The race is over: all the seeds I coddled by stating them indoors have finally been transplanted to the seedling box next to the garden. It’s been two months and I’ve chased the sun around the house with four boxes of seeds in hopes to get them to grow. Unfortunately, it’s been an overcast spring, so there hasn’t been much sunshine. Despite my best efforts, the seedlings stayed small and are stunted in comparison to the seedlings of previous years. I wasn’t able to transplant them outside until recently because it’s been too cold, so they haven’t been able to profit from the momentary breaks in the clouds. This clearly hasn’t been typical “Southern France weather”.
Disappointed as I might be about their dwarf-like size, the plants have another month before being transplanted into the garden so there might be hope for them yet. In addition to tomatoes and hot peppers I also seeded potimarron and butternut squash. Potimarron is an heirloom squash and butternut, while quite common in the United States, is just starting to grow in popularity in France. Christophe discovered it for the first time a few years ago and found it to be a worthy addition to the garden, which, if you knew how he defended space for the tomatoes, you would know it made quite an impact on him.
Until the big plantation – the tomatoes, eggplants, green peppers, and pumpkin, plus everything in the seedling box - the work in the garden is minimal, except for some watering and weeding. I’ll take the break; I’m tired of chasing the sun from window to window and having to walk around the living room like it’s a game of Twister in order not to step on the trays of seeds I’ve started. It’s time for the plants to grow – and chase after their own sun for a while.
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