Another delayed entry....  i started this 2 weeks ago.




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Last week, i finally got the rows dug (5/27), the plastic laid out and over 50 new bricks to hold it down.  Then planted the tomatoes, peppers and eggplant.  The day before,  i got the potatoes planted in the back row. I also installed a 15' soaker hose under the strawberry bed.  Last Sunday i direct sowed the carrots, parsnip, beets, turnip and daikon radish in just before 3 whole days of steady soaking rain.

I don't remember what day (maybe 3 days prior), but i did start seeds of melons, squash, cukes, sunflowers,  kale, chard and broccoli.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           ______________________________________                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                So,  to continue...

I finally got those cukes, melons and squash planted Saturday 6/13.  Well,  except for the two winter squash types- butternut and Red Kuri squash. Those are going in the row next to the potatoes,  but i didn't have time for it.  I just finished a 6 days stretch of work and have my first day off today and it is raining.

I've gotten things in pretty late but at the same time,  we have had such cool weather it wouldn't have done much good to get things in much earlier.  It only just started to get warm enough for melons.  Of course,  while planting the cukes and melons i realised that i had never started seeds for summer squash and zucchini.  The zucchini i wasn't really suprised by because i remember noticing that i thought i had ordered a packet of seeds for a type called Greyzini but actually hadn't. It looks like it never made it on my online order form somehow.... though a type of tomato i don't remember being particularly interested in was there.  I think i simply got interrupted somewhere during order selection and placement and mixed it up.  

Anyhow,  i started "49'r" yellow summer squash seeds yesterday.  It shouldn't be too late for a prolific and heat loving plant that gets buggy and overgrown before August.

I'm not seeing good results from my direct-seeded plots. I did Red Cored Chantenay and Cosmic Purple carrots, Hollow Crown Parsnip, Cylindra, Boltardy and Golden beets, Hinona Kabu and Shogoin Japanese turnips, the Minowase Daikon radish are the only ones doing well.
I don't think i'll bother trying to grow root vegetables again without making seed sheets (tape) out of them first. I think the 3 days of rain just washed them away or floated them into crevices. What does come come up is in clusters and is a waste from thinning and poor use of space.  Seed sheets at least hold the seeds down and they germinate in a predictable grid pattern which is easier to weed and thin properly.  Is pretty much a whole row of wasted seeds now. I'd try transplanting but i have seen it not work very well for others.

I'm trying melon again.  (Trying Minnesota Midget for the second year, last year they got eaten by a woodchuck shortly after planting).  A sweet melon called Sakatas. It has smallish fruit that can almost be eaten rind and all,  Tom Watson watermelon also.  I think i tried this my first year in the big garden- the year the birdhouse gourd tried to take over my hemisphere.  Tom Watson and all the other melons did not work out at all. I reconsidered watermelon one more time because of the success with black plastic and my sweet pepper yields.  Ogen melon is the next completely new try this year.  The description was so enticing i had to try it.   I have the seedlings pretty close together.  The seedlings may need warmer germinating temps because these smaller melons did not germinate well and look kinda pathetic.  Planting them close hopefully will let the remaining plants utilize space if half of them quit.

The seeds for the Mexican Sour Gherkin didn't come up well either.  I planted 6 cells with 2 seeds each and i think only 3 cells came up with only 4 total seeds germinating.   I may start some more of those seeds,  i really want to get plenty of these. One of my favorite summer beverages the last 2 years has been sliced cucumber and  sliced lemon steeped in water with some crushed mint.  It is incredibly refreshing.  These are described as tasting like a fava-beany cucumber with a lemon-lime hint.  (o-O)    They may make a nice drink when steeped in water.  They tell you to pick them when they are grape sized but they didn't say how prolific the plants are.  Even if they don't make a good fruit/veggie tea,  i still want to try them.

Uggh,  just remembered i forgot to start mint seeds.  lol


The cucumbers i planted are the pickling and slicing type.

For slicing i have Summer Dance and Diva. I planted more picklers since i prefer the flavor and actually don't mind the texture of the seeds and pulp at all.   Those are Boston Pickling, General Lee, and National Pickling.

