Today after school we got to fertlize plant the Empress beans and the strawberries.The Empress beans are smooth, white, glossy beans… remind me a lot of white Tic-Tac candy. We planted 6 or 7 around the base of a tomato cage. SFG book suggests 9 per sq ft. but I wasn’t going to argue with Julia over it. She was having a good time putting them around the circle.
After beans she wanted to play in the dirt, so I put in the strawberries. Then I got hot so we called it a day. I really have to check the tomatoes tomorrow.
And once I saw the tiny size of carrot seeds I didn’t even want to go there with a 3 year old anyway.
Instead, after getting Julia to sleep tonight, I made some seed tape in the kitchen. It looks like this:
To make it, I cut toilet paper into 1 inch wide strips. Then I lay them on a counter with a ruler to guide the spacing. I dumped the carrot seeds on to a shallow bowl. Then in another shallow bowl I mixed 1 tbs flour with 1-2 tbs water. With a small, soft paintbrush I make dots of flour-water on the toilet paper. Then I touched the tip of the brush to a seed to make it stick to the brush, and then I touched the paper to get it off. I spread the carrot seeds out about 3 inches apart. Now they are on a cookie sheet drying.
Tomorrow when we plant the strips, we can just lay them in, cover with a little soil mix, water, and hope they germinate and the toilet paper breaks down quickly.
