Spring Planting -- Phase 3, In the Meantime

It's been a little over a week since I planted my arugula, lettuse, spincach, green onions, sugar snap peas, and (oops..) cucumbers.  Since then, the weather has been pretty nice, daytime temperatures between 55 and 65, rained three days.  And appaently its perfect weather for lettuce, spinach, and arugula seed germination -- look at my babies!

This was taken a few days ago -- there are tons more now, especially spinach. So what exactly are my seeds doing? First the seed gets a signal from envrionment to start germination. When seeds are kept in the dark and in the absence of moisture, a chemical hormone called absicic acid is keeping the seeds from germinating but when they are lightly buried in moist soil with pinpoints of sunlight hitting them, they stop making absicic acid and start making giberllins which basically says GERMINATE! The baby plant starts growing by sending out a tiny root called a radicle. The baby plant, or cotyledon, elongates until the seed breaks the surface. Two baby leaves (plumule) comes out and the seed covering falls off. Over time, the radicle becomes a root and as the two baby leaves fall off the stem and the stem elongates, normal leaves are produced. Or in short, look at this diagram from Hawaii University: