Yes, my problem is lack of confidence in my seeds. Ironically, I expect none of them to come up, ever, because life is rather miraculous, so I over sow... and then they ALL come up! I think you say in your next post that some of your seeds have poor germination rates, so my pessimism about a pack of seeds packed by some stranger four states away is somewhat justified, no?
Well, yes and no. That guy four States away knows that in order to make money he must have a quality product. And sometimes row spacing is set for other reasons rather than just what is best for the plants. Like 5 feet apart for gourds. If you plant them on a trellis you gan put them a lot closer together. And sweet corn. The space in between plants is on the money but the distance between rows can be much closer. But you gotta get to the corn to harvest. When I make my seed mats for carrots I place them just far enough apart to grow a carrot. I picture a carrot top and space the seeds accordingly. Some seeds just don't germinate they way we would like. Some have to be refrigerated, some nicked, and some are just poor germinators. You can do your own germination tests. But I never do anymore.
I'll need to learn what a seed map is before the next carrot planting period here, which is September. Thanks.
Its a seed mat and it is very simple. Get some Elmer's school glue....I use generic. Also get a paper towel and a toothpick. Dump the seeds on a plate, dip the toothpick in the glue, pick up the seed with the toothpick, then roll the toothpick with the seed stuck on the end and roll it off. The seed will stick to the towel. Space them out the way you want. I also put a raddish now and then just for kicks. Or you can run a line of glue and place the seeds in it. Then let dry. When you plant the water will soften the glue and the seeds will sprout. Just place the paper towel on your bed and cover with a little dirt. You can make seed tapes out of newspaper strips for larger seeds. Then just put them in a trench and bury.
Real funny. My wife won't let me wear shoes in the house. So I'll just put some dirt in the bed. She won't mind. Seriously though, thanks. But you must be talking about planting in very long rows and making a very long mat. If the row is only ten feet or so, why can't you just put the seeds directly in the dirt by hand?
You can, but I have my carrot seeds in a 6 foot by 3 foot bed. No rows...just mats. The whole bed is covered. And i love Chinese food. We had cashew chicken a couple days ago. And I make my own egg rolls. But I use savoy cabbage instead of Chinese cabbage.
Don't mean to be dense, but what is the advantage of using the mat in that circumstance? More precise spacing? As my wife is Chinese, I eat Chinese food every day. Naw, she actually cooks very good smothered steak and shrimp gumbo as well. I suffer in this life, as you see.
You don't have to bend over as much. You get the spacing right. And you don't have to thin. You can also measure the paper towel and figure the space you fill. Every seed is also at about the same depth. I am a lazy gardener. When it gets hot I don't want to be in the garden weeding, watering, and performing other chores. I just like to harvest in the morning during the summer...that's it.
Some things you can do that with and nature will thin them out for you. I really don't thin my rows out either except with root vegetables like beets and radishes. As for the marigolds, I plant them along the parameter to deter deer but don't like to plant the between plants because it makes it harder to weed (since I often weed with a string trimmer )
Deckle, I thought you were mad at us. I had 900...yes 900 tomato plants going once when I lived up north. I had 5 acres of good muck soil. I sold vegetables. It got so bad in my tomato patch I ran between the rows with a lawn mower. But now I mulch on a smaller garden. I get some weeds...but not many. And they pull up very easy. I just planted 9, 25 foot rows of roundup ready sweet corn. Weeding them should be as easy as walking down the rows. I have 8 more rows to plant. And I still have a lot of planting to go.
I am about 90% planted and it is just starting to drizzle so I guess I timed that well. I still need to find some more hot peppers. Just having trouble sourcing peppers at all yet with this early spring. I found some sweet ones and a few Jalapenos at a road side farm stand about an hour away I picked up when out doing something else, but still need some hot banana peppers and cayennes. None anywhere to be found, at least in the cell packs. Am still feeling uneasy about planting this early. No cold in the 15 day forecast, but still makes me very nervous. I def won't do corn until midmay.
How about a nice habanero plant? You can make insecticide out of the fruits. I find them mostly inedible, but you can flavor your oil with them and make huevos montuleños. Or you can sell them to the government and they can make an acid bomb to drop over Pyong Yang.
I have my corn planted. The Hickory King corn is coming right along. At least what is left after the varmints. I am about done too. I have watermelon and sunflower to plant yet. I would also like to grow some Canary Mellon's and another exotic....if I have any room left.
If it doesn't rain soon the seeds I planted are not going to come up. I ordered some Gogi seeds--has anyone raisded that from seed? I think I am just going to plant them in place and hope for the best. I also ordered a bunch of unusual herb seeds and think I will do the same with them. Sink or swim.
I prefer to start off with live plants for herbs simply so I know what they are supposed to look like come weeding time. I basically just tossed out my entire crop of ground cherries for instance the first year I planted them without knowing what they looked like. The next year, I did them in pots just to be safe
I am not familiar with Gogi berries. But I also like to plant something like that from plants. It takes a long time to get fruit. But I have a lot of plants...rooted cuttings...and I am still building beds for those.
