Gold! How much is an ounce of gold? According to JM Bullion the price of #gold is at $1334 per ounce at this moment. For those of you wondering what happened to the price of your cryptos, I'm sure you were wishing you bought gold right last month, because the price actually went up $100 in value since December 12, 2017.

Wouldn't it be great if there was a real plant in the world that produced golden seeds? To early Native Americans, I wouldn't be surprised if they traded corn as if it was the golden currency of the land. #Corn is one of the most widely grown plants in the United States now, and it is used in nearly all popular packaged food brands. You would think the indigenous culture who spent hundreds of years genetically modifying corn through advanced plant breeding techniques might be owed a little something back for how much they have been a benefit to our modern civilization.

Today I'm showing off these seed pods, because... well, I thought they looked pretty special, and I just wanted to share.

A week ago I planted a tobacco plant seed that was encased inside green pellets just like these. After reading the package again, it says these can take 10-20 day to germinate. We'll just have to be patient.

In the meantime, I decide to plant these golden seeds. These coated seed pellets are another flowering tobacco plant called Starlight Dancer.

These flowers even come with their own theme song!

To plant these seeds, I decided to switch to a different growing medium. Perlite at glance just looks like white styrofoam pellets, but it's not. According to the packaging, it is a heat-expanded siliceous volcanic rock. That means it is a sedimentary rock formed from accumulated silica, and it was later super-heated in a volcano. Perlight holds a lot of moisture and air, so it is perfectly suited for growing seedlings and plants in. To make sure the seeds don't slip through and slide to the bottom, I add a layer of coir fiber to the top for the seeds to rest on.

Caution: Wear a mask and gloves to handle this stuff. It is not safe to eat, and the rock particles form a dust cloud in the air when handled. Microscopic lightweight silica particles floating in the air could be harmful if inhaled.

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Bonus Photos:

The award for the healthiest looking plant in the garden today goes to the #sweetpeas. The aphids have completely died off, and new shoots are climbing up to the sun. Buds are forming on all the tips.

Please be flowers. Please be flowers. Please be flowers.

The brussels sprouts out in the garden were trying to tell me some very creative truth recently...

"If you don't eat them... the slugs will."

So, I can take a hint. Clearly my brussels sprouts out in the garden weren't going to be any more ready than they are to be harvested. It is early February now, and I've never been able to eat brussels sprouts from my own garden before. There's a first time for everything.

These are super easy to harvest. Just twist, and they release from the stem. I knew from the looks of it the slugs were dining on the leaves at night, and these leaves are pretty thick. It probably takes them a long time to chew through a single leaf. Until I noticed...

Egats!

Can you see that? There's two of them hiding in plain sight! They are literally living underneath the sprouts on the stalk. And trust me, these weren't the only two slugs I found. There was probably five more little baby slugs I found hiding in between the spouts as I was harvesting.

Pro Tip: If you hate touching slugs (like I do), then find a nearby stick or piece of bark. You can pry them off, flick 'em off, or send them on a vacation to meet their relatives in the compost pile. The in-laws and ex's might even give them some hell for the pain and suffering they caused.

This stalk was leaning out really far, and thought it made a fun picture. None of the sprouts on this one looked appetizing to me, because they were opening up, and the ends looked all raggedy. Why didn't the slugs go after this one?

Is it just me, or does this photo above look a bit like Jack's Beanstalk?

Inside I gave the #brusselssprouts a good rinse, and pulled off any rotten looking bits on the outer leaves. Some dead aphids washed off in the cold water. Yuck!

Then I roasted them in the oven at about 425 degrees F. I like to coat them with olive oil and some salt, pepper, and a 7 herb seasoning mix. In about 11 minutes these were snapping and popping in the oven pan like buttered popcorn, and ready to be served.

Not the best, but alright enough that I enjoyed eating them all up. They didn't seem as tender as brussels sprouts I have eaten in the past. I'm going to blame that on the warm winter we've had. My area hasn't had many nights that went below freezing, and that is supposed to sweeten the crop as I understand.

Let me know if any of you have grown these before. Any tips on making them bigger, sweeter, and more tender?