Lettuce seedling

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A challenge that I hadn't thought about here at The Tropical Paradise when I started sowing seeds directly into the garden was the ability to identify seedlings from weeds. I'm sure that more experienced gardeners knew this! I'll tell you what I am discovering.

Since I have been watching the seeds sprout in the past couple of weeks, they all seem to look about the same when they have only the first two leaves. It's when the next set of leaves shows up that you seem to have something of a chance to really identify these little critters! At left is a lettuce seedling, about a week old. The beginning leaves don't look like much, but the next set looks like, well, lettuce. Cool.

To give you an idea of how tiny they are, take a look at the olive next to it. And that's no jumbo olive! I am also finding that some seeds germinate, poke their little heads into the world, and then disappear the next day. This is in a shady area that stays pretty wet, and that seems to help a lot. I have also started some lettuce seeds in my little 36-cell greenhouse, so if the directly-sown seedlings don't make it, hopefully the greenhouse seedlings will and I will be able to transplant them into the garden.

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