Today I took a page from Annie's book of wisdom and decided to try making carrot seed mats. I love carrots and always plant many of them so I can snack while I'm in the garden and have them used in cooking. I also like many varieties but hate that so many seeds were wasted each time - they're so small that it's hard to really plant them in normal intervals without taking forever. So normally i would sprinkle the in wide rows and then thin them out. What waste of seeds! And then I stumbled on Annie's blog and was floored when I read about her seed mats - would never ave thought about it myself. So today being cold and rainy day I made them. 
I used the same method that she shows in her tutorial - napkin, water soluble glue and seeds. I made several of these and each has label on it so I know what variety it is - Purple Dragon, Nantes Scarlet coreless and Red Cored Chantenay. And I made 3 types of mats - one very dense - this will be used for baby carrots. 3 mediums and 3 large spacing for purple dragon. I still need to do few more because i want more Nantes and more Purple Dragon for second wave of planting. Has anyone else tried this method before? And can you recommend any other good varieties to try?
I used the same method that she shows in her tutorial - napkin, water soluble glue and seeds. I made several of these and each has label on it so I know what variety it is - Purple Dragon, Nantes Scarlet coreless and Red Cored Chantenay. And I made 3 types of mats - one very dense - this will be used for baby carrots. 3 mediums and 3 large spacing for purple dragon. I still need to do few more because i want more Nantes and more Purple Dragon for second wave of planting. Has anyone else tried this method before? And can you recommend any other good varieties to try?
i saw this post and went and made seed mats immediately! ha! i remember granny posting this and always wanted to try. thanks for the reminder.=)
ReplyDeletequestion - what state/zone are you in?
According to USDA Plant Hardiness I'm in zone 6a. location wise I'm up in northwest corner of NJ in Sussex mountains - on border with PA on west and NY north. So about 5 degrees cooler than the rest of Jersey areas :)
DeleteI've been meaning to try this too. Maybe this weekend! My carrots in the container were a major fail.
ReplyDeleteI've tried this method with lettuce and radishes. Germination was good and it did cut down on thinning. Unfortunately my location makes this a hard way to plant. The constant wind coming over the mountain makes it a real challenge to lay the mats out flat!
ReplyDelete