chia gardening project

I never grow plants.  I tend to kill them.  They come home all happy and lush and within a week under my care the leaves are falling off.

I’m on a mission to successfully make a seed into a plant since I cannot keep a mature plant alive.  Maybe the little seedlings will adapt to my erratic watering schedule and bad placement for lighting during the whole “growing” phase…so we establish a relationship and an understanding…and by the time they’re big enough to know that my care and attention is bordering on abuse…they’ll be none the wiser.

I decided to start with training wheels. 

As SIMPLE and as EASY as you can get.

A Chia Garden.

These things are supposed to be fail-safe.  Boost my confidence.  Prepare me for the big boys.

So how hard can it be?

To start – it gets a bit challenging when TWO of your four pots are BROKEN. 

Enter two miniature leftover pots we used for the wedding trees (Yes, My Honey…I now see why it pays to keep random things).

Crisis averted.  I moved on to putting the dirt pods into the pots…and was ready for the seeds…

And learned that the Chia people give you SIX seed packets and only FOUR pots.  Who did the math on this one?  And doesn’t someone think, “You know…we should probably include the EXACT SAME NUMBER of pots and dirt pods AND seed packets incase we get someone WHO CANNOT ONLY PLANT FOUR WHEN THERE ARE SIX.”

Enter two more wedding pots and some organic potting soil and we have a complete herb garden.

And now…an experiment is underway. 

Chia Pod vs Organic Soil.

I’m already rooting for Organic Soil.  When I watered everybody, half the seeds ran off the Chia pods and ended up in the water-catcher thing.  I tried to pour the seeded water BACK on the pods…with little success.  I think I got more water on the floor than back on the pod (damned hole in the bottom of the pot).

Tim just looked over my project and was all, “your seeds are sitting in the water.  Where are the instructions?”

In the trash.  We’re done with instructions.  Its time to GROW things!

And then from the kitchen, after retrieving said instructions, Tim informs me I missed a step in the growing process. 

I didn’t pre-soak the pods.

DAMMIT.

The pods…after all skipped instructions are followed by Tim-the-Gardner-so-they-actually-grow-and-Jessica-is-not-disappointed.