Making Seed Tape

The temperature was seven degrees (F) when I ventured outside this morning, the coldest of this winter.  I harvested seven eggs and found all seven of our rabbits nesting cozily in their straw.  While I am not a superstitious guy, the three sevens reminded me how our ancestors gave thanks for sustenance and safekeeping, especially this time of year.  Three of the hens shocked me back to reality by giving three more eggs, three hours later.  The predicted high today is 21 degrees.  Surely there is a numerologist somewhere who can further explain.

Even though this blog is technically about neighbors, I am going solo for today's project, also the first blog post of the year, as the neighbor is home with his wife and new child, unlikely to emerge in this weather.  Luckily my wife and youngest son are in the next room thinning seedlings, so I am not alone.  I predict the neighbor will emerge in the spring to help with the harvest.

Each year around February we fire up the grow lights and begin planting trays indoors in anticipation of winter's end.  The earliest seedlings become micro-greens for soups and salads until we decide to let others continue growing for transplanting into the spring garden.  Although I love cultivating these pungent young greens, there are several drawbacks.  Mainly we loath the chore of thinning seedlings.

For newcomers, thinning is the process of removing plants that are too closely spaced together which almost always results in killing those that are removed.  Thinning is required because it is very difficult to plant small seeds at regular intervals over the soil.  Instead, the gardener typically sprinkles twice the seeds required, or more, to allow for the fact that some seeds never germinate.  Later the gardener sacrifices the smaller plants to leave nutrients for others.  The plants removed are cut at the base to avoid disturbing the roots of the keepers.

My wife is opposed to thinning plants on metaphysical grounds: she abhors killing anything.  I, on the other hand, simply dread the boredom of dawning tweezers, scissors, and a magnifying glass for what seems like an eternity to turn 200 overcrowded plants into a hundred.  Thank heavens, this year I think we have an alternative: seed tape.

Among our first eight trays of seedlings this year we planted two using seed tape.  If you have never seen seed tape, it consists of a roll of paper embedded with seeds regular intervals.  Actually it is two thin strips of paper with seeds sandwiched in between.  I used a lettuce seed tape, a common variety, purchased locally at the home store, although other seed types are available.  My goal was to make the seed tape myself, but I decided to first try the store bought version, and it worked out well.  The two trays planted with seed tape have required almost no thinning at all.

So, today I set out to make our own seed tapes.  If you want to try it, here is what you need:

1. Paste.  In a small bowl, mix 1/4 cup of flour with 2-3 Tbsp water.  Mix and add water slowly until you reach the consistency of glue.  Don't use real glue if you plant to eat the greens.
2. Work surface.  I used a scrap of plywood, approximately 2 ft. by 4 ft.  A tabletop will work, but the plywood allowed me to make guide marks with a pen.  Plus, I could set up in front of the cozy wood stove.
3. Seeds.  I used one brand new package of carrot seeds for half of my seed tapes, hoping that it will be very likely to germinate.  For the rest I used a variety of last year's leftover packs: spinach, several varieties of lettuce, chard, cilantro, pak choi, cabbage, and parsley.
4. Toilet paper.  Roll out strips about 3 ft. long.  Use scissors to cut them down the middle lengthwise.  Newspaper or other scrap paper will work fine, I think.  (Three feet lengths allow me to plant directly in beds outdoors, or break them strips in half if I decide to plant in trays.)

Seed tape is a great advantage for small seeds.  By this I mean that working with small seeds is very challenging in the garden soil, even when planting in trays.  By contrast, the white background of the toilet paper indoors on a flat surface makes it easy to apportion seeds with less wasted seeds.  I would not bother making seed tape for large seeds that are easy to handle, like squash and cucumber.  The largest I used were Cilantro, and most were smaller, such as carrot and lettuce.

How to make seed tape:

1. Stretch out a strip of paper along your work surface.
2. Use a pen to write the name of the seed on the end.  This will be important later on at planting time.
3. Use a utensil to place dots of paste at two-inch intervals along the paper.  I used a chopstick, but a spoon, Q-tip, or Popsicle stick would also work.
4. Sprinkle one or two seeds in each dot.
5. Fold the paper lengthwise and press firmly, but gently, to seal.

After the paste dries, you can roll up or fold the strips.  I worked ahead so that, when I had finished making about six strips, I put away the first one which was was dry.  It is not a fast process, but it gets faster with practice.  At 18 seed dots per strip, I had more than 500 potential seedlings by the end of the afternoon with time to blog about it.

Store seed tapes in a cool, dark place until planting time.  When it is time to plant, unfurl a strip in a tray of soil, or directly in the garden, cover with soil, and water thoroughly, just as you would with any seed.  The paste and toilet paper dissolves as the seedling takes root.

Check back in a few weeks to see our seed tapes in action, and to see whether the neighbors made it through the winter.  And be thankful that spring is just around the corner.

Green Beans and Peas

Our vegetable garden has five rows, each about 30 feet long.  Except for some perennial asparagus, the crops vary and are rotated annually.  With the winter behind us, this weekend we started planting a cover crop of green beans and peas throughout the empty garden.  Not only will these be edible when they mature, but they will discourage weeds thus reducing our reliance on chemicals, and retain moisture thereby cutting back on our use of water.  They will also give the area a pleasant uniform appearance.  If the cover crop is turned under before flowering, the plants will actually increase the nitrogen in the soil, or so I am told.  Next weekend we will finish with snow peas and cow peas.  The soil was amended with compost and manure in the fall, so no only a light tilling to remove weeds was required.

The 48" stick is marked at 3" intervals to serve as a guide

for spacing seeds.  The sheet of plywood prevents 

compacting the soil with bootprints while planting.

