Coffee Cans and Seed Mats

I wanted to do a quick update on my seed mates that I sowed last month. The Easter Egg radishes germinated beautifully, about 90% I believe. They should start to bulb up within the next couple of weeks. The gourmet blend beets that I sowed (upper-right hand corner) were less reliable. Germination was more like 50%. I will have to split some of the doubles and reseed other areas with fresh seed.


The carrots also germinated very well - at about 85%. I have many different colors and varieties here including Cosmic Purple and Scarlet Nantes. I'm sure I will get a few white, red and yellow colored carrots as well. As you can see, they are starting to develop their first true leaves. Hopefully growth will speed up as temperatures rise.


In other news, I wanted to find a use for all of the empty coffee cans that we have lying around the house. I decided to make small planters out of them. First I started by making 3 slits on the bottom of each can to facilitate drainage.


Then I filled them up with a mix of organic potting soil and compost and transplanted some Rhubarb Swiss Chard. I think they'll look pretty charming in the garden. I wonder what else I can grow in these...maybe some lettuce, mizuna and arugula perhaps?

Late Winter Sowings - Fava Beans, Snow Peas and Seed Mats

This past weekend, I planted my Fava beans. Traditionally, Fava beans are sown when the crocus emerge or as soon as the soil can be worked. My raised beds have thawed out completely due to the recent rains and though it seems a bit early, I thought I'd take a chance. While our nightly temperatures are averaging in the high 20's to low 30's, I've read that Fava bean seedlings can tolerate temperatures down the low 20's. In any case, I can cover my quick hoops with plastic in a jiffy if I have to.


I also planted several rows of snow peas in 2 different beds. The seeds were sown fairly close together because I will be harvesting the young shoots as greens. If you've never tried pea shoots, please do because they are absolutely delicious. After a cutting or two, I will pull half of them and let the remaining plants mature. Also, I made sure to soak my Fava beans and peas for 12 hours prior to planting. Hopefully, that will kick start the germination process.


My homemade seed mats containing Scarlet Nantes, Cosmic Purple and Carnival blend carrots, several different varieties of beets, and Easter Egg radishes were ready to be sown undercover. The carrots and radishes were spaced 2 inches apart and the beets were spaced 4 inches apart on each mat.


I started off by amending and leveling my raised bed.


I then laid down my mats and covered them with a bit of packaged organic gardening soil.


Once all of the mats were in place, I covered them completely and tamped down the soil lightly with the back of my garden rake. Simple as that. Quick and easy. Hopefully, they will germinate well and I'll have ultra-neatly planted rows to admire. :-)

If you'd like to construct your own seed mats, read Granny's awesome tutorial here or a post I wrote here.

Construct Your Own Seed Mats

"Construct Your Own Seed Mats," as posted on Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op on December 21, 2009.

Posted by Thomas from A Growing Tradition Blog

Homemade Seed Mats (Radishes)

Have you ever come across an idea that sounded a bit silly or even crazy at first, but then the more you thought about it, the more you realized how absolutely brilliant it is? In this case, it took me about 5 seconds to see the light of day. And I have to thank none other than Gran from Annie's Kitchen Garden for enlightening me.

This my friends is a homemade seed mat, which allows you to sow many of your crops accurately and efficiently. For me at least, the benefits of these mats seem endless. Here are just a few I can think of as I'm writing this:

• The obvious - thinning, or lack there of. Since you've perfectly spaced the seeds on the mat, you spend less time thinning your seedlings. Carrot growers rejoice!
• Eliminating waste - Since you have less to thin, you also get to keep more of what you sow. Seeds are becoming increasingly expensive these days and more gardeners are choosing to save seed. These mats allow you to maximize your seed usage.
• Aesthetics - The perfect spacing achieved by these mats gives your garden an ultra-neat look.
• Maximizing space - Seed mats allow you to maximize your available square footage by evenly spacing your plants according to their specific requirements. This is particularly important if you only have a limited amount of growing space in your garden, hoop house or cold frames.
• Regulating growth - Because your plants are evenly spaced, their overall growth becomes more regulated.
  
• Time and flexibility - You're sowing entire mats, which is a fraction of the time it takes to sow individual seeds. (Your back will thank you.) Also, it took me about 15 minutes to construct 3 mats while comfortably sitting at a table. This is the type of gardening I don't mind doing at 11 pm.
• Comfort - they are particularly useful for small seeds and crops that do not require large amounts of space in which to grow. From my own experience, I've found certain seeds to be particularly tedious to handle and sow into neat rows (wild arugula seed, for example, is the size of a grain of sugar).
• Finally, cost - It costs next to nothing to make these mats and chances are, you already have the materials in your home. A six-row seeder costs $549.00.

Are you convinced yet? Or curious at least? Then give these homemade seed mats a try. All you need are some thin single-ply paper napkins or toilet tissue (anything that disintegrates easily when wet), some water soluble glue (like your child's Elmer's glue), a ruler and toothpick. Personally, I use fast food restaurant napkins for my mats, which degrade very quickly in the garden. The directions are pretty straight forward:

1. Unfold your napkin. On your napkin, using a ruler and pen, make a series of evenly spaced points. The space between these points will be dictated by the type of crop you are sowing. To give you an idea, most baby salad crops can be spaced 2 square inches apart (2 in by 1 in). Carrots and radishes can by spaced 4 square inches apart (2 in by 2 in). Spinach, many Asian greens, turnips, beets, claytonia and smaller-head varieties of lettuce can be spaced 16 square inches apart (4 in by 4 in). In fact, these seed mats are best for any crop that you can direct sow and space 6 inches apart or less.

