Would my success in growing cannabis plants translate to nasturtiums?

In a cave once used as a stable and now abandoned, I found a wooden crate containing a dozen tiny clay flowerpots. They were of a simple design and looked old. I found two packets of seeds in a bric-à-brac drawer — sunflowers and nasturtiums — and I sowed them in the pots, which I arranged in a row on a shelf on the terrace. It was my first attempt at growing anything since 1979, when I raised six cannabis plants in my father’s greenhouse with such spectacular success that I had to permanently leave the roof panes open to accommodate them.

Rarely have sunflower and nasturtium seeds commanded such loving and indefatigable attention from the sower. When the little green sunflower shoots appeared wearing the split-open pod husks like little hats, I danced before them like David before the Lord. On sunny days I moved the seedlings from the shelf to the full sunlight of the outside table. If the breeze stiffened, I protected them with an improvised windbreak. On colder evenings I brought them indoors. I loved and admired my infant shoots and cherished them as individuals. I’d neglected to label them and for a long time I believed that the nasturtiums were sunflowers and vice versa.

Then came the big day: I had to separate the young shoots and replant them in bigger pots. At this point my little green children stood about two inches high at the shoulder. The operation was as traumatic for me as it was for them. As I scooped them out of their pots, I was amazed that the spindly nasturtiums — or sunflowers — had already put out such a dense mass of tiny roots that they were nearly potbound. Thousands dead and the world economy collapsing was nothing compared with my surprise at upending a flowerpot and noticing the extent of the root system already put out by a two-week-old seedling.