I'm trying Black Futsu and Red Kuri winter squashes this year. The Red Kuri remind me of one of the first large winter squashes i ever grew called Red Eye.  Red Eye has been discontinued from my usual seed place for quite some time and no seeds remain. Not sure if they are related in any breeding aspect but if they have a similar flavor i want to have that again.   The black Futsu is supposed to have a rich flavor,  nutty like hazelnuts and has remarkable storage qualities.   I have no idea if these plants will take over my garden (i barely have the space for 3 "compact" butternut squash vines)but i'm giving them what extra space i can spare.  The Futsu is supposed to be very prolific and the Kuri on the prolific side but not as explosive sounding as Futsu.

I'm trying edamame soybeans again too. I had tried a type called Beer Friend a few years ago,  but i got the seeds late in the season and planted them the following year. None came up. These  are called Butterbeans and sprouted pretty quickly.  I will probably forget to sow a few every couple of weeks so we don't end up with one bunch and then that's it.


I finally managed to get ahold of some Schizandra plants, aka 5 flavor berry.  I tried growing them from seed a couple years ago and got nothing and then Oikos Treecrops didn't have any left and none available this spring,  but the blog i follow about Sea Buckthorn-- their company does sell schizaqndra pl;ants for a reasonable price,  so i got 3.  I think they came in on May 23 or so.  One looked great, one was so-so and i don't have much hope for the third one but i'll give it some time before i ask for a do-over or something.

This is the good one:

The one on the left is the ok one (there's a tiny green bud just above the farther rim of the pot) and the one on the right, i don't think is alive at all:

i also got these hazelnuts from Burpee this year,  they came along with the 5 Darrow blackberry plants i ordered.

They are Jefferson and Theta. ...and.... my 6-year-old for scale.  They were planted almost immediately May 21, 2014.

These are the Darrow blackberries:

Lots of potential plums on Stanley this year.  I'm using Surround for spray this year with a few other things.  Application scheduling is always a challenge due to weather, time and proper applicator availability. I might go into that more later.

Stanley still has galls despite my attempt to remove them as instructed,  they are extraordinarily numerous this year and i'm rather irked by that.  After pruning 4 feet off the top of it this spring and its still about 12-14 feet tall,  i'm doubting that i got a dwarf plant and really suspecting that i paid for a dwarf and got a slightly cheaper semi-dwarf.  I really need to find out what to do about the galls.  All Starks advised me was to remove them and disinfect between cuts,  which i did only to be rewarded with a bumper crop of fresh ones.

The blueberry plants are finally starting to pick up size.  This one has had the greatest increase.

Here's the bigger Carmine Jewel cherry tree with unripe cherries.  Hopefully some will ripen fully and we can have our first taste.

Yes!  I can finally see the beginning of sea buckthorn berries:

I got some Moonflower seeds for my oldest daughter to plant in her designated pot.  We planted these about a month ago now.  They came up then it got cold and they haven't moved much since.

There's 4 O'clocks in there too.

The garden this morning

And the seedlings waiting to be planted or given away

And a small project i'm working on.  Labeling all my perennial plants with some more permanent markers than my feeble memory. :0)  There's some botanical name info,  the date i got them and the suppliers' name.

Carrots and Onions (and Shallot) 2010

Wow, the carrots really did well.  I got lots of them. I don't remember if i did weigh them. I can't imagine that i didn't- but i don't remember doing it.
They were sweet and crispy, the roots were thick and a bit on the short side- but i think the varieties i had weren't supposed to be the ultra long and thin type- so they may have been as perfect as they could be- which was great. I only had 4 or 5 that were bifurcated, cracked or shaped oddly, the rest were straight, smooth and not 'hairy'.  The color of both types was hard to differentiate, the skin on both was a vibrant garnet red. The cores were small, one type more tinged with green than the other, but otherwise the inside color was the usual carrot shade of orange.  They pulled up easily- a few broke from their stems but the soil had stayed so nice and loose they were easily pulled out.

