This morning, I stacked a split rail fence that I’ve torn down and restacked about eight times in my life. After it was up, on newly tilled soil in a fresh bed, I made sure to seed in around it:

Bachelor Buttons
Larkspur
Poppies
Ox Eye Daisy
Nasturtium
Barley
Flax

Momma added burgundy carnations and collards while Tom and Robert raked in and set up hose end sprayers with Miracle-Gro to get the seed in good contact with the soil.

Don’t Forget to Seed

Ya’ll probably get tired of my seed in lessons. But this is the time I see so many good gardeners forgetting to do it. For me, around the split rail fence, I have visions of all these pastel and purple spring flowers taking the picture right through the heat until mid-May. They are the transition plants, between spring and summer.

In other gardens, I’m putting out red clover, white clover, chinese toadflax and galardia. You can do true biennials now too – all those beautiful Coreopsis.

The satisfaction comes quickly as a little green fuzz shows up all over the ground in a few weeks.

The satisfaction of my stacking the fence was immediate. Amazingly, to me and my nephew, Momma told us that her Great Grandfather had cut the pine, split them and made the rails we were stacking. So these slender sticks, with oily red hearts have been a fence for my family since, oh, 1900?

Good genes, right? Tutens from Crockettville, South Carolina gave them to me. This seed in, fence building project was a diversion – a family day in the dirt. But it will look great when we have the garden open next spring! And it feels great to be in a family business of plants and plant lovers.