Early last fall I prepared a beautiful and large container. It had many wonderful things in the soil starting with a thick layer of rotted wood chips at the bottom. Over that went a thick layer of compost bucket slurry blended in the kitchen. Next went in a layer of home made compost and the best container soil I could find.

In to my cauldron, I added several worms and other elixirs such as greensand, dolomite and bagged hen manure.

I was going to have a huge bucket of luscious lettuces for the winter and spring. I carefully planted a packet from BigBox that was labeled "sweet lettuce mix".

Up sprouted dozens of bitter mustards. I kept pulling them thinking that the lettuces were slower to germinate. At the end of this saga, I had THREE lettuces from that packet.

I will never broadcast sow any seeds again.

Many times, I have direct seeded to have NOTHING happen. Old dead seeds, maybe. Or perhaps, floor dirt swept up and packaged.

Everything, from now on, will be planted in cups, When they come up and when they are what I want, then they will go into their home.

Direct seed is just not worth the gamble when I have so little time to garden as it is. It's very disappointing to seed a plot and then wait while the precious season passes by and nothing germinates or worse, something unwanted comes up.