2. Going row by row, dab the slightest bit of glue onto each point. (I've also used a thick paste made from flour and water, which worked well too. Use a toothpick to dab a bit onto each point.)

3. Place a seed at each point and press lightly with your finger. (For baby salad crops, I adhere 2 to 3 seeds at each point for better germination rates. For small or more delicate seeds such as carrots and many salad crops, touch the tip of a toothpick to your tongue or a wet sponge and use it to pick up and transfer the seed.)

4. Let the mats dry completely. Do not store stacked until they are completely dry.

Newly Sown Mats

5. In the garden, amend your bed and level the soil surface with a garden rake. Lay the mats on top and sprinkle a bit of compost or garden soil onto each mat to keep them in place. (You can make a 50/50 mixture of compost and organic garden soil.) Once all of the mats are laid down, fill with enough soil to achieve the appropriate sowing depth. Water thoroughly.

6. Two or three days after the first seeds have sprouted, fill in any germination gaps with fresh seed.

I achieved about a 90% germination rate with my radish seed mats.

And that's about it. Hopefully, some of you who are as anal as I am about neat and evenly planted rows will give this a try. For Gran's instructions on how to construct these seed mats, click here.

Same radish bed a few weeks later.

Fall Garden Surprise

In early October, I did a post on sowing radishes using Annie's Granny's homemade seed mat technique. I haven't written an update on this because for a long time it looked as though the radishes weren't doing much of anything (as you can see from the picture above taken yesterday). In fact, I've been ignoring them mainly because I thought they'd be killed off by frost long before producing a crop.



However, I decided to take a closer look yesterday, and low and behold, they are starting to bulb up. Very strange. I've been gauging their growth by the amount of green foliage they've put on but I guess they don't need much in order to produce a crop. I haven't offered them any sort of protection from the weather thus far but am considering it now. If we don't see a hard frost within the next couple of weeks, I might be able to get at least a partial harvest. I love when plants surprise you.

Seed Mats - Radishes

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to create my own seed mats after seeing a tutorial given by Gran at Annie's Kitchen Garden. I have to admit, the concept was completely new to me and I was very excited to give it a try. If you've ever seen photos of Eliot Coleman's Four Season Farm, you'd be amazed at the level of accuracy and neatness that can be accomplished by a 6-row seeder (which can by purchased at Johnny's at a hefty price). I wanted to be able to duplicate this on a much smaller scale in my home garden.

I had listed the many potential benefits of using seed mats that I could come up with in an earlier post. For instance, I could see how they would be useful for small seeds and crops that do not require a large amount of space in which to grow. From my own experience, I've found certain seeds to be particularly tedious to handle and sow into neat rows (wild arugula seed, for example, is the size of a grain of sugar). And having to thin carrot seedlings is a chore that my back would gladly live without. Finally, as I'm just about to harvest some of my Hakurei turnips, I've noticed that growth has been pretty irregular due to the fact that the spacing between each plant is not consistent, a problem I'm hoping to solve with these mats.


I decided to grow a quick crop of radishes (30 days to maturity) using this method. To construct the seed mat, I used fast food chain style napkins that measured 12" x 12" when unfolded. On each napkin, I was able to fit 24 radish seeds spaced 2 inches apart. Since my raised beds measured 6 feet in length, I was able to align comfortably about 5 and a half mats down one strip.

I amended the soil in my bed and leveled it using a garden rake before positioning the mats seed side up. I then covered the mats with about a half inch of compost and watered well. It was as easy as that.


One week later, about 90% of my radishes germinated and sprouted within a 24 hour period. They look impeccably spaced and their growth appears very consistent. I'm extremely happy with the results. This past weekend, I sowed some mache, minutina and Tango lettuce using the same method. Hopefully they will do just as well.

Homemade Seed Mat

Homemade seed mat of radishes spaced 2 inches apart.

Have you ever come across an idea that sounded a bit silly or even crazy at first, but then the more you thought about it, the more you realized how absolutely brilliant it is? In this case, it took me about 5 seconds to see the light of day. And I have to thank none other than Granny from Annie's Kitchen Garden for enlightening me.

This my friends is a homemade seed mat - my first and therefore a bit of an experiment. For me at least, the benefits of these mats seem endless. Here are just a few I can think of as I'm writing this:

• The obvious - thinning, or lack there of. Since you've perfectly spaced the seeds on the mat, you no longer have to spend time thinning your seedlings. Carrot growers rejoice!
• Eliminating waste - Since you no longer have to thin, you also get to keep more of what you sow. Seeds are becoming increasingly expensive these days and more gardeners are choosing to save seed. These mats allow you to maximize your seed usage.
• Aesthetics - The perfect spacing achieved by these mats gives your garden an ultra-neat look.
• Maximizing space - Seed mats allow you to maximize your available square footage by evenly spacing your plants according to their specific requirements. This is particularly important if you only have a limited amount of growing space in your garden, hoop house or cold frames.
• Regulating growth - Because your plants are evenly spaced, their overall growth becomes more regulated.
• Time and flexibility - You're sowing entire mats, which is a fraction of the time it takes to sow individual seeds. (Your back will thank you.) Also, it took me about 15 minutes to construct 3 mats while comfortably sitting at a table. This is the type of gardening I don't mind doing at 11 pm.
• Finally, cost - It costs next to nothing to make these mats and chances are, you already have the materials in your home. A six-row seeder costs $549.00.

Are you convinced yet? Or curious at least? Then click on this link to Granny's post on on how to construct these mats. I plan on testing these on various crops in my garden this fall and winter and will report my results. If you have any positive or negative experiences using seeds mats, or have any tips, please do share!