The Natural Life - Relax

Now you can chill for just a second.

Hello Frens,

Welcome back to the Natural Life. It’s been another action packed week and I was able to get my garden planted. I posted a short thread on my row crop planting process here. I now have a good bit of vegetables planted in my backyard and I’m looking forward to the idea of saving a little money at the grocery store. Now I can relax a little while I wait on the plants to sprout. Today I’m talking a little more about planting seeds and then we’ll move on to the next steps for your garden.

Seeds planted and watered is a great feeling.

I wasn’t able to take any pictures or videos of the actual seed planting process. Planting seeds in a large row style garden is actually hard work. Ultimately, you have to just dive in and get your hands dirty. Once you start working at it, you’ll see there are a few steps that are better done before you start. I went over this a little bit in my twitter thread.

Row Crop Seed Planting Process

You will want to take a look at the weather before you start planting seeds. If you have a thunderstorm coming, you need to wait so the seeds aren’t washed away. A light rain after you get everything planted is ideal.

First thing I do is lay out all my seeds to make sure I have everything that I want to plant. Then I write down all of the plants on plant markers, this time I just used a marker to write on popsicle sticks. I use these to mark the start of a row of plants. Next, you will need a hoe or garden rake, and a stick about 4 feet long, I use a piece of 1/2”x 1/2” plant stake about 4 feet long.

If you’re planting in a row the easiest way I have found is to use a long stick to drag a strip in the top of the row, this is much easier than poking holes or digging each small opening at the proper spacing. Now, all you have to do is drop the seeds in to the crack you made at the proper spacing according to the seed packet information. After I’ve planted the amount of seeds on the row according to my crop plan, I come back to each spot and cover the seeds up with my hand. When I’m done I close the seed pack and put the popsicle stick with the seed name in the dirt where the last seed was planted.

Then you get the next pack of seeds and repeat the process. It sounds easy, but this is a lot of work. Most of these seeds are tiny, so you’re just doing your best to get 1-3 seeds in each location at the proper spacing, but don’t let me lie to you, you’re going to spill and drop the seeds in various places, don’t worry too much about it. This is another advantage to starting your plants from seed ahead of time indoors, you can take your time and get one seed in each seed pod. When you are outdoors and so many seeds to plant you’re a little less deliberate with each seed.

After I got all of my seeds in the dirt and covered up, I hooked up my water hose and watered all the rows. This is very important! The water compacts the dirt around the seed and causes the seeds to begin their sprouting process. We’ll come back and water daily or every other day based on how dry the soil looks. Soil needs to be damp but not waterlogged.

What’s Next

Hopefully in a week or so, we’ll be able to report back tiny green sprouts along the tops of my rows. In the mean time, we can relax a little bit, but there’s always more work to do anon!

An Internet picture of a beautiful row style garden, maybe one day we will be able to achieve such autistic gardening abilities

Weed Control:

Whether you are using a raised bed or rows, you will still have a problem with weeds. On your raised bed, if you used potting soil, there shouldn’t be any weed seeds in your dirt, but grass and weeds will start to grow on the outside of your raised beds. You can use a string trimmer and lawn mower or you can put down some plastic around the edges of your raised beds. Another idea is to put mulch, straw, hay, or any other natural debris you have readily available to smother out the grass and keep things looking good around your raised beds.

Here you can see they put down some material around the raised beds to keep things looking real nice and maintenance free.

For row crops, you want to go ahead and get your material ready, as soon as your sprouts begin to come up, you want to put some type of material down around them to smother out the weeds. You can leave the dirt bear, but this will require you to use a hoe or your hands to weed around the young plants, and you’ll have to do this often, and stay on top of it or the weeds will get out of control quickly.

The plants need to stay weed free until they are well established in order for them to make it. I’m going to use hay or pine straw around my plants. So now is the time to start collecting pine straw from under pine trees on my place and haul it back to the garden. I’ll also bring a hay bale over to the garden, to put the hay in the walking rows like the picture above.

Autist Note: There are seeds in the hay. Grass will come up where you put the hay eventually. Straw is better since it has no seeds, I’m planning to put straw around the crops and hay in the walking rows. Try to find material that is cheap or free, a good homesteader uses what is readily available, instead of running to the store or buying stuff.

Luckily, we have access to plenty of hay, try to find material that is free or cheap to use on your garden Anon!

Other than watering and gathering material it is a waiting game for the next few weeks. Enjoy the spare time you have, because once the plants begin to come into maturity, you will have more work to do, harvesting and preparing your bounty.

Here is a list of everything I planted:

• Carrots

• Radish

• Cauliflower

• Mustard Greens

• Beets

• Collard Greens

• Turnips

• Black Seeded Simpson 

• Parris Island Romaine

• Butterhead                                       

• Crisphead

• Oakleaf                                             

• Salad Bowl

• Tom Thumb

• Mesculin Mix

• Broccoli

• Brussels Sprouts

You’re probably thinking this is a whole lot of lettuce varieties!… and it is. I suggest you try many different types of plants as well. You will find what works and what doesn’t work in your area, you may find some variety that grows really easy for you. I bought this seed packet on Ebay and it came with 8 different lettuce seeds. Who knows, you might find a variety that you find super tasty! Always try new things in your garden and on your homestead, this is how you learn and get better!

Until next time Anon, Remember… We All Gone Make It!

Your Fren,

Farmer