About six weeks ago, I threw a bunch of petals from my mom's bougainvillea plant, into this bucket of dirt and these started growing.
2 Answers
Propagating bouganvillea from seed is very challenging, and it certainly won't happen with chucking a few petals into dirt. As it says in the comments you're growing weeds.
The usual methods are by taking cuttings or by air layering.
I have several happy looking bougainvilleas in my garden, but I never found any flowers that have developed seedpods. This is quite common among bougainvilleas.
Here is an info page on how to grow Bougainvillea from seeds:
https://m.wikihow.com/Grow-Bougainvillea
It is easier to propagate from cuttings.
Here is how to do it:
https://homeguides.sfgate.com/can-root-bougainvillea-61773.html