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Disclaimer: I'm quite new to gardening art.

So a few months ago, I had ordered this Moria Combo of 40 Seeds from Amazon just to try my hand at growing a few plants from scratch. I naturally got busy in other things and just forgot about it then. And then a few days ago, I remembered it again and just for fun, sowed a few of them in paper cups using garden soil from my lawn.

To be honest, I didn't really expect anything to grow considering late May isn't exactly a good time for germination, that too in a tropical and hot country like India. But still, I religiously watered them for 8-10 days continuously. Nothing happened until yesterday, no germination. Then all of a sudden today morning this one chap (Sweet Williams Flower) sprung out of nowhere right up to almost an inch!

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Is it normal for seedlings to sprout overnight like this and that too up to an inch? What's going on here?

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As to your title question, "sprouting" or "germination", I suppose.

Perfectly normal (though they will do it whenever they are ready, not specifically overnight, but overnight is not unusual.)

Looks as though it could probably use more light than the present location has, now that it's working on leaves.

You may want to drip water on the seed hull that appears to be still stuck on the cotyledons (first pair of "seed leaves" in a dicot) - that's the only "safe" help to the plant in getting it off if it does not let go on its own (I used to try to remove them, and by doing so I killed the seedling more often than not. Leave them alone to sort it out, or help only by putting a drop or two of water on it a few times a day to help soften it, from my experience.)

Many annuals are not that picky about season of the year for germimation, given adequate care.

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  • Thanks for the helpful tip! I let a few drops on as you said and the muddy portion went away. Another seedling (Kochia plant) has just sprouted in a similar way. Is it the case that all plants look this way (straw like stem and bulb shaped leaf at top) at sprouting and later take their proper form once they start growing?
    – Prahlad Yeri
    Jun 5, 2022 at 7:57
  • Dicots and monocots look different (thus why dicot is still in common use even if it's somewhat deprecated per the linked article.) Many dicots are pretty similar, some have distinctive differences even at the cotyledon only stage, such as a particular shape different from the "usual" - there are also size differences, of course. For example look at the pictures in this question (the large version of the picture, ideally) gardening.stackexchange.com/q/62216/6806 which has several different things growing, one of which is clearly dill (or something closely related) even at this stage.
    – Ecnerwal
    Jun 6, 2022 at 0:45

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