2 Weeks - False Sunflower

Well almost two weeks later. In other news I got everything I wanted in the ground planted then spring bagged plants went on half-price clearance. Grr. I brought home a day lily (okay 6 in one bag), some bleeding heart (3), a 'Niagara' grape vine, another peony, and then found a blooming Blue Flag Iris and some Japanese Forest Grass (Hakonechloa macra). I'm inundated with pots again and almost out of potting soil.

Geranium maculatum Seeds

If left alone the seeds will be flung from the plant as their holders dry. Once the holders (totally not the scientific name) are black all the way down the seeds can be removed. they should be planted immediately and kept moist until the following spring when they will sprout.

False Sunflower (Heliopsis helianthoides) From Seed - Part 2

Yesterday, I teased apart the false sunflower seedlings and potted each in its own container. I'll be moving them up as time and need allows. This is very similar to what I did with lupine last year and I have many flowering lupines this year.

Seeds

I'm still doing some fall cleanup, and just chopped all the hosta seed stalks. I labeled them with little sticky notes, and just need to put them in bags. I found a leather fern frond with ripening spores to bring inside, and the garlic chive seeds are just about ready (see above), and I had to cut a few down to move the plant indoors so I'll see how they ripen. I spent a few hours yesterday making little packets to store my saved seeds in so I can get them in airtight jars too. Now I have to make a few more.

Garden Note: Yesterday was the first frost warning and the tomato plant did fine with a blanket over it. The next week has night temps in the high 50's with daytime in the 70's, so hopefully that will help it along. The peas (blooming) and lettuce survived fine under plastic. I dug up some of both kinds of chives and need to decide if trimming the normal chives is worth it. At the moment they're very long and floppy. The chives came in as my mother discovered my failure to make cream cheese results in a cottage cheese she likes, and she prefers chives in cottage cheese. I also swiped a coleus cutting from a big planter outside at the mall and put it in water. I don't feel that guilty since winter will kill the whole plant in a few weeks anyway. There were two red dragonflies circling the yard this afternoon as well.

Saturday Digging Holes

I've avoided it for years, but I finally bought Gladiolus bulbs. I remember years ago we planted them at the foot of a rock wall and they returned for several years, even though everything I've seen recently says they're annual here in zone 6. I've been avoiding them for two reasons. Digging down six inches in my rocky clay soil is not fun, and they seem to come only in numbers of 32 or above. Who really needs 32 bulbs... I also talked myself into some acidenthera, a gladiolus relative, more crocosima though this will be my third time killing it, freesia, which I'm trying to decide if it will thrive in a pot, and two Peruvian Daffodils, just because the flowers look really pretty. Most of them I spent 5 hours planting today. Admittedly the five hours weren't just for the bulbs. I got my new cone flowers in, a pincushion flower, a native false sunflower, some dianthus, and did some more weeding. Since I've been putting it off weeding has become my little obsession over the last few days. If I don't finish it soon I won't be able to tell what plants are what, and where I still have space. The paths and the beds look exactly the same, full of annual grass. I also replanted the cucumbers and cantaloupe plants, since the peat pots were not working I had to peel them off, and hopefully the plants will recover. They were buried, so shouldn't have been drying out the roots, they just weren't working. For some reason they weren't getting roots out of them at all. I won't make the mistake of using them again. It's also just starting the season of seeds. These are wild geranium seeds, the actual seeds are down on the bottom. I'm still waiting on at least 4 kinds of fern spores as well. I'll post soon about my cinnamon fern spores and how I sowed them.

Spring is Coming...if it feels like it

So far I've bought two gardening books this month. Hopefully they'll be my only ones of the season. I managed to restrain myself quite well so far about plants in bags, and seeds. I only got one bag of Ostrich Ferns (6 roots for $5) and some pepper seeds. Realistically I already have enough seeds for the other vegetables to last for years. In my seed starting I've started 12 lettuce seeds, and I'm trying to start 12 pepper seeds. The pepper seeds were started almost 12 weeks before planting time since they take absolutely forever outside to do anything, and I have enough light inside to hopefully keep them happy until Late May - Early June. They also give me something to concentrate on while the ice layer in the yard gives way to mud. The muddy sections look kind of like we keep pigs and they've been turning over the soil until you get close and see this. Unless I get sod it will look like this until June, when some annual grasses will emerge in a few sections of the yard. We've tried seed dozens of times and all it gets us is annual grasses. It takes too long, and can't stand up to dogs for well over a year.