Seeds A-Growin'

Originally posted on The Expat Garden(er)

About two weeks ago, I plants a few pots of seeds. The seeds I picked up from roadside trees, bushes, and other plants in California haven't sprouted yet. They ended up in a plastic baggie with apparently a moist paper towel and got a little fungusy. This happened after I got back to Saudi Arabia, however--I'm not sure why I did that, but I hope some of them will germinate. The other seeds were ones I collected here on campus through various means.

For example, the Adenium seed pod I tweeted about the day before leaving for a conference in Qatar. I seem to have hundreds of the fluffy seeds, but I stuck only three in some soil mix two weeks ago, and this is what they looked like yesterday (bottom left in the photo). They germinated in about a week, and they're already growing leaves! Above them are swiss chard seedlings from a seed packet I bought at the Tamimi supermarket; to the Adenium's right, there are black cherry tomato seedlings from the seed I saved weeks and weeks ago; to the top right, there are seedlings from seeds I saved from these tiny tiny tiny tomatoes, also given to me along with the black cherry tomatoes on my first weekend on campus. A few days ago, I also planted some chayote seeds and a ripe date palm fruit, which are all over campus.

I discovered chayote through a recipe post on Plant Zone, and I was delighted to find the vegetable in the grocery store here! If I can grow a vine, I'll be quite happy, because these veggies are much more expensive here than they are in North America--40 riyal per kilogram (about $5 per pound), so I paid about $10 for three of the buggers, which only made one batch of stew. It tastes like beef stew, which is a magical feat, because there are no animal products in the recipe I made (I only generally followed the one I linked to, as is a common happening in my kitchen).