I love how light my soil stayed in the planting rows. Even now, this late in the year after all the watering and recent rain, if i step into a bare spot in any planting row, my foot will sink at least an inch or two. I'm used to soil with a higher clay content so this is recognisably different than the garden soil i traipsed through as a kid.

Now the onions-  I decided at the beginning of the year that if i got one or two onions the size of a regulation baseball, i'd be happy enough.  I got my wish and then some,  i got at least a half dozen that were of good size and plenty of sizes close.  I got plenty of little tinkers too- and i like the range in sizes actually.  The little golf ball ones are great for the morning omelet.

I got plenty of white onions, and the red onions did catch up in size-  they seem to grow at a noticeably different pace than the white ones. I probably could have waited to harvest the red ones until the tops were more dried than they are, but we were getting so much rain for a while there i was afraid they'd just rot in the ground. So i pulled them.  They will get diced and frozen for convenient use through the winter soon anyway, they don't need to store well whole after all.   I never did get to the root cellar yet. Hubby has been working on the basement now and then but there was a lot going on down there and he isn't finished yet.   So not having a root cellar for storage this fall isn't a problem since i don't have a big need for it yet anyway.

Oh, and the Shallot...s....  Well, i don't know what was up with those things, the variety was named "Mirage" and i'm thinking that they were that very thing! lol.  I planted a number of seedlings, but it looks like i only pulled one or two up. The seedlings may have gotten slugged,  and the other thing that i think contributed was the volunteer pumpkin plant that hubby asked me to keep.  It was self-seeded in the center of one of my walking rows and it vined in the direction of my shallots. I think it shaded them too much despite my trying to keep those leaves down to a minimum and the vines out of the planting row.  So whatever it was, it probably wasn't all the fault of the variety of shallot.  I have them green-lighted for next year.

Dill, cilantro and spinach planting.

Yep, its a bit on the side of "late" to be doing this now, but the space that had the fennel was just making the weeds happy and me irked.  So i went ahead and cleaned it up and am attempting a somewhat late planting of Mammoth dill, cilantro and i used up the last of a very old packet of spinach that has been hanging around 9 years or so.  I never know what to do with things like that. I don't even know if any of the spinach will come up, but if it does it will be interesting. If not, no loss.
  According to what i read, i could expect a good harvest of dill if i had planted it a couple weeks ago, maybe i can expect a paltry harvest if planted now. Paltry is fine!  Anything is fine. 

I was thinking i might plant peas, but i don't eat peas. My kids do, but i don't think its a good time to try.  I need to consider remembering to get some snow pea type seeds, i eat those.

The hubbs took the little one with him grocery shopping so i have an extra hour and now she's napping so i actually had some extra time to do stuff.
I even managed to make some Summer Squash Bread...yes, its actually a recipe for summer squash, not just zucchini. Not like they are very much different of course.... but still.
I don't eat such things but hubby reports that it is very good.  I made it per instructions, i didn't change anything. You can find it here if you'd like:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Summer-Squash-Bread/Detail.aspx

I also set some carrots to dry, they look so cool like this.  Of course, one had to jump ship.

Today is pleasant and a bit on the cool side, but not at all cold (mid to high 70's), dry and breezy. Its very nice actually.  I hope we get the rain that was mentioned in the forecast last time i looked.

It usually misses us lately, like it is literally being pushed away by something..

I found a tennis ball sized cantaloupe in the garden this morning, didn't get a picture, but its great to see,  i was wondering if i had forgot to plant them or something, lol.
I just remembered that i haven't seen hide or hair of a banana melon yet. 

I'll have to take a close look around there.  Its funny how big a melon can get before i see it... they blend in so well and the vines tangle so much.  I think i need to get some serious trellises built next year.

Harvesting

Atomic Red carrots, Crosby Egyptian beets and some finoccio.

My finoccio was pretty much all bolting,  other than that it hadn't actually grown for weeks. I don't think it was getting enough water... the ferny tips were always drying out.
I planted a square maybe 4'x4' and it looks like only 2 stayed in a nice bulb, the third one i kept looks like it was in the process of getting away.  They may be too tough for roasting and being a side dish on their own, so they may end up going into the Clay Pot Cooker as an aromatic for a roasted chicken.

