Seeds of cilantro for 1 dollar have taught me a lot and I totally underestimated the importance of gardening.

2 months ago, I bought a pack of cilantro seed for a dollar (500 Chilean peso) on the street.

I knew the basic theory of “how to plant” : put seeds into the soil and let it give sunlight and water.

Theoretically, I had everything what I needed to plant, and I was so excited to use it as an ingredient.

Gee. But nothing came out of the soil for a month.

I started thinking that something must be wrong with my cilantro: 

(1) the sunlight is not enough?
(2) should I give water more or less?
(3) the seeds are bad because I bought them on the street?
(4) the soil is bad?
(5) or some other issues involved?

Then I threw it again and moved it to where the sunlight hit more, and give water everyday back again.

1 week, no answer
2 weeks, nope
3 weeks, please say something
and 4 weeks later, when I almost forgot about it, something unexpected happened (see the picture below) !!

Voilà!! Yes, some buds are coming out!!!!. This made me happy all day long that day. 

As you see the photo, it didn’t come out through the soil but it just found a hole to come up through. 

So for now (not 100% sure), my conclusion is (4) the soil is bad. I guess it was too hard for the cilantro to penetrate.

From this experience, I could not help but think about the connection between gardening and learning.

And here they are, I found an interesting site which lists some quotes connecting gardening and education. 

Those are some of the quotes I liked. Although I don’t know any of them, they are impressive partly because of  my failure and experiment. 

Gardening is something you learn by doing — and by making mistakes….

Like cooking, gardening is a constant process of experimentation,
repeating the successes and throwing out the failures. (Carol Stocker)

The more one gardens, the more one learns;  And the more one learns, the
more one realizes how little one knows. (Vita Sackville-West)

A gardener’s best tool is the knowledge from previous seasons.
And it can be recorded in a $2 notebook. (Andy Tomolonis)

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. (Cicero)

I found it really similar to learning. Just like gardening has many variables (seed, sunlight, water, soil, etc.), so does leaning (teachers, peers, materials, classrooms, health and mental condition, parental support, motivation etc.). You learn from your failure and there is no blueprint. 

You garden from learning, you learn from gardening.