Sow Easy – Indoor School Garden Activity

By Lisa Gustavson,  Getinthegarden.com

Are you looking for an easy garden project to occupy your time while early sown seeds germinate and snows melt away? Seed tapes are the answer. They’re super-simple to make, use everyday items in your home and make sowing small seeds like lettuces and flowers a snap! Seed tapes are simply paper strips with seeds adhered to them. They make planting and spacing small seeds outdoors faster and easier.

What you’ll need: A paper towel or napkin, flour (organic), a small paintbrush and seeds. You may want to recycle a cardboard tube to roll the seed tapes around as well.

First: Mix the flour with enough water to make a medium-thick paste. Don’t worry about exact amounts, just so long as the paste is thick enough for the seeds to stick to.

Next: Use the paintbrush to dab the flour paste at equally spaced increments along the paper towel. Use the packet as a guide for spacing and a ruler if you’d like it to be precise. You can fit several rows along each sheet of paper towel.

Last: Press two or three seeds gently onto each dab of paste making sure they adhere. Let the strip dry completely and cut between each row of seeds. Roll up each strip and store in a plastic bag in a cool dry place until planting time.

This is a great project for children! Clean-up is a snap and if there is flour paste left over it can be thinned with more water and used to decoupage seed packets and flower pictures from catalogs to clay or plastic pots. (Be sure to coat with an eco-friendly sealant so they’ll be waterproof.) It’s sow easy!

Seed-Saving and Seed Study for Educators

Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (OAEC) School Garden Program announces the release of “A Handful of Seeds” – a new publication on seed saving and seed study for educators.

This guide is available now as a free PDF download on their website. CLICK HERE to download the 91 page (1.6MB) full color illustrated guide.  Inside you will find lessons linked to California Educational Standards, practical information on seed saving in the school garden and seed history and lore.

Choosing Tomato Seeds

Always a difficult decision. Tomatoes (and corn) is everyone’s favorite homegrown vegetable. We’ll be starting them indoors in late February and early March. If you haven’t gotten your seeds yet, get them NOW.

This year I’ve decided on Aunt Ruby’s German Green, Pineapple Tomato, Cherokee Purple and Sungold Tomato.

Sungolds are bright orange, cherry tomatoes, hybrids, very sweet, and very high yields. The others are heirlooms, open-pollinated, 1-2 pounders: green, yellow blush, and deep red.

The intent is both visual and culinary. The different colors will delight any child and the depth of flavors from the four varieties in a freshly made salsa, bruschetta, or checca will excite the palate of any adult.

Favorite Seed Companies:
Baker Creek
Botanical Interests
Gourmet Seed
PineTree Seeds

Seed Sale from Botanical Interests

Botanical Interests, Inc., supplier of quality seeds to independent garden centers and health food grocery stores, is extremely interested in helping schools with their school gardens.

For schools needing NEW seed for their gardens, email shaynal@botanicalinterests.com for a 40% discount code off any seed purchased from botanicalinterests.com.

Include the name of your school and your contact information. Old or donated seed with poor germination is very discouraging to kids and teachers when it doesn’t germinate after so many hours of preparing a garden!

Also check out http://www.botanicalinterests.com/schools.php for easy, paperless seed school fundraisers.”

For more information about School Garden Fundraisers see my Q&A with Curtis Jones, President of Botanical Interests.

Starting from Seed

The vegetables we grow are mostly annuals. They start from seed, flower,
and end as seeds all within a defined year. That’s their life cycle.

Bolted Lettuce

Save some seeds this year.  The easiest are cilantro and lettuce.
We also do arugula, fennel, marigolds, beans and sunflowers.
See Starting from Seed for more instructional material.

Marigold Seeds

School Starts Next Week, Be Prepared

School starts next week. For those with school gardens already in place now is the time to be ordering your seeds. For those who are starting from scratch see, How to Start and Maintain a School Garden.

If you’re not sure what is seasonal for your area check out your local cooperative extension. In mild winter areas like Southern California one can use the vegetable planting schedule from DigitalSeed.com

We already have seeds of cilantro, lettuce, arugula, and marigolds that we saved from last year. Be sure to set aside one or two of your plants this year to use for seeds. Not only does it show students the full life cycle of an annual plant it also saves your garden program some much needed funds.

For those who are buying, the following seed companies are worth looking into:

1) Botanical Interests – Based in Colorado, BI is a family owned business know for their large selection of certified organic varieties.

2) Baker Creek – Based in Missouri, with a new outpost in Northern California, BC is known for its large selection of heirloom varieties.

3) Gourmet Seed – If your fava beans must be Moroccan, and nothing else will suffice, GS is your place.

A list of what we’ll be growing this year includes the following: arugula, beets, bok choy, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, chives, cilantro, fava beans, fennel, garlic, kale, lettuce, mint, onions, oregano, parsley, peas, potatoes, radishes, rosemary, sorrel, spinach, swiss chard, tat soi, thyme, and turnips.

Lastly, perhaps you just want to throw some seeds into a container outside the classroom. If so, consider cool weather flowers such as stocks or snapdragons, a winter hardy herb garden or such easily grown veggies as lettuce, spinach and radishes.

Coriander Harvest

Its called cilantro when we harvest its leaves, and coriander when we use its seeds.

Being an annual, it’s one of those plants we get to witness a complete life cycle.

It was originally planted in the fall, bolted in winter, flowered, went to seed and now ready for the seeds to be harvested.

Collect the seeds for the following September and we’ll never again have to worry about buying cilantro seeds.