Kale, car­rots, dill
Look how far we’ve come since Jan­u­ary! These were all sown when the moon was wax­ing gib­bous in the sign of Can­cer. I’m not being very sci­en­tific in my moon phase sow­ing exper­i­ments, and I have no idea if it had much bear­ing, but I do know that I’ve been sow­ing seeds only dur­ing a wax­ing moon for as long as I can remem­ber, so I don’t have much to com­pare it to.

Attempt­ing to sow by moon phase means I found myself on a prime plant­ing day (astro­log­i­cally speak­ing) with­out any of my seed start­ing sup­plies. So I impro­vised with pie pans, warm­ing trays, cof­fee cup sleeves and toi­let rolls. For any­one try­ing out the cof­fee cup sleeves, I am hav­ing a hard time with them col­lect­ing damping-off fun­gus — it hasn’t mat­tered to the seedlings yet, the cin­na­mon is keep­ing the soil alright, but the sleeves them­selves get fuzzy with­out treat­ment. Ver­mi­culite and seed start­ing mix from the local hard­ware store (plus a touch of com­post from the gar­den). Every­thing kept moist with rain­wa­ter so far, a rather stun­ning feat in the arid Cal­i­for­nia cli­mate, but really I’ve only need about a gal­lon of water yet — we’ll see how long I can keep it up when the weather is actu­ally warm­ing up.