Monday, March 26, 2012

Sowing leafy annuals! Today was the day!

It's a new thing for me to follow the moon for planting. I wanted to make sure i got the right days for it, without having to resort to checking the chart each day or week, so last week i filled the 'fertile' dates til June, in my diary.
With the new moon, and a few days following, it's the best time for leafy annuals to be sown.
So today after getting back from school.. rushing to make the most of the last bit of daylight.. i took off up the hill with my seeds, a bunch of toilet rolls, some scissors, my big container of Seasol and a Hafiz book :)
I chopped the bottom of each toilet roll about an inch deep four times (think north south east west) and then folded two of the flaps in and two of the flaps out to help the toilet paper roll be upright.
I then took them to the compost pile and filled them up pretty close to the top, and positioned them in 2 rows together.

I tapped down the compost a little.. and then i arranged all my seeds in alphabetical order and positioned the rolls on a cardboard box in the same formation so i'd know which seedling was which (without labelling them).
Then i topped them up with compost and watered them in with a bit of seasol in creek water.
I'm not completely sure the compost was 'ready'. It was a bit warm to touch, and i'm not sure if that was from the heat of tghe sun from a nice warm day, or if it is still 'cooking'. If it's still cooking, i'm guessing the nitrogen might be too high, i'm not too sure.. so time will reveal more.
I feel glad to finally have got something planted, even though it wasn't a whole lot.
I know i overloaded the tp punnets but the great thing about the tp rolls is that they can go straight into the ground and they'll decompose without me needing to pull the seedlings out.
I was considering broadcasting seeds over compost, and may still take that avenue for some seeds..
Right now there's a heap of black plastic covering part of the area where i want to set up the beds.
I like the idea that it's killing off weeds for me while i'm at school! It's been there a few weeks already. I adjusted its position a little today and will keep an eye on it when i go up to water my seedlings each day.

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