Buckle up -we’ve got lots of seedy news this Sunday!

Seems I’m not even close to being done planting seeds. These one came in the mail last week.

The Swiss Chard and Corn Flowers got planted directly, but the watermelon and sweet peas needed to be started inside. I didn’t have any more pans for seed snails, but I did still have some of these seed starter kits.

Since the sweet peas don’t like their roots disturbed ,they are probably a better choice anyway. And those watermelon… they are called Mini Mike… like the Sugar Babies I planted last year, they are a small “personal-sized” watermelon. But these Mini Mikes are supposed to have much smaller seeds. But that pack… only FIVE seeds! I certainly wasn’t going to do a whole snail for five seeds.

So, I did five little pods with melons and filled the rest with sweet peas.

Though I’ve tried many times, I’ve only once been able to get decent sweet peas once. It was our first year at the townhouse… but then bunbun came and ate them all.

And those seed snails…. well, it was time to give them some attention. One of the advantages of snails is that you can plant many seeds in a small space. And… you don’t have to pot them on. You just have to unroll and pack in a little more soil every so often. This is only my second time trying seed snails. And last year, I started the seeds late so I didn’t bother with this step since everything was outside. I just put the seedlings in big pots outside.

That’s not an option yet. And several seedlings had started to wither. They needed some attention.

Now unrolling is easier said than done, as the seedlings tend to tangle quite a bit. And once you pack in more dirt, the snails are bigger, and take up more room. I got rid of any snails that hadn’t germinated/died off and managed to fit all the repacked snails in two trays.

While I am only half way through this experiment, I think I’ve concluded that seed snails work best for robust seeds/seedlings.

These pumpkin seedlings look FABULOUS! But more delicate ones, like the marigolds, foxglove and grass have not faired so well. Happily, I had more seed for all of those, so I planted some foxglove direct, and then used a few more of those seed starter kits to plant some back up for the rest.

The biggest disappointment was that all of my sunflowers planted in snails died off. That really surprised me, as they did well last year. I don’y have any back up sunflower seeds at all – so they’ve gone on the to buy list. I MUST have sunflowers in the garden.

In happier seed news, things are happening with the other seeds I planted directly.

We’ve got tiny lettuce and spinach sprouts.

And they we’re wrong about radishes…

They are growing fast! Apparently I could be harvesting radishes before the end of May!

And after weeks and weeks and WEEKS of nothing…

We’ve finally got signs of life in the Winter Sow jugs. If you recall, these were planted with native seeds from the Ottawa Seed Library. These are Joe Pye Weed, Pearly Everlasting and St. John’s Wort. I also have a jug of Hairy Beardtongue, but so far, nothing is happening there.

So that’s it for this week… but another order of seeds just arrived… and I’ve got to get some carrots and potatoes planted. It’s certainly exciting times around here!