The carrots are looking good. I really don't eat them because of the LC thing, but they smell nice and the roots are firm, longer and straighter than i expected.  I mainly planted them for the rest of the family. I did sample a bite.

I once was brough to the farm of a family member (cousins i think, fairly far removed- i was too young to remember who and i haven't remembered to quiz my parents about it) and we were taken on a tour of the fields. I remember watching as some carrots were pulled up, wiped clean and i was given one to try.  I still remember how unlike grocery store carrots it tasted.
Mine have a similar flavor as that one did (if memory is as sharp as i hope), they are a tad bitter but the taste is stronger than store bought.

Atomic red is supposed to be higher in lycopene than regular orange carrots, but since the color is only skin deep (at least in mine) i don't know that the amount is all that critical.
I think i'd like to try another type of carrot next year.  I also have Cosmic Purple carrots out there...
I got the colored carrots more as a novelty since io had no idea if i was going to get much out of it with this being new soil.... i figured if i only got a handful of roots it would be pretty cool for them to be fun colored!

The beets.  I'll have to cook them up. I'm wondering if they will be tough....i'm always worried things will be tough.  They were planted just behind the carrots in the row so i think if the carrots were not tough, the beets shouldn't be either.
If these are good i should plan to plant a much larger row next year so i can make pickled beets without sugar.

I picked another 3# of summer squashes today,  i get an average of a pound a day though i only pick every other or 3 days.

I'm trying to decife if i should plant more SS next year but harvest them when they still have their blossoms attached (my favorite size) or just plant 2 of each again and simply dehydrate or freeze any (any?, hah!) extras.

Oh, i did make SS chips yesterday, my oldest daughter loves them! Sooooo...looks like i'll be making much more. Sweet potatoes also make great chips when dehydrated.
There is a brand of chips at my health food store, i forget the name, but its a bag of mixed veggies...taro, carrot, parsnip, red potato and beets all thinly sliced and fried up like potato chips.  I bet i could make a blend similar to that, only dehydrated instead and no taro. Its worth a try.
I want an Excalibur dehydrator now. *sniffle*

I have 2 dehydrators. One is an old Durabrand that i may have gotten for Christmas when i was in my teens (my parents also got me a juicer another Christmas, which i still have), yes i was an odd teen.  The other is a Nesco American Harvest FD-39.  It has the heat and fan at the top, which is ok because it won't get filled with juices and oils when i dry meat, but it is loud.  My Durabrand is quiet.  The NAH dries quicker but the noise makes me prefer slow over loud. The trays are also not made to stack high or compact so i can't control the airflow and once when making fruit leather with the sheets, the NAH actually melted its lower tray right in the center a bit.  So i only use it for leathers and keep the bottom tray empty for now. The NAH trays are also way more flimsy and the mesh can break while being cleaned.

Anyway, i'm glad i learned that summer  squash dries up quite nicely!


Tomatoes are all still quite green except for another Siberia which is getting orangey. In 2 more days i think it should be ready.
The first tomato harvest always begins with a smattering of readies.


Edit To Add-

I peeled and cooked the beets, they are delicious!

Radish picking

Lifted the end of the row cover

Looks ready

The average size was about the length of my thumb, but fatter

The Hailstones were starting to be ready too, just 3 of those:

Probably about 20 or more radishes out of maybe 3 feet of row. A few have hollow centers, which is annoying

But most of them were sound

They weren't as mild as i expected and i think that is because of the warm spring and the row covers making it especially warm.  I will have to plan for that next year. I will be able to get radishes in earlier than i did this year and they will be out in time to plant things like green beans and such. But they will be put in a row that won't get a cover.

Plants are very much bug-free this year. I'm amazed.  Even the melons and cucumbers are being left alone very much. I see a few flea beetle nibbles on some of the cuke leaves, but that is it and it stopped before any real damage happened.  Here are the better growing plants in that row.

Bird house gourd:

I think this is Pony Yellow, i tried to remember the order i took the pictures in, but i just can't.

