This is Why We Call it the Gulag Garden

My friend Barbara is visiting with me this weekend, and I proudly served up a lovely green herbal salad, asparagus, and some excellent grass-fed beef flank steaks, rolled up into pinwheels and gently broiled. What has that to do with the Gulag Garden you might well ask? OK, I'm getting to that.

As we ate, Barbara commented she smelt something... strange. I hastily assured her whatever it was must be coming in from outside, or at worse, the funny odors were in her imagination. She insisted there was a strange odor, but I shrugged it off, up until after dinner clean up time when I went to pull the broiler rack out for cleaning. Uh oh...I was sprouting this year's garden seeds in my oven. I forgot all about my seedlings

the source of the 'funny smell'my seedlings cooked in the oven
right along with the formerly cool planting blueprint.

Barbara asked why seedlings were in the oven in the first place. My reply to her was loud and a tad bit rude. Shoot. The same oven sprouting method worked for me last year.

Poor seedlings were encased in hardened damp shrink wrap from the see throug lid that melted above them. Happily I have enough seeds for a second round of plantings though. Maybe there will be Moon & Star Melons in the Gulag this year after all - if I keep them out of the oven.

Because I was using the broiler, not the oven, never
occured to me to check the oven - DUH
The planting tray melted and sagged through the oven rack
Happily, several days ago I put several of the seedlings that were up and ready for sun, out of the oven sprouting box: heritage Silverbeet Swiss Chard, one Alaska Nasturtium and a couple of the sunflower seedlings. So they are safe and happily sunning themselves in a bedroom window, therefor not all the seedlings were lost. Still, I feel like a colossal duffus.

So looks like if I'm to have any plants at all this year, I'll have to buy them at the nursery, which at any rate now carry more of the popular heritage varieties. *sigh*

The only good news today is I found the seedlings I collected last year. I have searched for weeks but came up empty. Tonight Barbara encouraged me - in my post-seedling-baking-trauma, to search my desk again. I found my seeds on top of my computer amoire. Hurrah! Apricot Poppy seeds, Wild Crown Brodia and Wavy Soaproot plant seeds, Wild and domesticated columbines and exotic black poppies. I can't wait to plant them out. I think I'll skip sprouting them indoors and put them directly into the soil. A wise decision, you think?