weeding the seedlings
We're into serious seed-starting season here, and just to keep things interesting I've run into an entirely new problem. Over the winter mice got into the grass seed in the basement, which is fine—it was oldish and the mess cleaned up easily—but as well as eating much of it they also buried a fair amount in my seed-starting medium. So, despite the probable poor germination rates of the four-year-old grass seed, when treated to the premier seed-starting conditions we provide here at the squibix farm enough of the the little grasslings have been able to emerge alongside the authorized sprouts. Imagine my surprise!
This isn't more than a minor annoyance for most of the plants, because the grass seedlings, monocots as they are, are pretty clearly different from the cute little seed leaves of the tomatoes and peppers. The onions, though, are very grass-like in appearance (or the grass very onion-like) so I take more time that I should trying to figure out which is which (and then to cut the grass sprouts off below the surface of the soil in order to not disturb the other seedlings by pulling them). Good thing I do this all for fun, or I might wonder if it's really worth it!
I'm also thinking about growing a very small demonstration lawn. At about one-foot by two it wouldn't be too hard to mow by hand, would it?