The Garden of Cheatin' -or- Sowing Seeds with Ease
As you can see from the tomatoes I planted yesterday, when it comes to gardening, I'm a cheater. I buy most of my plants at a variety of stores throughout the month of June, when everyone else has already lost their first round of tomatoes to a late May frost and bought another round. This makes the stores think there is a larger-than-expected group of gardeners out there looking for tomatoes. They order more, no one buys them, they go on sale, and BAM! That's when I strike! I almost always find gallon-size tomatoes, at least 18" tall, usually with flowers, often with fruit, and three days ago at the Bi-Mart in Cheney, I found them two for $5. This pleases me.
I cheat with my garden because of our shorter-than-average growing season. The last several years in the Pacific Northwest, specifically the Spokane area, have brought with them cool, damp springs and early, cold falls. This is not exactly primo weather for starting many of your garden-variety plants outside from seed. Even if I had the room and patience to start the garden indoors in December, all it takes is one cat to jump up on the counter, and all that effort will have been for not. Therefore, I buy almost all my plants as big as I can find them for as little money as I can pay. Note: If you love the feeling of bringing flora along from seed to plant to food, kudos! Keep it up! And please post a comment below if you have any pointers!
Plants I suggest you buy at the store if you live in my climate:
- Tomatoes
- Peppers
- Squash
- Cucumbers
- Basically, anything that isn't indigenous to our area, and shrivels up if you so much as say "32ºF" too loudly.
Plants you can buy at the store, but will do fine from seed if you start them early, even if it's cold and wet:
- Broccoli/Cauliflower
- Lettuce
- Cabbage
- Onions
Plants you start from seeds/tubers/roots/crowns, almost without exception:
- Asparagus
- Beans
- Peas
- Carrots
- Corn
- Beets
- Radishes
- Spinach
- Garlic
- Potatoes
As you can see, some of the best stuff has to be started from seeds. For this, I'm going to call on a little help from two more very influential people from my past who have helped over the years to cultivate me to be a cultivator: the dynamic duo of Judi Horton and her husband Tom Bacon (of local NPR fame).
Quick window into my not-too-distant past (skip this if you don't want a story)...
I worked for a plant nursery in Post Falls, Idaho, called The Plant Mill for all of my high school career and a bit into college. Judi and Tom, church friends of my parents, gave me a job schlepping (Judi's term) bags of soil, 20-gallon trees and 200-pound garden statues into vehicles. After the first year, I was consulting customers on their plant choices. After the second year, I became the water garden expert (teaching workshops to groups of 20-40 adults at the ripe old age of 16). By the time the shop met its untimely end at the hands of the new Big Box Mart across the street, I was still the youngest employee, but also the most senior. That job put me on the path to becoming the plant-lover I am today, and gave me the tools I needed to pair with the passion I inherited from the generations of gardeners who came before me. Judi and Tom, you will always be my 'Garden Godparents' - thank you for those wonderful years at The Plant Mill!
Ok, back on track, thanks for indulging me....
A few years ago, Judi and Tom (who must be about "Level 80" master gardeners) came across an easy trick for planting seeds that I will now pass along to you! It's called seed tape, and I bet you the ingredients for this simple solution are lying around your house right now!
For seed tape, you'll need:
- Newspapers, preferably black and white.
(I prefer the West Plains Extra, because it's abundant and free in my area, but you may use whatever you like... plants can't read, yet, so they're not picky) - Flour
(the kind you bake with, any type, as long as it doesn't contain another ingredient like yeast) - Water
- A small dish
- A paint brush and/or Q-tip
- Scissors
- Seeds for plants you'd like to grow in straight rows
Here's what you do: Cut the newspapers into stips the long way (hot dog style if you're a child of the 1980's-90's) and about 2-3" wide, wider if you want wider rows. Combine a little less water than flour in a small dish so that the slurry that ensues is about the consistency of Elmer's glue. Using your paint brush, run a long line of flour glue down the center of your paper strip. (If you're using large seeds, take a q-tip and dab a spot of glue every place you want to put a seed.) Following the directions on the seed's packaging, space the seeds out by sticking them into the glue as far apart as you would if you were putting them directly into soil. Stand up, put one hand out, and using the other, give yourself a high-five! You just took all the work out of planting seeds, and you'll have the straightest rows imaginable for your carrots, spinach, radishes, etc.
Next steps: Use a marker to write any info about the seeds you need for later identification. Let the strips dry fully, and if you're not using them right away, you call roll them up for storage. They'll keep for a long time, as long as the papers were dry when you stored them, and stay away from light, heat and water (and rodents, as they refer to seed tape as 'Seed Roll-ups').
When you're ready to plant, simply dig a trench as deep as the seed packaging states, cover with the proper depth of soil, water gently, and walk away. As the days go by, the newspaper will disintegrate and become part of the soil, as will the flour glue, leaving your seeds in perfectly spaced rows, ready to become perfectly spaces veggies.
There, wasn't that easy? If you have any questions, please post them below. I love to help people with their gardens, hence this blog, so keep the questions rolling in, and until next time, happy planting!
Good night for now,
Sam
