even when the weather is perfect, it’s not always the best idea to start your seeds directly in the garden. small seeds can blow away, birds or bugs might get your bigger seeds, and bad drainage or too much wet weather might cause your seeds to rot in the ground. by starting seeds outside the garden, you can try to control the conditions your seeds are growing in. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

usually i start my seeds in my office, where the windows don’t open and the sun is only directly shining in for about 3-4 hours every afternoon. it’s warm and light enough for the seeds to sprout, but once they’ve sprouted they really need to get more light than just a windowsill. that’s usually when i bring them home. when it’s not windy out, i like to put them up on the roof of our apartment building.

this isn’t a perfect place to leave them. if it gets above 80 and i didn’t water the plants enough, then chances are when i get home the plants will be completely shriveled up and probably blown halfway across the roof. (this has happened several times; my next big post will be about repairing the damage when this occurs.) if it’s windy at all on the ground, it will probably be twice as windy up there. if it rains, the little cups will fill up and my plants will drown. i’ve gotten very diligent about checking the weather several times a day.

this is what happens when you let a sprout grow in low light for too long - they get very tall. sometimes people call them “leggy”. (this is chinese cabbage, which is not supposed to have much of a stem at all above the soil line) the stems tend to get weak and can bend pretty easily. these always end up being the plants that accidently dry out or drop or get stepped on for some reason. i’m proud to say that i still haven’t actually killed anything. i’ll get plants real close to the point of no return, but then they’ll make it through somehow. not sure if that makes me a sadist or a really great gardener.

sometimes i will do something stupid and set the plant at an angle and forget it’s there for a day or two, and it will grow unevenly or at a weird angle.

this also is something i seem to only do exclusively to the ones that have gotten too tall or damaged.

sometimes, in spite of all the mistakes i’m making, stuff will grow perfectly.