So, I made my mats containing carrot, lettuce/mesclun, and radish seeds. I used Kirkland (Costco) brand napkins, and followed Granny's lead with putting everything together. Granny didn't specify how she dotted her napkins, but I just stacked them up and held the permanent marker on them for a few seconds so the ink would go through all layers. This saved a lot of time by not having to dot each individually.
Lettuce mat...
Carrot mats...
Radish mat strips... The radish seeds are larger and easier to handle than carrot and lettuce seeds, but I chose to do these strips to save time later. These guys will be grown at the tops and bottoms of my broccoli squares.
With the weather finally cooling off, I decided to get my lettuce and carrots started yesterday. It turned out to be very helpful to have these mats because it was windy and chilly! Because of the wind, and having topped off the raised bed's contents last week, I decided to wet the soil to keep it from being blown all over the place (my eyes are usually the casualties), then scraped a 1/2 inch layer off the top before placing the seed mats down. I then covered the mat with the moist soil, and I was done!
In addition to the lettuce and carrot mats, I planted my green arrow peas.
Here's hoping the weather stays cool!
Totally cool. I'm so doing mats next year.
ReplyDeleteThat seems like such a cool method! I can't wait until I have a place where I can actually garden. Can't wait to see the results!
ReplyDeleteCan I ask how your carrots are doing or did with making those seed mats. I have some carrot seeds and would work on that while looking outside at my snow and wishing for spring ! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks,
Andrea
Andrea~ Thanks for checking my blog. Sorry it's taken so long to respond, and I hope you see this... I had good success with the seed mats for lettuce and radishes, but not much luck with carrots. A few things factor into this, however. I discovered the spot I planted the carrots in gets a lot less sunlight during the winter, and I think slugs got to a lot of the seedlings before I noticed they'd sprouted. I ended up sowing a row of carrots in a different spot, and thinning these with better success (although my peas are covering them now). I may try the carrot mats one more time to compare. Lettuce mats, definitely.
ReplyDelete