#cantaloupes

First paper towel seeds germinated in only 3 days! I was too busy to post them immediately but I have proof it happened:

The first one is cantaloupe, other two are big tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes. I'm going to sow tomatoes first because the other one is going to need more resources.

That big tray of tomato seeds is the most important tray I'm sowing in the entire spring. This is going to be the most of my plants, and the most of my food. There's about 100 potential tomato plants in here, though I just need about 30. This is what's going to end up creating tomatoes I'll eat and cook into salsa and pizza sauce and other sauces, what I'll can all my other veggies in because the acidity will preserve them. I spaced a few rows of seeds evenly and then realized I had too many seeds so I just scrambled the rest and we'll see how they do! The smaller pot is cherry tomatoes; they're going to be my dried storage crop, I'll have sun-dried tomatoes from them! And they're likely to start producing earlier which I love.

Now the cantaloupes... I need 2 plants, so why did I germinate this many? Well. I wasn't thinking. My seeds are 3 years old, how should I have known they would have 90% germination rate? I don't have the unlimited soil it would take to grow all of these correctly, so I just stuffed them into a tray, and I'm cringing so badly just looking at this. They're going to grow so big, so fast, there's no way they could all fit in there, even 2 per pot is insane, they all need individual  large pots. We're just making do and I'll gift these to the plant lady she loves cantaloupes too.

* 2 days later *

I forgot to check my seeds yesterday, so today I found more germinated stuff!

These are early cherry tomatoes, orange and yellow tomatoes, and a germinated clementine seed! If you remember, I mentioned putting some clementine seeds to germinate and this one was first to activate, and it's sprouting two roots currently! Which I don't know what it means but I think it's whimsical and special so I love it. It makes me feel such a rush holding an tree seed that is activated because that one is starting a journey of becoming an actual tree, that can produce fruit, isn't that wild? In what other context can you hold a whole tree baby in the palm of your hand? Wild.

I'm slightly worried about those cherry seeds because I am slightly late in sowing them, you see how long these sprouts are? They're already in the phase where they're trying to get out of the soil and they're going to be disoriented now, they've chosen their direction and now I've messed it up. But at least a few of them will make it, I believe!

I didn't have extra soil to plant a whole tree so I got some already-used soil, I think it's going to be okay because the trees grow so slowly and I will fertilize this when it's time. I mean maybe I'm wrong but I'm about to find out if a little clementine will like this! Any time I tried to plant an orange tree it failed but I've never tried a clementine and I actually prefer the clementine taste, I love the acid.

Melon pyramid. Burrell's better seeds. 1948.

Packing cantaloupes, Eddy County, New Mexico