Finally, Some Seed Bombs!

I seriously regret not getting this done back in November before the rains, but oh well. If anyone's curious a seed bomb is a pellet (or other fun shape) usually made of clay, compost and seeds. You can toss them into vacant/abandoned lots and other places that have been left to weeds and hopefully the seeds will germinate and prettify the landscape. Wish I'd known about this technique years ago, there are a few long time vacant commercial lots I'd always wanted to scatter seeds in, but didn't want to hop the fence and couldn't figure out how to toss the seed any distance. Mixing it with compost and clay solves the fence and distance problems.

You can find lots of different recipes on seed bombs at Guerillagardening.org, here and here :)

Last weekend I got together with Jean and we finally made them!

my conspirator, accomplice, partner! Jean and the flats we put the seed bombs in to dry out :)

 and some of our finished seed bombs

 (mine on left, Jean's on right)

As you can see, Jean wore gloves. I did not. Here soil balls came out much smoother than mine did (and she did not suffer so much from little bits of twig/stick in the compost poking her hands). I don't know if that will make a difference in the final product.

 I had printed up several recipes I found on how to make them which we basically ended up not using :9 We broke up clay from the soil in my yard into little bits. Then accidentally added an equal amount of compost from Jean's bin instead of 5:1 clay to compost most recipes were recommending. But it was actually holding together well and easily shaped. So then we said screw it let's do it this way and dumped in the California wildflowers seed large packet (it was probably around 14 grams like the B.I. large packets). Then we just rolled them into little balls. Simple.

We set them in two nursery flats Jean had to dry, I took one back home to my place. I don't think we really need to wait for them to dry out, they were holding together well and should fly over fields with ease. We did a second small batch with cosmo, marigold and.... I forget what other flowers :9 Jean help!

 The green bucket in the pics that looks full of dirt - that's not dirt. That's the 3 gallons of clay I dug up from the front border of my yard. I am glad that is out of the ground and I have space to mix in some nice compost (and maybe my border will grow in properly this year).

It really didn't take much in the way of raw materials. The green bucket with clay was filled to the brim when we started and you can see in the last pic we used very little of it, and add to that equal compost, then seeds. I think we each have about...4 or 5 dozen seed bombs. So simple. Why didn't we figure this out sooner?!

So this weekend I will be riding the neighborhood and going after the huge parking lot/dirt plot of the former Malibu Castle... mwuahahaha

THANKS JEAN!!! :) We must do this again.

Seed Collecting

Now that summer's firmly moved into my garden I've been harvesting seeds from most of my spring plants. I'm actually very surprised at how much I'm coming up with.

 

 

One I didn't plan on was this radish, it bolted while I was away for a weekend and I thought "hmmm, we have never seen radish flowers, this might be interesting". Well, it turns out bolting radish looks like a weed o.O but the flowers are rather pretty and attract tons of bees so it was worth it.

 

 

And here are some of the seed pods I finally harvested. This fall's free crop of radish in the palm of my hand...mwuahahahahaha.

 

My current list of home collected seeds includes:

 

• green onion
• chives
• sweet peas
• bluebells
• oriental poppies
• cosmos sea shells

I'm hoping to also get seeds from the zinnias, parsley and cucs eventually.

Seed Trading at Dave's

Good morning.

I recently joined Dave's Garden (freealthough they have subscription services also). This site pulled me in because it carries a wealth of free information from plant profiles, to discussion forums and all kinds of articles.

What finally did it for me was their Plant & Seed Trading forum. This is something I've been wanting to try for the last few months but didn't quite know how to test the waters. One this site it's free to set up a Trade List, the process is slightly tedious but not overly complicated. You can start a Trade List from links in your profile, My Tools tab, or you click the Communities Tab and then scroll down to Plant and Seed Trading. There is a link on those pages to manage your own list by adding what you have to trade and what you want.

When adding a new plant first you must select whether you Have or Want it from a drop-down list. Then there are boxes to check what you have/want of that specific plant, the choices are Seeds, Plants, Roots Tubers and Bulbs, and Cuttings.  To start adding plants you will need the scientific name, both the Genus and the specie which will be entered into different boxes. You may also add the variety name (the italisized one ex. Bright Lights variety of Cosmo) if you have a specific one in mind, the sytem will pickup the common name of the plant on it's own from the latin one. And finally there is the Special Notes box. If it's a plant you want you might repeat that you want seeds/cuttings and how many, perhaps also mention what you'd like in exchange. The same for things you have to trade.

