Garden FAIL, part 1: seeds

At the end of every summer, I imagine all gardeners think about what might have been: plants they wish they had planted, plants they wish they had had better success with, hardscaping or other general garden improvements that did not take place. I’m no different.


This year, in spite of all my good intentions, and the purchase of several packets from good vendors, I grew only one plant from seed, and even that one I didn’t plant until early June. It’s a cute little castor bean plant but needed a longer period to gain its proper height. This (above) is the puny result of several packs of seeds including hyacinth bean, cleome, nigella, and amaranth. “Why,” I hear you saying, “Those are all easy, quick-germinating seeds!” Well, I did plant some of them in peat pots, but the ones that came up failed for whatever reason.

Today I went over to my BFF Cheryl’s house and saw her hyacinth bean, which she had twining up both sides of her front porch. It is shown at the top of this post. C. tells me that she planted them quite late (in May) and used an inside/outside method of growing them. Of course, these were seeds that I had given her. It’s somewhat humiliating!

Next spring, those seeds are being planted, and successfully, or else.