 This is Long Island Cheese, an heirloom winter squash. Its a very pretty and classic looking fruit:

I need to find out what these are.  Some sort of rose?  They smell incredible and bloom just beyond our fence every year. They are in the scrubby wasted areas.  I used to smell them in the years before we added this lot to ours, but i was never close enough to see what was making that smell.

 I meant to photograph it last year but the blooms were gone before i could.


The apples are starting to get larger, some are already being bothered by pests.  I need to spray again, but where things have been going on it hasn't happened and the rain has narrowed my chances a little more. Today would have been a good day to get it done, but the radar has shown rain close by for hours, its not getting here fast, but it will.

We are going to take out that big tree. I can't remember if i already logged that decision, but we will. Whenever hubby gets to it.  There is no room for 2 trees only 4 feet apart and since the big tree is doing poorly, its the one to go. The little tree is doing well despite crowding. Hubby wants me to replace the big tree with something like it, so i will eventually. But it will be planted farther than 4 feet away!

I really want to take those row covers off!  They are doing an awesome job keeping the bugs at bay and warming the soil and slowing evaporation of rain... but it makes going out to weed a bit of a hassle. The covers have to be removed or pinned up first and putting them back is an added step.  It really is worth having them on, but i have to balance my annoyance with its effectiveness.

Here are some pics of the rows under cover for comparison

Brassica Row:

Roots and Beans Row:

Tomato Row

But see what i mean about the weeds?

Parsnip seedlings- so i remember next year:

And carrots....  you can see how the seed tape made pretty decent spacing

But they germinated so odd, some are already 3"-5" high and others are just sprouting.  Same with the parsnips. I wonder if i got seeds that weren't so fresh or if i wasn't as thorough with watering as i tried to be.

I  just got the Topsy Turvy planted.

Pain. In. The. Butt.

The issues are that they are very heavy when filled with soil.  They need to be hung someplace where sun will reach the plant- which means that they can't be under the overhang on the side of the house because there will only be full sun maybe 3 hours a day to reach it. The shed is out because the trim is not sturdy enough.  So i decided the basketball hoop was my best bet,  this will put the plant at eye level.  But the planter will be too high to fill with dirt when it is up there, so it needs to be filled on the ground, then lifted.
I don't know what hubby (or myself for that matter) did with my rope so i couldn't pulley it up.
Its really hard to fill a container with a plant on its bottom without squishing the plant.  The tomato plant had to be inserted before the dirt goes in. I tried hooking it onto a table, but my "S" hook wouldn't catch the edge, the wheelbarrow handles were too low, the saw horses were too low, any other items were too light and would have been dragged over
I finally set it on a cinder block with the tomato dangling inside the hole, then i filled the thing with dirt.

I used the same cinder block to boost me up to hook the planter to the basketball hoop.

Scrawny tomato...  But it should catch up.  We'll see if it was worth the effort.

Finally...!

The carrots are up!

I was not expecting anything interesting  to happen when i went out to check if anything needed water, so i did not take pictures. But i did look up some carrot sprout pictures yesterday and due to the regular spacing of the sprouts in the plot, i am sure they are my carrots.  I planted them on the 11th, so i guess they are right about on time- within the 14-20 day period they are said to. I'm just used to seeds with that time frame popping up for me within a handful of days.
Still no love from the parsnips. But i am happy enough about the carrots. Funny thing is that i recently made up my mind to plant something else there by the middle of next week if they did not come up.  That must have scared them straight.

Very pleasant weather today. Sunny and a little breeze, temperatures in the high 70's. But we really do need rain. We never got any of the thunderstorms that the weather forecasters expected, it even fooled my weather module and my leg.

Oh, and  i think a local farmer is manuring  his fields right about now. It carries on the breeze. A very bovine aroma.  First i have smelled it this year. It truly is Spring planting time.  Glad it doesn't bother me like it does some people, i grew up around farming areas and it could get quite pungent. But nothing like when the pogies come ashore in Harpswell.  That is close to unbearable!

Seeds...

