Planting seeds..

I planted so many seeds this morning it was quite incredible. Four packets of radishes, three packets of carrots, two packets of beets and one packet of some lovely bunching onions. I had to get his done while watching two toddlers, who were much more interested in making holes than planting anything in them and luckily my love rescued me by taking our son away to entertain somewhere else. One toddler in the garden is much easier to manage and so we were quickly able to plant the last few packets in the random bare spots in the yard and get on with the rest of our day.

I originally had only planned to plant a few seeds from each pack but when the kids were helping me water this morning, somehow they all got wet... wet seeds need to be planted, so that's what we did. In the madness of planting I completely forgot about writing down what I planted where I planted it. Plus I also over seeded many of the crops which will either take care of itself with the help of a few insects or is going to take me a bunch of time in thinning, especially since they are all root crops and need plenty of growing space in the soil. I'm actually more bummed about this than I am about not knowing where all the food is growing. As soon as those seeds come up I'll have a nice little game to play called "name that seedling," not only does it cause me to pay more attention to minute details, it also helps me to learn the exact names of plants and gives me more insight into plant geneology.

To be honest I have only very loose drawings of the garden areas with plant names written down in barely legible scrawl. My partner told me he couldn't figure them out at all, so it's probably for the best that I didn't go back through them and change a few of the pages, adding even more jibberish to what already lay there. I'm also not very upset at the fact that most of the seeds got sprinkled and thrown about a bit so all my plantings are interspersed. Yay for polyculture in the garden, especially multiple varietals from a few different plant families! Since we are rebuilding the soil we want to have different plants, and plant families contributing wonderful organic matter to the soil. They all have different nutritional needs, soil bacterium and insect populations that will contribute to the vitality of the fledgling eco-system. Most of the root crops are going to be left in the soil, remember that we are planning on sheet mulching everything at the end of the season anyway, and all that wonderful plant matter is going to compost in place, leaving all the colonies of micro-organisms intact. Just thinking about all that soil life makes me so excited! Add to that the excitement of mystery seedlings and I am dancing in the clouds. I'm sure a few of you out there are cringing at the idea of letting seeds fall where they may, overplanting, not labeling and not really caring about the soil conditions, to you I ask, when was the last time you felt free in the garden? When was the last time your garden was about the earth?