The cool thing about my carrots

The garden April 28th



It looks like I've been planting string. The two long strings on the right are peas and carrots. The two short strings on the left are beets. I'm kind of clumsy and forgetful, so the strings are there to keep me from neglecting or trampling the things I've planted. I have officially seen three asparagus sprouts, and the onions are growing. Other than that, there's nothing to look at except string.

Today I planted the carrots and beets. I promised something cool about my carrots, so here it is:

You're wondering what that is. Well, it's homemade seed tape. I learned how to do it from the Canned Quilter over at Hickory Holler Farm. She is a brilliant woman.

Since I wanted to do rows, I used toilet paper, and I made them in five foot increments. I rolled out five feet of toilet paper, used a ruler and a Sharpee to mark where the seeds should be, and glued them down with Elmer's school glue.

seed tape production

I did this a few weeks ago, and then rolled them up until I was ready to plant them. It was breezy today, so as I unrolled the seed tape, I placed small rocks on it. Then I covered it with potting soil.

Finally, I watered them. The plan is that the toilet paper will biodegrade as the seeds sprout. The ability to get them perfectly spaced and in a fairly straight row really appealed to me. I was so excited about the seed tapes that I wanted to make a whole bunch more, but pretty much everything else I'm planting has fairly large seeds so seed tapes are kind of pointless.

According to the plan, I think the next things to be planted will be flowers. I'm planting marigolds and zinnias, largely to attract pollinators, but also because I love flowers.

Sunday's birds: grackle, house sparrow, robin, cardinal, downy woodpecker, house finch, bluejay, starling, mourning dove.