Seeds from the Whole Seed Catalog. All kind of weird things. The weirder the better because one can buy normal things anywhere.
And True Leaf Market, seeds in bulk intended for micro greens.
And a few things from eBay.
Years ago I planted petunias from seeds and those were the most sturdy of all other petunias. Their seeds are near microscopic and they take a long time to get started.
Jiffy Pellets are fun. They come as compressed discs. In two sizes. It makes a difference. The discs are placed in a nursery tray and flooded with filtered water. They soak up the water before your eyes and turn into barrel shapes surrounded by weak net opened at the top and designed with a hole in the center to accept a seed.
Technology. Innit fantastic?
These nursery trays come with holes or without holes. But they are cheaply made for single use and they're disposable. You can buy sturdier trays that won't fall apart. And you can buy clear domes for them. And you can buy baker's trays intended to proof bread that are much more sturdier and food safe. If you decide to grow micro greens, for example.
For things like carrots, also tiny seeds, I mess up the top of the Jiffy Pellet barrel and sprinkle the seeds across the top. If they germinate and grow then I can tear up the barrel sideways to separate the plants and spread them a little bit more. That way fifteen Jiffy Pellets can form a patch of carrots outside in a planter on the terrace.
Last year my carrot patch failed. And that's a bummer!
Because they're like beautiful ferns when they grow together.
Wafting in the breeze like a Disney cartoon.
Instead of those lovely green yam plants that we buy for outrageous abundant hanging lime-green foliage that takes over the whole place, this year I'll have heritage Russian melon and heirloom watermelon. By way of experimentation.
Because, what the heck?
And a few zucchini for their insane foliage like elephant ears. But zucchini grows outward and they leave a lot of negative space in their centers that can be filled with something that doesn't require a lot of direct sunlight. Something like caladium perhaps. (Already ordered for spring) We'll see how this works.
Rare Seeds will send you a catalog for free, or you can buy their bigger one for $10.00. I bought one for myself and for my sister-in-law and my brother told me she stayed up to 11:00 reading it. That's way past their bedtime. She told him she wanted to stay up and keep reading but had to turn in. She is fussy and critical about American food (for good reason) so I was happy the catalog interested her. I hope she finds things in it to grow. They're very close to the Baker Creek store in Petaluma California separated by San Pablo Bay from Antioch. They can drive there easily. While the seeds come from Mansfield Missouri. Or wherever it is that MO stands for.
Did you know that you can buy a bag of beans from the grocery store and plant them and they will grow to sturdy plants that produce beans? One beans grows to multiple bean pods. And you can pick the pods and the plant will grow new ones for as long as your season lasts. They're one of those category of things that GMO hasn't messed up for proprietary control. Yet.
My situation is the terrace gets partial sun. But when it gets sun, it burns. Seven hours in spots. Therefore I'm trying sunflowers this year just to see what happens.
The sunflower seeds were purchased in bulk for micro greens but I pulled out ten seeds to attempt to grow them to full height. (5 Jiffy Pellets, so 5 will be sacrificed. Like baby birds do sometimes. And humans too for that matter. This world is cruel.)
1 comment:
I’ve got a crop of garlic in; first try at it.
Hope it works, we’ll know in June.
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