After adding a plant it takes you to the list it's under (Have or Want). Under Plant Name it will usually have some options to check such as a choice of varieties/cultivars if it some are already listed on their site, and always the choice of "No Cultivar" (if you choose that only the typical common name will be used in the listing for searches). Be prepared to see variety names slightly different from the one you are looking for (happened to me for Lemon Basil) or to not see the specific one you're looking for at all. If your variety is not a choice, just add that to the Special Notes by editing the listing. A picture may automatically be added to the listing after you've chosen a cultivar from an existing one in their plant catalog, if you don't like it or they don't have one you may upload your own.

As I said before the system is not perfect and you will need to play with it a bit to get familiar, but it's worth a shot :)

If anyone's interested in trading with me here's my Trade Lists.

the Waiting Game

My Green Children are forcing me to be patient...

I have so many seedlings started and seeds I'm waiting to see sprout. I really want to be sure I'm starting enough of the flowers to fill mom's beds well. Some of the plants I started for my mom are almost ready to transplant...but the new flower beds aren't even started yet. My parents keep changing their minds about what they're doing to the yard. Last night we had a quick gruop talk to go over the contractor's recommendations. Because of the bad drainage in the yard it seems we're going to start completely from scratch so he can re-grade. Seems dad is going to spend more on this than planned-but improvements to their house are long overdue and that's the price of procrastinating. I may further edit the yard plan since we don't have to worry about only disturbing some areas... But if they don't start work soon I will have to scour the 99 cent store for larger cups/containers for the flower...

Two nights ago I set some seeds to pre-soak. Usually I only do that for the chard, beets and sweet peas, but I thought I'd give it a try for my next round of seeds. I was suprised to see the basil seeds developed an odd jelly coating.

The Blue Butterfly Bush I moved a couple of weeks ago went into shock. It did fine the first week, hence my happy post, but with the unusually early hot weather not so much. Since Friday it's been losing leaves and showing some signs of pallor. It got it's weekly watering on Sat, and I watered it again last night. This morning I lightly watered again with some liquid fertilizer to make sure it's getting nutrients. Now I need to leave it alone a few days and cross my fingers.

And I want my veggies! It's been a month or two since some of my larger veggies have been growing in their beds/permanent containers. I'm most surprised that the Cauliflower which are actually in the ground still haven't started growing their heads. The cabbage are getting pretty big leaves, but no cabbage head yet :/ But I'm most excited about my broccoli! They've been developing heads for a couple of weeks, one is nearly ready (I need to check info on the best moment to harvest). They're hanging basket is currently sheltered  by the storage shelves, the current heatwave was not playing nice with them (nor the kale, chard and lettuce).

Too Late/Too Early?

I've gotten a bit off track on my gardening in the last two or 3 weeks while trying to prepare for a yard sale. I'm glad I kept track of what and how many of everything I've sowed on an extra calendar, but I've begun to forget the general plan I had in my head. Now the problem I'm looking at is if it's too late to try to start growing some of the seeds I wanted and too early for others. This is always on my mind being in the Southbay area and the weird weather we've been having the last year and a half.

My major worry is the last frost date. Normally we just don't have any frost at all. Normally. Once every few years there will be one (maybe two)  mornings where I head out the door to work and find the grass frosty and the birthbath icy. Once the birthbath water was frozen solid...that was kind of funny. Anyway, with the weather so abnormally cold for my area this year I've been trying to plan around figuring we're likely to have a night of frost in February or March. I don't want any of my green babies to get frozen to death after all. But will one night of Socal frost really kill them? 90% of any seed and new shoots will be in my back patio area which is fairly sheltered, I can't remember if previous nights of frost affected anything beyond the open front and side yard areas. Will they be ok back there? I don't think any of the plants in the front and side yard were damaged from frost before...but I wasn't paying attention at the time, they were all dad's plants then. Am I wasting my brain cells and planting time worrying about frost at all?

Besides the frost question I'm concerned I waited too long to start some of my seeds, especially the spring veggies and bloomers. In my area "Spring" is practically over by May and "Summer" lasts into October. That said, should I stop planting anymore spring veggies that might not come into harvest before the summer heat?! Is it too early for my summer veggies?!

Ok, time to just go experitment and remember to record what happens so I know better next year...