Thinning

Most of my seedlings are up, some are getting too tall for humidity domes already.  It's time for one of the slightly sad duties of gardening: thinning.  Uncertain of how good my older seeds were, and confident seed was much cheaper than space under plant lights, I planted more than one seed per cell in my pots.  In some very poorly germinating seed this turned out to be very prudent, as even with the extra seed only a few cells are showing any sprouts, but then others have 2-3 plants in every cell, and one of my sources of broccoli seed was incredibly fertile and the pot is overflowing with sprouts.  Right now both sprouts in the cell are cute little promises of future mature plants, but if I let them continue they will crowd each other out and not do so well in the garden, so out come the scissors, and I have to choose one to keep, and one to be thinned.

*clip*  A sprout falls to the floor.  It's promise gone.  But yet I've given more promise to it's brother that is left behind to thrive.

Sometimes I have to do thinning in my life too.  Just this week I unsubscribed from one of my gardening e-mail lists. It was educational, but it took too much time to filter for useful info, and that took time away from more targeted reading and actually getting away from the computer and using what I'd learned.