In praise of enthusiastic plants

chard, originally uploaded by jocelynb. Less than 24 hours elapsed between left-hand and right-hand pictures.

I love the plants that are started inside closer to last frost because they're showmen and keeners. I planted swiss chard (variety Five Colour Silverbeet), zucchini (Costata Romanesco, which I had great luck with last year), and cucumbers (Early Russian and Armenian, which by the way is actually a melon) on Saturday. Over the past couple days it seems they've been sprouting one plant per hour.

When I checked the plants yesterday morning when I woke up, there were a couple of slight disruptions in the soil where the chard was about to poke up. By the evening, half a dozen little plants had sprouted and spread their initial leaves. By this morning there were about 15 shoots. No sign of the zucchini yet, but the Armenian Cucumbers are all sprouted, and so are most of the regular cukes. No offense to the slow germinating peppers and asparagus of earlier this year, but these are my kind of plants. I guess because I have the patience of a first-grader!

And I have more of this to look forward to, because the only seeds left to start indoors (this coming weekend) are the melons and squash. I'm going to try two varieties of watermelon (Sugar Baby and Cream of Saskatchewan) as well as Bennings Green Tint squash. And then I will get to wait for all THOSE to sprout.