Saving My Seedlings

by Amy Stevens AdamscloseAuthor: Amy Stevens Adams Name: Amy Stevens Adams
Email: amy@capecodbranding.com
Site: http://capecodbranding.com
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As John mentioned last week, we have planted a container garden on our back deck. I am just learning my way as a new gardener and therefore we have hired Fiona, who is an experienced container gardener to help get us going. She designed a beautiful vegetable garden for our planter. For more info about Fiona and our garden projects, you may read John’s article, titled The Container Gardener.

At the beginning of last weekend, Fiona called to warn me that there was a heavy rainstorm headed to the Cape that afternoon/evening and she was concerned about my fragile lettuce seedlings that had just begun to sprout (they were maybe only  1/8-1/4″ high so far). The garden was just planted earlier in the week, and she recommended that John and I find a stable way to cover the seeds before the rain started. On top of that we were expected to get strong winds so we needed something secure. Thankfully, John and I are excellent at solving problems when we work as a team. So we headed off to Lowes…

Unsure of what we were going to create, we came home with a mix of supplies; tarps, bamboo stakes, twine, a staple gun and staples.

Here is our garden in the rain before we started. It is populated with herbs and flowers that are already stable, however we needed the cover because we have lettuce, carrot and radish seeds that aren’t established yet in the soil. In a couple more weeks we won’t have to worry ‘too’ much about rainstorms once the seeds take root and we have actual plants.

So we started by protecting our seeds.  We gently covered them with strips of paper towels (per Fiona’s recommendation) to keep the rain and water from ‘splashing’ them out of place.

Then we put down bamboo stakes around the perimeter of the planter, and one longer one in the middle (to create a run-off when when put the tarp over it).

Next we covered it with an 8′ x 10′ tarp (our planter is 8′ x 3′) and because of the strong wind that was expected, we had decided to staple the tarp down to the deck. We gave this part much thought. Because of the wind, we knew we couldn’t just tie the tarp down, or even try to weigh it down, it needed to be permanently secured. So we put a staple in about every 10″ around the base of the planter.

It did rain all through the night, and the following day our make-shift cover was still in place! We used needle nose pliers to remove the staples, with little to no damage to the tarps and no damage to the wood. Now we can reuse the tarps and stakes if we encounter another big storm before the plants are mature.  I’ll post more updates of my garden as it grows and flourishes.

I hope our solution can help anyone else who may have the same dilemma. Happy Planting!

-Amy Stevens Adams of Cape Cod Branding

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