A Winter Project for R

In recent years my seed-starting has ballooned into a horrible monster of a project that was a little more work than fun, so this year I decided to stall setting up the plant lights until the last week of February.  And then, of course, I pined for little green sprouts until, in desperation, my subconscious tricked me into planting. 

Sprouting "speckled beans"

It was a project for R, of course.  Not me.

We took out Mommy's notebook and drew up a science experiment.  We hypothesized that many of the whole foods in our kitchen were actually seeds, and might sprout if we soaked (3 hrs, 20 min) and planted them.  We dug bag after bag of beans, nuts, and grains out of the catch-all drawer I use for such items and carefully counted out 2-4 of each type.  Other than one kung pao pepper seed that somehow got lost in the shuffle, we planted all of them.

Progress stalled after about two weeks

Curious about the results?  After one month I gave up and dumped the sprouted (now very leggy) plants and soil in the compost pile.  The red kidney beans, garbanzo beans, lentils, popcorn, kung pao pepper and speckled beans (saved from my garden last year) all came up.  The ones that didn't come up were: peanuts, pecans, almonds, brown rice, pinto beans, great northern beans, black beans, barley, lima beans, and snap bean seeds (saved from my garden last year).

I would love to tell you that after the experiment was ended we talked it out and developed some new hypotheses to test regarding the "seeds" that didn't come up.  Or even that we looked them up on the internet.  But...a month is just a little too long for a four-year-old to stay excited about such things.  It was, however, just enough time to carry me into my delayed seed starting season.