Those Zsa Zsa pepper seeds just like to sit i guess....  i just decided to put them on a heat pad. My actual Seedling Heat Mat does not seem to be working anymore, but i did dig up a ZooMed heat pad for reptiles that i had saved from when we had pets that needed it. I have never had germination trouble with peppers, sweet or hot, so i am annoyed with these seeds.

Asparagus seedling count... out of i think 70 seeds i got 40 to germinate so far.  There are more coming up here and there so that number might increase,  but if it does not i have plenty as of now. It is a good deal, 40 plants for about $2.00 from seed.

Now that i have had more time to wait and see what definitely did not survive the frost i counted them up. Since it was quite a disruption and i had no extra seeds of some things, i will have to redo the GrowVeg plot.... again...  Funny thing is thaat about 2 weeks ago, i thought i wouldn't need to do that again until January lol.  I'm lucky that i enjoy these things.  Someone around my age who is more into Clubbing, partying and stuff like that would probably find me incredibly boring.
Good. 
That way they leave me alone! ;0)
I am a novice home brewer, i love a glass or two at a time of a good wine, i intend to grow some fruits that can also be made into wine, and the only mixed drink i really enjoy is a sweet-tart margarita,  but i don't understand the obsession with getting drunk every weekend or even every night.  I like to be social, but frankly i am more interested in tomato varieties than pop culture and social alcoholism.

Oh, where was i...? Oh yes, how boring i am.  And to prove it,  here is another boring list!

Of what maybe made it through the frosty night and what seeds i replanted out of the remainder of my Ridiculously Large Seed Stash:

What made it:
Tomato- Pruden's Purple (5)
Tomato- Yellow Pear (2)
Tomato- Polfast (3)
Tomatillo- Purple (4)
Tomato- Roma (2?)
Artichokes- Imperial Star (2)
Sweet Pepper- New Ace (2)
Hot pepper, Jalapeno- Fooled You (4)
Summer Squash- Patty Pan Sunburst (1)
Eggplant- Slim Jim (5)

Anything not listed was a total loss.

Assorted Herbs survived, many of the perennial flowering plants i sowed did fine. The herb that took the hardest hit was the Basil, i had 2 types and i lost at least half of the 18 cells i seeded.
I did lose the single Loenotis leonurus seed that had sprouted at the time so i have to find the space to start those again.
Other plants that went through the cold night that aren't listed have done fine. Like the asparagus, broccoli, pak choi, lettuce....  The only thing that isn't doing well with no real excuse is the durned cauliflower. The two sprouts that didn't get sunburned haven't grown hardly a bit and the seeds i stuck in over a week ago have shown no sign of sprouting.  Really disappointing.  I almost wonder if the seedlings that croaked really were sunburned, they may have been from bad seed.  So maybe i got 2 packs of bad seed this year.  Not good.  I might put the few remaining cauliflower seeds into peat pellets and see if it was a bad batch.
Things are starting to get frustrating.

This is the list of what got replanted, 6 each except the salsify- 12 of those:

Tomato- Empire Hybrid
Sweet Pepper- Red Knight
Hot Pepper- Chiltepin
Tomato- Siberian
Tomato-Black from Tula
Sweet Pepper- New Ace
Cucumber- Summer Dance
Cucumber- Alibi
Pattypan Summer Squas- Sunburst
Summer Squash- Sundance
Winter Squash- Long Island Cheese
Winter Squash- Red Eye

Acorn Squash- Carnival
Melon- Hale's Best
Melon- Rocky Ford
Melon- Banana
Watermelon- Pony Yellow
Watermelon- Tom Watson
Tomato- Yellow Pear
Eggplant, Ornamental- Scarlet Chinese
Salsify- Sandwich Island Mamoth
Beans, half bush- Appaloosa
Job's Tears

Later i'll edit my stash list so i don't miss ordering anything for next year that i want to plant again. I already started a list of things to buy again when i was low on them, but now i am out.

I also put together a list of the "Last Chance" varieties at Pinetree, those are the seeds they will discontinue before next catalog. A few of my favorites are on it, so i need to stock up on those and store them well in hopes that get back in the catalog before i use them up or they expire.  See, i may need to get a mini fridge for a better reason that before.

