100 Square feet is not a lot of garden. But I've planted zucchini. (click to enlarge)
The smaller the seed, the less I trust it. An hour ago I was planting carrot seeds in a two square foot patch of my new little 100 square foot test garden. I had my reading glasses on in order to see the darn things in the first place, piled up in the palm of my left hand like a half thimbleful of sand. I was dribbling them, pinched between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand, into a dolly-sized furrow a 1/4 inch deep, my face six inches from the dirt, losing confidence by the second as each seed dropped and disappeared into the micro-crevices of soil.
This was new soil, a not particularly homogenous brew of little clay balls, thumb-sized tangles of grass root, sand, half-done compost, crumbly chunks of peat, chopped up leaves from the neighbor’s stash, and bits of yellow oat straw. It was the best I could do, given that just 5 days ago where this 50 square foot bed now lies (you can lie in beds, but do beds themselves lie?) was a patch of lawn that had been growing over hard-pan Indiana clay for 50 years.
As I watched my microscopic carrot seeds drop into the oblivion of this raw garden soil, a burst of wind from a stealth thunderstorm front tore the rest of the seeds out of my upturned palm, and lo, the remainder of my carrots got planted at random down the length of the bed. This was about half a packet of Danvers carrots from Seed Savers Exchange, and at $2.75 a pop, not a negligible loss.
Give me a seed that has heft and weight. Say, a scarlet runner bean (I’ve been growing these out from seeds I got in Tucson 10 years ago). A bean as big as the end joint of your index finger. Step on one on the kitchen floor with your bare foot in the dark and you’ll limp for a week. [read more…]
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