Tomato

I have always had trouble getting tomato seed to start. In fact, I have only succeeded once and that was entirely by accident. I had been composting at the rear of a house I had been renting in Los Angeles. Having lived in the country years earlier, I started throwing compost in a hole I had dug, but once again soon became "citified" and started throwing it in the garbage like everybody else. Months later, I wandered to the back where the hole had been and the place was covered in weeds, or so I thought. A closer look revealed that the tomato seeds from store-bought produce took root and yielded some very delicious fruit much more tasty than their origin source. However, all future deliberate efforts to get tomato seeds to start had failed. This is not to suggest that tomato is difficult to sprout, but only that I myself, through neglect or other lack, couldn't make a go of it.

This time, I decided to watch the seeds in a jar of water and sure enough, they sprouted. Here is a shot looking straight down into the jar. You can see the little sprouts growing out of their shells. Notice the one seed that has a very long root; it's interesting how that one got such an early start. At this point I think they are ready to be transplanted. If I were to leave them in the jar of water, I suspect they'd die from too much moisture. It's time to put them into soil.