Here are the pansies in their normal state - in a moisture-retaining enclosure. This is how it says to store them on the packet for the first couple of weeks of their lives - it’s not that I’m cruel and like to see them suffer, honest!

The two straggly mixed pansies which grew in the pantry are looking in a very sorry state and I don’t think they are going to make it. However, every cloud has a silver lining and this one brings some new fresh healthy-looking shoots. I therefore believe that removing them from the pantry and exposing them to sunlight has been better for them than what it said on the packet.

The green and black pansies meanwhile are growing healthily, and most of them have this cute “Y” shape to them.

Two of the boxes have been sitting on the windowsill for a fortnight, and they seem to be doing just fine and have poked up lots of cute little leaves.

However, the third (in the middle here) has been in the pantry, and is looking rather sorry for itself, having produced just two measly straggly anaemic-looking plants.

I am hoping that a move to the sunny window will perk these up but it’s rather disappointing to have a net haul of only two plants! Ironically, these are the “normal” pansies (the others are slightly more unusual varieties) which I expected to be the easiest to grow.

Here are the new trays we bought for them

The seeds

Really the seeds. They’re tiny!

And the finished contraptions. One of them had instructions to store “excluding light” so it’s into the pantry with that one for a fortnight. The other two have gone on the breakfast room windowsill where the sunflowers and nasturtiums had their formative weeks.