That used to be my approach, too, but these are for a relatively wild area controlled mostly by deer, who are probably well equipped to make such judgments.. Additionally, a very long time ago I took a course in "New England flora" and learned how to use plant keys. [Best course I ever took--really upped my observational skills.] For example, I was able to figure out that what I had growing in the spot where I had planted bee balm had now miraculously become what is almost certainly snakeroot, and I don't try to make tea with it....I was going to pull it all up, but it actually looks a bit like wild chrysanthemum in the fall, and I am not in an agricultural area..I decided if the birds had planted it there they must get some use from it so left most of it alone. Maybe they use the seeds to rid themselves of parasites. On the other hand, my naturalized Feverfew and Skullcap both have returned for years, and I even had some Horehound come back for a few seasons. I'm not a "survivalist" per se, but IMO it doesn't hurt to tilt the local environment toward survivability in any way possible. If the usual medication supply should ever be disrupted, it's nice to know there might be a few helpful plants around to pitch in. Realistically speaking, there wouldn't be enough of them and they are only available during certain seasons, but you can't control for everything. In a pinch, they could probably be cultivated again, or individual plants could be grown for sale. Or something. Did you know Forsythia buds have antibiotic properties, and that the Chinese have a strain of Forsythia they bred to increase them? Chinese herbology is fascinating; I've only nibbled on the extreme edges but find native plants related to Chinese medicinal ones especially interesting when they become accessible and suited to my zone.
If you aren't really using the herbs, nature will do what it does. Being in the middle of the eastern seaboard, I can mostly grow something year round as I can garden some things in fall/winter without a lot of extra work, but if I had to eat turnips and greens for months to survive, you can bet I would be one ornery cuss come spring. I have the ability and the means to extend my growing seasons if necessary with hoops and such, but I generally just go with whatever mother nature is throwing at me. There are several plants with antibiotic properties so you can stagger them into your season I suppose, or dry them. I think it is crazy that so much of our medicine comes from the blue blood of horseshoe crabs. I remain generally aware of edibles that grow in nature that people view as weeds but I seldom eat them. They are often bitter anyway. Some things I do propagate like wild garlic. Poke berries and blackberries I let thrive in the margins of my property just for the animals but are edible (the poke berries can be used in very limited intake for medicinal reasons--eat one too many and you are in serious trouble--and the greens are edible if you boil the a few times to get the toxicity out of them). The seed pods from maple trees are edible when they are still green and tender. They are used some in Asian cooking. A lot of things that are not directly palatable can be used in teas that extract the vitamins and minerals from them. I have also started adding flower petals into some of my salads when available. It took me awhile to be brave enough to eat marigold petals because the plants smell so odd, but the smell doesn't come with the petals so I have adapted to them.
The plants in the back of this bed is wild bee balm. I also have some wild coreopsis, and others. This is a wildflower bed in patial to full shade. I don't use any of it for medicine...just looks.
I've noticed our squirrels eat many of the oval maple seeds from two of our maple trees' seed "wings" and had often wondered if I should try some...maybe this year I will! (I have decided the maple tree in back must be a Norway one--the squirrels just ignore it.) I did try a bit of young, thrice boiled and drained poke leaves (by then they're pulpy) several years ago and found it rather energizing, but IMO it would be asking for trouble to do that too often. I've never tried the berries. I was just to the point of trying the petals of the decorative plant called "marigold" in the US when I finally read that it is actually the English "calendula" that is referred to in the old herbals. Since then I never believe I really know what I am dealing with unless the Latin name is provided. One local outlet sold black horehound instead of white horehound one year with their other herbs---the white is used for lung complaints but the black is strictly decorative and poisonous. My spouse's family lived on almost nothing but Swiss Chard all one winter when he was a child because nothing else grew that year. For years afterward, of course, they wanted nothing to do with it. Swiss chard is real survival food, though; it is one tough plant and will often winter over. We garden on a town plot that gets plowed in the Spring, so we can't follow through with biennials and perennials like asparagus there, though. I've tried unsuccessfully to grow asparagus in our yard in three different locations. Right now I have just discovered that there are two or three different plants called "climbing spinach". One is winter hardy and one is not. I am hoping to try both this summer, but want to plant the winter hardy one in a permanent spot somewhere. I'm also hoping to grow (in small amounts) a few kinds of amaranth, some lamb's quarters, and maybe orach, but I have nightmares about what could happen if I plant them in the regular garden and they then go to seed before I can stop them. We had half of our back yard full of Motherwort for a few years, from the seeds of just one plant bought at Sturbridge! I didn't realize how many interesting small seed outlets are on the internet now. There's a woman in Amish country selling small quantities of heritage pole beans! I just received some from her in the mail in tiny transparent envelopes containing a few seeds each....
I used to get sprouting maple seeds when I cleaned out our gutters up north. And I feel your pain. We had a very bad drought last year. No rain for 6 months. That is when I decided on a no till, deep mulch garden. I also started hauling horse manure for my pastures. I am still bringing it in. It is free except the gas to go get it. I have hauled over 50 pickup loads. It grows very good pasture grass. I also started hauling pine straw. Everything I plant is mulched. Except of course the pastures.
I think that climbing spinach is more popular in Florida than elsewhere. I have never tried it. I have talked with some people about it. It apparently can feed a family forever down there. I have an asparagus bed. It is not that old though so I will give it another year before I start harvesting. I had maybe 4 or 5 shoots I could have done this year but not really enough to fool with. The others are still too scrawny. Hopefully by next spring I will have a couple dozen edible thickness shoots. I have some swiss chard just now starting to poke its head up. No way I could eat it every day for months. That family is sort of like my mom's attitude about wild garlic i.e. ramps. Growing up there were families in her area who were so out of everything by late winter, that is how they survived the spring by cooking them. Apparently the people would smell so bad they would be kicked out of school. She wouldn't eat them as a result. To me they just taste like those wild onions that grow everywhere with a bit of a garlic tone. Agree on the seed availability. I try to mix up my suppliers from year to year. It keeps the catalogs coming which in turn allows me to keep an eye on a wider variety of things to try. This year I am trying about a half dozen new leafy things I have never tried before to see how they work, and am also trying out something called Salsify which is a root veg.
