I’m starting to get the idea that although it’s high maintenance, people start plants indoors when it’s not strictly necessary because it’s more… predictable.

It’s easy to tell that my window seedlings aren’t performing perfectly well. They’re leggy compared to the beautiful seedlings I see on YouTube. I could probably fix that with grow lights, but I figured, why bother when there’s sun outside?

Since then, my seedlings have dried out prematurely (probably the wind), been plucked out or cut off by a tiny human, eaten by wildlife, and completely upturned. Makes me want to lock them up into perfect conditions too. But at the same time, I don’t really want to invest in grow lights, racks to mount them too, and timers to control them. I also don’t want to give up more of my living space to plants.

I want them to thrive outside, but it’s taking some work to figure out how to get that to work for me. It has been almost a week since I started building the cages, and that’s definitely helping. It looks like my one rescued cosmos seedling has survived the initial transplant, so that’s a ray of hope too.

Jeeze man, the learning curve on this gardening stuff is freaking steep. My lettuce seedlings have not come up at all, but the peas have all seemed to come up nicely. The radishes came up, but no sign of germination from the cabbage.

I will say this, the fact that I was able to rescue a seriously damaged cosmos seedlings gives me more confidence for transplanting other tiny seedlings. I’ll need to find a way to secure them so they don’t get killed by weather or critters (small people included), but I’m ready to double down on starting my own plants. Now I just need to buy more lettuce seeds…