March Yard Pick Up

My young son said this was a "three holiday" weekend.  He meant Friday the 13th, followed by Pi Day on Saturday and the Ides of March today.  For me it was the annual weekend of outdoor cleanup.  Somehow I manage over the winter to accumulate various piles of debris around our yard.  This year it included a spoiled crock of sauerkraut, a large blue tarp, several defective watering containers, a number of five-gallon buckets, a stack of random red bricks, even more stacks of one-gallon pots, half a chord of firewood, and multiple locations where rabbit droppings that belong in the garden were dumped haphazardly by the hutches.  It is my hope that by chronicling it here I will be less likely to repeat this offense next winter.  Today the neighbors got most of it cleaned up and put away.  We even found an hour in the middle of the day to replace the brakes on the neighbor's truck which is a very rewarding experience considering that his life and the lives of his entire family depend on our doing it right.

For $20 we replaced the PVC pipe holding up the hoop house.

It has become an annual chore after the last snowfall.

The Next Generation of Peas

Like much of life, not everything about growing food, is happy, peaceful, and fruitful.  Even those who claim to have a green thumb are likely to make an occasional mistake.  Gardening does allow you to try and try again until you get things right.  This year we planted snow peas indoors in early January along side our wonderful trays of spinach, lettuce, and assorted other greens.  The greens are doing well but the peas are dead.  You might conclude from this that peas are difficult to grow, but you would be wrong.  In fact, growing snow peas is easy.  The "root cause" of our trouble (pun intended) was that the peas grew much, much faster than the rest of the seedlings.  In an outdoor garden under sunshine this is no trouble, but beneath the artificial grow lights of our system, the peas quickly became taller than their neighbors.  Had we raised the lights to accommodate the peas, the rest of the seedlings would have suffered.  Winter prevent us from putting the peas into the ground, and the recent snowfall has destroyed our hoop house once again.  So in a weak attempt to remedy the situation we moved the peas to the basement where they soon became neglected.  We will plant snow peas again, in the spring, in the ground, as we should have done in the first place.  And we vow to learn from our mistake and enjoy organic snow peas for years to come.

You might conclude that that is the end of the story, but you would be wrong about that too.  The root cause of the unfortunate snow pea neglect was that the neighbor has planted a sort of pea of his own, that is, he is expecting an addition to the family this spring.  It is his first offspring, I might add.  Preparation for the arrival of the youngling has the neighbors' minds on many things now that compete with gardening.  Without complaint we look forward to his arrival--we know it is a he, in fact--because it means we soon will have another hand to turn soil, pull weeds, and water the plants.  Just kidding, of course.  My advice to him, should he read this blog in the years to come, is to learn from his mistakes, no matter how few they are, and to resist the temptation to plant snow peas indoors.  Congratulations, Neighbor.

The Coldest Night of Your Life

With temperatures forecast around -8 to -4 degrees F tonight for Central Maryland, this could be the coldest night of your life if you were born and live here.  Given the weather, it is unlikely that we'll be actually planting anything outdoors anytime soon, so we're enjoying our trays of seedlings in a variety of creative new ways.  I cannot recall a past growing season when we ate so many of our tiny plants without planting them.  Last night we brought an entire tray of baby Bok Choi to share at a family dinner.  For lunch I made a ham sandwich with Arugula sprouts.  But the best so far was Chinese egg fried-rice with Tong Ho micro-greens for breakfast.  Time to grab a blanket, make a spot in front of the wood stove, and plant more seedlings!

 Left, baby lettuce; right, even the chickens

are rebelling against the cold weather.

Chinese Hot Pot

I grew up in the city, far away from the influences of farm life.  This may explain why I find so many aspects of growing food to be completely magical and unlike anything I have ever before imagined.  For example, tonight we harvested young seedlings to use in Chinese hot pot.  If you have never eaten hot pot, I encourage you to do an Internet search and try making it.  Chinese hot pot is a sort of stew made at the table typically for the evening meal during wintertime.  It is more of an assembly of ingredients and a way of cooking at the table than a recipe, although certain sauces can be prepared in advance.  Over the course of the meal, fresh ingredients are added to hot broth in the center of the table as you dine, including meat, fish, mushrooms, seafood, and fresh greens.  For tonight's meal we thinned five trays of three-inch seedlings to yield a large bowl of greens for use in the stew: lettuce, bok choi, Swiss chard, tong ho, and young kale.  The greens need only a few moments of blanching in the broth.  This is a wonderful and unexpected way to enjoy the rich nutrition and flavor of delicate greens.

Chinese Hot Pot prepared at the table, clockwise from upper right:

broth with tofu and mushrooms simmering on a propane burner,

peanut sauce, large colander of fresh micro-greens, thinly sliced beef.

Transplanting Indoors

It's hard to go from a full tray of healthy seedlings to a mere dozen plants or so, but it is for the better.  Our seedlings were planted too early to go into the unheated hoop house or beneath row covers.  Today's high temperature of 10 degrees (F) underscores the fact.  Their roots are becoming too long for trays and their tops too intertwined to separate as they vie for light and nutrients.  This afternoon we transplanted this tray of bok choi into deeper individual pots.  In a day or two these 15 plants will flourish again as they continue onward to maturity.  The process of selecting winners and losers is about as much fun as being cooped up indoors due to the weather.  We will keep the rest of the bok choi for a few days to make sure the transplants make it.  Next week we will consume or give away the rest.

Transplanted bok choi in the background came from the overcrowed tray

in the foreground.  The three heirloom mustard greens in the upper left

corner are the only survivors from an old pack of 2012 heirloom seeds.