It’s always so interesting to see the different ways each person plants the seeds. We all started with the same instructions. Each of you got a seed pack which contained seeds and a label. Those who needed supplies may have gotten pots, soil and chicken wire. We all followed this handout I made:
Thank you to all of you who kindly sent in pictures of the way you planted your seeds.
The way we planted our seeds has several common components:
- Pots with shallow plantings of seeds.
- We made sure our pots are exposed to the elements and getting rain/snow for at least 5 weeks. This ensures that our seeds have a chance to go through cold/moist stratification and begin germinating.
- We protect the pots from our mortal enemies: squirrels! Just kidding! I love squirrels, but I just don’t want them digging up my pots. So I was delighted to see how you have come up with some really interesting solutions. Thanks for sharing!
Catherine used an ingenious method of tying on plastic mesh with twine which I think is brilliant. I say that with a perspective of someone who had to use metal snips and gloves to cut lots and lots of chicken wire and that is a painful item to work with.
April and Narges bunched up their chicken wire inside the pot.
Elaine and Priya covered the top of the pot with chicken wire.
Nancy also tried out a whole set of other winter-sowing techniques. Now I’m really interested to see how these different methods work out.
Nancy decided to take her seedsitting to a whole new level and her picture below shows how she is using a variety of different winter-sowing techniques. You’ll notice bottles that have been cut in half then taped back up as well as salad mix containers with holes. I am very interested to see how these setups work out and I’ll be asking Nancy to share her finding with us to see if one system worked out better than others.
As for myself, I went with the same trustworthy method I used last year with my command center setup. I have covered the whole thing in plastic fencing but have switched to the larger pots since last year my smaller trays flipped over on a very windy day and scattered their seeds in all the other pots.
I have to mention that just a few days ago I went to add a few last-minute pots and noticed something had dug out one of the pots. I suspect it was a tiny mouse as the pots were too tightly placed for a squirrel to squeeze through…. so my defence system is not as good as I had hoped.
So what are our next steps?
I will be sitting back and thinking about all those gardening projects I will be working on when my plants grow up! It’s actually a great time to think about how we can share our plants with our community and friends. In the next post, I will share some ideas about projects we can work on together.
