Right now we’re going to plant the seeds. I’m going to use Hopi squash - traditional hopi squash from seeds of change- in this hill, because you want to put squash and cucumbers, melons in a hill because they make long vines that go all over the place. And you want the hills to be about four feet apart.
The other seed I’m going to plant right now is xenia. And I’m going to put that in this row. And these xenias were harvested from this garden. They were in and out of everything in this garden four and five feet tall, solid like a jungle last fall. So I allowed some of the flowers to dry, and once they were well dried, I put them in a bowl and the center of the flower is where the seed is. And so I- after that was well dried, I crumbled that and that became the seed stock.
So, to plant them, I’ve already made this row here with this little ditch for the seeds, so I’m going to just sprinkle these xenia seeds from my own stock into this row, into this little ditch here, and that will make a lot of xenias right there. And once they come up, I can transplant them around my garden so that they’re spaced properly. You don’t want them to be too close together. And when you plant your seed, you want to cover it up with loose, fine soil. And it’s very important that you do not cover it up too deeply. The most common - and then you press the soil down, and sprinkle just a little mulch over it- not much. You don’t want to cover it - you just want to give it a little more moisture. The mulch retains the moisture.
The most common reasons that seeds do not come up is that they’re planted too deeply. So be sure that you read your seed package, and on the seed package it will tell the planting depth, how many days to germination, how far apart it should be spaced, whether it takes sun or shade, and what kind of water level it needs.
So, with this information, squash should be planted a half inch to one inch deep. And I’m going to put only three squash in this hill. So I’ll make a little hole on three sides of the hill and make sure that’s about a half inch to one inch deep, and I’ll cover it with fine soil. And this soil has compost, and sand, and it’s the original soil with years of mulch on it. And then I just press it down lightly. And that’s how to plant the seeds.
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