples of 72. Or something. Like anyone would ever need to sprout 72 baobabs at once. Even in their natural habitat, baobabs don't sprout 72 at a time. So that's obviously no good to me.
But then, in a different aisle, where the planters are, there it was: one little tray of just ten pellets. Just one, all by itself. $4.29.
$4.29?
Booya!
See? They call these things "greenhouse kits". It's a cheap plastic tray with divots in it like an egg carton, and in each divot is a peat-free pellet. Because peat takes thousands of years to form and we're destroying the earth's peat bogs for the sake of gardening. We can't even be ecological without destroying the earth. How sad. And then there is a clear plastic dome, to create greenhouse conditions. Plastic, ecologically friendly peat-free pellets, more plastic. Er... What? Well, I suppose they'll tell me the plastic is 100% post-consumer material and is also good for the environment, or something.
You pour water on the pellets and they expand. Ten times faster than the competition, it says on the package. (I'm assuming the printed cardboard packaging is also recycled, or something, right?) Really, that's a selling point? Because someone out there seeds so fast, they can't wait an extra minute for their sprouting pellets to expand?
Anyway. I didn't have ten species I wanted to seed, so I got the following: A. suarenzis, A. digitata, A. grandidieri, A. madagascarensis, Diospyros quiloensis, Coffea canephora, Piper nigrum, Arysthaema triphyllum, and two cells of Dodecatheon clevelandii.
Voila, a baobab forest (and that other stuff) sprouting on my nightstand. Sleep tight, little seeds!
Hmmmm...
Well, it's a rather circular reasoning, but it works for me. Of course the pack I coveted was gone from the store, so I went to the other hardware store, which has more selection and better prices anyway, and there, they had those huge seed-starting trays for people who grow vegetables and genuinely need to sprout things indoors in multiples of 72. Or something. Like anyone would ever need to sprout 72 baobabs at once. Even in their natural habitat, baobabs don't sprout 72 at a time. So that's obviously no good to me.
But then, in a different aisle, where the planters are, there it was: one little tray of just ten pellets. Just one, all by itself. $4.29.
$4.29?
Booya!
See? They call these things "greenhouse kits". It's a cheap plastic tray with divots in it like an egg carton, and in each divot is a peat-free pellet. Because peat takes thousands of years to form and we're destroying the earth's peat bogs for the sake of gardening. We can't even be ecological without destroying the earth. How sad. And then there is a clear plastic dome, to create greenhouse conditions. Plastic, ecologically friendly peat-free pellets, more plastic. Er... What? Well, I suppose they'll tell me the plastic is 100% post-consumer material and is also good for the environment, or something.
You pour water on the pellets and they expand. Ten times faster than the competition, it says on the package. (I'm assuming the printed cardboard packaging is also recycled, or something, right?) Really, that's a selling point? Because someone out there seeds so fast, they can't wait an extra minute for their sprouting pellets to expand?
Anyway. I didn't have ten species I wanted to seed, so I got the following: A. suarenzis, A. digitata, A. grandidieri, A. madagascarensis, Diospyros quiloensis, Coffea canephora, Piper nigrum, Arysthaema triphyllum, and two cells of Dodecatheon clevelandii.
Voila, a baobab forest (and that other stuff) sprouting on my nightstand. Sleep tight, little seeds!
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