Pictures of Germinating Herb Seeds II
Answered by: Conrad Richter
Question from: Fred Bleuk
Posted on: March 04, 2004

These are pictures I have taken of my attempt to grow parsley and thyme. Can you please see if these are what the seedlings should look like?





You definitely have weeds growing among the parsley and thyme seedlings. It is not possible to identify all the seedlings positively. That’s because these seedlings are at the "cotyledon stage", the stage at which only the first pair of leaves are showing. Cotyledons -- that first pair of leaves -- almost never resemble the true leaves of the plant.

Still, it is already possible to narrow down which seedlings are parsley or thyme and which are weeds. As the seedlings develop and show their true leaves you will find that it gets easier to tell which are the weeds, and you can successively remove the rogue seedlings as they develop.

In the parsley picture, the seedlings you are pointing to are almost certainly not parsley. The larger seedling to the immediate left looks like parsley: it has the typical elliptical cotyledons of parsley and many other members of the parsley or carrot family.

In the thyme picture, the seedlings marked "Thyme?" could be thyme but some are elliptical and I can’t be sure of them. Probably the one seedling that most looks like thyme at the cotyledon stage is one you don’t point an arrow to: the one to the immediate left of the word "Thyme?". The seedlings that are marked as "Weeds?" are certainly not thyme; they look to me like lamb’s quarters (Chenopodium spp.) or related weeds.

Where did the weeds come from? The most likely source is the sowing medium. If you used an unsterilized sowing medium such as soil from your garden or compost then most assuredly that’s where the weeds came from. Unclean seeds are another source, although most commercial seeds are mostly free of weed seeds as dictated by government regulations.

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