Attempted the clay soil balls. Seriously so fun. Sown in my cold frame newly built from salvaged materials. Semi super impulsive move to sow this early, but we’ve had some warm days, who knows. The point is to see what grows.
Any ID on these? I think I see some orach, a sunflower, brassicas, allium, beet or chard, lentils, lettuce, and some kind of Cucumis. I expect a few things may outgrow the cold frame. We’ll see what happens!
Btw—now I know how to make clay I guess? How crazy is that?
Agree that second ball has some beet/chard, orach, and some sort of umbel family — my guess would be parsnip but it could also be the wild cow parsnip or something related.
Left the cold frame open for rain and checked back to close it. There is a reason the soil balls are recommended to be at least 1 inch thick: they hold water better than the smaller ones. The tiny ones looked dried out by the end of the day. It looks like the soil balls I made with just mud without grinding and sifting are holding water better than the clay, too. We’ll see what happens! Fukuoka seems to say the seed holding water is what matters, and after one rain they will have enough water to germinate, but he lived in Japan, not Utah. I guess if anything does well with this method, that’s my next generation of seed.
Sometimes we have a bit of a rainy season, I feel like we had that in the fall.
Thanks! If I had known it was parsnip I might have done it a bit differently. Oh well. Got sprouts! Featuring carrot greens and dead kale as a bit of mulch.
