seed strips

Picked a nice bunch of Green Beans today. Planted Carrot seed in the first cleared plot. Combined two tips that I learned from reading garden books. First was to make seed strips- cut paper towels into narrow strips, dab on a thin paste of water and flour every marked off three inches, stick the seeds on evenly spaced, let it dry. Then lay them down on the soil, sprinkle more dirt over top and pat down. Easy that way to make sure the tiny seeds are all evenly spaced. Then water with hot boiling water, that worked well for me in spring getting the seeds to germinate quickly. Two lengths of five paper towel squares cut into five or six strips each filled one plot quite nicely.

When it's too cool for the tomatoes to ripen on the vine quickly but they're still growing, I pick them and put inside on windowsill to finish ripening. The row of round, rosy shapes is such a cheerful feel of approaching autumn, for me. More so than falling leaves- we don't have many even changing color yet. But already the tomatoes line the windowsill, in their various hues creeping from green with a touch of rose to juicy bold red (as in this month's header image).