Still reading Root Cellaring, the beginning is full of garden advice so far and i'm getting into the part of the book where they are starting to discuss actual storage. They put in a nice list of varieties that they have found to be 'good keepers' well suited to root cellar storage, i am finding that to be very helpful and i recognise many of the varieties and their suggested sources.

 I may stick pretty close to their suggestions for next year.

Its cloudy today and i went out to water the carrots and radishes i planted. The radishes are no-shows so far and i don't know if the carrots are sprouting...? There are sprouts here and there under the boards and i don't know if they are weeds. They aren't numerous enough for me to tell if they are in the grid formation i made my seed tape in...I'm used to tiny gardens made mostly up of weed-free potting soil and bagged manure, not wild dirt. Seed tape is more obvious without weeds. And have not tried growing carrots for at least 3 years now and it has been longer since before that.  So i really don't remember what a carrot seedling looks like with just seed leaves.  So, since it is a cloudy day i took the boards off and hopefully if the seedlings are not weeds the sun won't burn them. I thought carrots are supposed to take weeks to sprout, so i am befuddled.

I'd like to know where my radish sprouts are...
Again, i see sprouts in the radish bed, but they aren't coming up in a line like the seeds i planted.  I know things shift a little when watered or the roots sometimes move the leaves off to the side, but not halfway across the row.

I'll just keep waiting.

Carrot & Parsnip Seed Tape

Simple DIY. I actually saw seed tape for sale at a big box store a few weeks ago. I sort of laughed at the price...

Its easy to make if you don't mind being a little nit-picky.
I don't like to thin, so i rarely sow direct because when i do i tend to oversow and annoy myself.

So here's how i do it.

Paper towel.... 2 ply is great, the cheapest is actually better than what i have because it is thin.
 Don't separate the ply right yet, it will save work later if you don't. If you want narrow rows use a mid grade TP.

Get a ruler, glue, pencil and a felt marker and seeds.

check the spacing of the seeds and get ready to mark your grid.


I'm spacing mine closer since i plan to harvest them small...  my garden soil is not very deep so i can't expect long roots at all.

This is why i leave the ply intact until marking is finished and use a felt pen. Saved half the effort.

 I have even gotten this marker to mark through 4 layers of ply, but 6 seems too much...or i would need a juicier marker.

So now i separate the ply.

Running out of room at the edge is ok because you can overlap them in the garden to keep relatively even rows

Glue dots...

Oh, yes... its not a bad idea to put a sheet of waxed paper underneath to keep the glue from getting on the work surface,  but if it does, the paper toweling pops off ok if you are careful.

Tiny carrot seeds,  these are Cosmic Purple. (funny, they don't look purple- lol)

.Tedious, but i'd rather do this comfortably seated at the kitchen table than bent over a row with the wind blowing everything to kingdom come.

The lick-a-toothpick method works great for this.

 The glue (unlike some seed starting mixes) is more than happy to grab the seed from the moist toothpick.

Label  it so it won't get mixed up.

Lay them aside separately to dry or they will stick together if the glue spots touch. I think that would make a huge mess of the situation!



 I'll put these in the garden once i get them all finished. I want at least6 squares of paper towel in size for each variety.
But it does take time to make them...


Planting out.

Its good to let them dry completely, just so they don't stick to each other.  Try to do this on a still day...  In the last few years i have found my home to be on one of the breeziest areas i have ever known.  Its almost constant and just strong enough to be irritating.

But anyway,  spray down the dirt.  It gives the paper something to adhere to immediately so you have an extra split second to grab a few clods of handful of dirt before the breeze picks it up.

Rocky I

Quick, hit it with water before the wind blows it away!

This is actually the last sheet of seeds, the rest you can see are covered in dry dirt. The wind was being too pesky for me to take the time to grab the camera. 

I also had to work fast because i had the little one out there with me, in a stroller and she wasn't being very patient.


So, i covered the covered and well watered seed tapes with plywood boards and i hope those don't blow away!