You Can't Stop Seeds

Mother Nature can sure deliver a wallop of winter during springtime -- but she can't stop seeds from bursting out of the ground. And our direct seed efforts are paying off with the introduction of new cucumber, watermelon, cantaloupe and tomato plants to the garden.

Venus and I direct seeded into these cups about two or three weeks ago. Warm weather would have been nice -- I know. But the weather didn't cooperate as you probably know. We got walloped with one rainstorm after another here in the Sacramento area, although now we've been blessed with some clearing and it looks like a right fine weekend this weekend in the Sacramento area.

Get ready to plant!

The wife that is Venus has already started "Stage 2" of the Direct Seed effort and she has started 14-15 cups of various vegetable plant starters, including, but not limited too, pole beans, squash, zucchini, muskmelon and a few other things that I can't think of at the moment. Most of sprouted, but are still somewhat behind the Direct Seed cups we planted a few weeks back.

A few warm days, which are about to arrive, will take care of that.

If you're still itching to plant that garden, there's still time to direct seed, although I will admit that time is running short. If you don't want to find yourself limited to what Big Box stores or nurseries are offering, here's what you do.

Grab yourself some ordinary planting cups (old cups work just fine), some ordinary planter mix and seeds. Fill the cups with planter mix and plant seeds. It's that simple!

In our case? We keep the cups in a pathway around the lawn. This way

they get water from the morning sprinklers, and we don't have to worry about watering them day in and day out. The sprinklers tend to take care of those water needs.

At some point, in the next week or two, these cups will find permanent homes in the planter beds scattered about the yard.

I'm not quite able to put my finger on it, but there's something immensely satisfying when it comes to starting seeds. Perhaps it's the fact that there's no instant gratification? Perhaps it's you've helped create and nurture life?

Or, perhaps it's just the beer.