My Half Acre of Paradise

I wasn’t having any luck with the Lavatera seeds I harvested from my garden, so I thought I’d try again. This time, I soaked them for one or two days (can’t remember how long!), and then I put them in the moist paper towel in a little ziploc baggie. Good news! It’s working. Well, one of them sprouted after only one day in the baggie. I think others will follow shortly.

Also, I wasn’t completely sure which part of the seed was really the germ — the seeds kind of split into two parts: a crescent shaped outer part around an inner part that’s also curved but thicker and a little more substantial looking. I was pretty sure it was the inner part — it just made sense. But that’s being proven true now. It is the inner part.

I can’t remember if these flowered first year from seed, but I hope they did. I’ll try to keep track of that this time. I really need to create a database with notes on each plant I grow so I can remember these things, along with bloom times.

My Forsythia started blooming about four days ago and really got full in the past two days. I love this shrub! It really brightens up the earliest spring. I hope its blossoms do OK in the freezing weather we’re having for the next few days. It hailed a little today and is expected to snow tonight in the valleys. This will last through Thursday. I hope it doesn’t kill all the apricot blossoms I’ve noticed this past week (I don’t have an apricot, but there are plenty around).

My flowering plum is just starting to open its blossoms, so hopefully this cold storm won’t hurt them. If the cold doesn’t mess things up, it should have a really full head of blossoms in the next week.

I also thought I’d post this. I just trimmed these Blue Oat Grass clumps about 10 days ago, and all that green growth is brand new. These are growing about an inch a day lately! Impressive!

Actually, these aren’t the first blooms of the year. I had some crocus flowers up in the front rose bed about a week ago (maybe even longer?). I should have taken a photo, but I think they’re gone now. I also have some very nice pansies blooming their heads off in front. They’ve been flowering a long time, since they’re a winter flower (I planted them in the fall).

My flower seedlings are coming along fairly well. Here’s an update on each kind:

• Geraniums — outstanding! growing nice, stocky-stemmed plants
• Delosperma iceplant — good, but the little guys haven’t grown very fast
• Verbena — very good, getting taller and getting their second set of true leaves. But about half the seeds didn’t germinate in the baggie. I’ve brought the seeds back into the kitchen where it’s warmer than the basement, but they’re still in a dark cabinet, since they’re supposed to need darkness to sprout.
• Dianthus — pretty good, but they also seem to have stalled in growth
• Rudbeckia — extremely well! Tonight, I cut out the competing seedlings for the first ones I sprouted. Now, there is only one seedling growing in each jiffy pellet.
• CA poppy — the first ones sown are doing quite well, but there are some others I sowed a little late, after leaving the sprouted seeds in the baggie too long, and I think it weakened the sprouts. They’re barely hanging on.
• Heliotrope — two of these are now sprouting, and I hope the rest of them will start sprouting very soon.
• Lavatera — not doing well at all. The seeds in the baggie are not sprouting after several weeks, and some that I put in potting soil with plastic lid over them also aren’t showing any sign of life. I soaked some more Lavatera seeds in water for a day or two, and now they’re in a baggie. I hope they sprout soon!

I took my maple seeds out of the refigerator today (Dana’s happy about that!) and planted them in little six packs with the other seeds in the basement. Half are Japanese maples, and half are a tall street-tree maple with golden leaves in the fall.

OK, here’s the lawn update: I got it mowed and aerated last week, and I just spread out the fertilizer today. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, so this is a good time to get it soaked in. It’s starting to green up a little, but not really a lot yet.

Here are some of the seedlings growing in trays in my basement:

Annual Verbena seedlings. They’ll have purple flowers.

Delosperma, or cold-hardy iceplant. Hey, if they’re gonna call it iceplant, it darn better be cold hardy, don’t you think?

Annual geraniums (pelargoniums). They’re just starting to get their true leaves.

California poppies; these are hopefully true to their parents’ pink color (the ‘Summer Sorbet’ variety).

All the seedlings that sprouted are doing very well. But no change for the other seeds that I mentioned were slow to germinate. They still haven’t.

I found a post on the Rocky Mountain Gardening thread at GardenWeb where someone mentioned putting “Sul-Po-Mag” on their roses. I was curious and found the information below from a google search. I wonder if my roses need something like this to make them flower better?

Sul-Po-Mag (0-0-22)

Sul-Po-Mag also known as K-Mag NATURAL (Mosaic) is the commercial name for the mineral otherwise known as sulfate of potash-magnesia (langbeinite). Contains 22% soluble potash, 22% sulfur and 11% magnesium. A quick release source of potassium, Sul-Po-Mag also makes a good addition to soils that lack sulfur. Broadcast 5-10 lbs. Sul-Po-Mag per 1,000 sq. ft. OMRI Listed for use in organic production.

K-Mag NATURAL is virtually 100% water soluble, meaning crops have access to three essential nutrients:

Potassium - Essential for protein synthesis and protein formation. It improves the flavor and color of fruits and vegetables, and promotes drought tolerance, winter hardiness, and disease and insect resistance.

Magnesium - Resides at the heart of the pigment-containing molecule, chlorophyll. As rates of photosynthesis decline, so do quality and yield.

Sulfur - Remains a key element in crop proteins. It is a requirement for nitrogen fixation in legumes and vital to vitamin synthesis in all plants, important determinants of crop quality. Without sulfur, onions, garlic and mustard would not possess their distinctive flavors.

On the weekend, I transferred all the sprouting seeds to their growing cells, which are either Jiffy pellets (a peat product with a thin mesh around each) or little six-packs with Jiffy planting mix (pretty much just peat, too, I think). Here are the seeds that are sprouting and are planted:

• Geraniums - 100% germination (but only 10 seeds)
• Verbenas (some of them are still in the moist paper towels in the dark, and they’re getting a few more sprouts every day)
• Dianthus - very high germination rate
• Eschscholtzia californica (California poppies) - lots of germination
• Hibiscus moscheutos - I think I got 100% germination from these
• Delosperma - germinated well, but so tiny, so I scattered the seeds on top of the peat, including the ones that didn’t sprout at the time, but they’re mostly sprouting well now
• Rudbeckia - these are very excellent germinators; I also sprinkled some directly on the peat in half a flat tonight

Some that aren’t working yet:

• Lavatera - these all got moldy and I threw them away; I sprinkled some directly in Jiffy pellets tonight to see if they’ll do better not being in the paper towels
• Penstemon - also got moldy. They’re still in the baggie, but I don’t think they’re going to work
• Thymus - no activity yet; I’ll wait a few more days and perhaps put some directly on some peat if they still don’t sprout
• Erigeron - nothing going on at all; I wonder if the seeds were even viable - they look so tiny and skinny, like they weren’t even pollinated

Also, I had not put the Heliotrope seeds in the baggies and was thinking of waiting till next year because of space, but tonight I sowed them directly in some Jiffy pellets. Hope it works.

Last night, I took a good look at all my seeds, and these are beginning to sprout:

• Geraniums
• California poppies
• Dianthus
• Hibiscus
• Rudbeckia

I do have some worries, though. The poppies had some mold (is it called “damping off?”) on some of the seeds. I took them out and rinsed them in a sieve, then put them back in a new moist paper towel (a little less moist). I may have to take them out of the baggie and just put them in some soil. My verbena seeds also looked like some mold might be forming, so I did the same with them.

While I was at it, I checked the maple seeds I have stratifying in the fridge, and some of them were getting moldy, too! Bummer. When I put them in the peat moss, I did not put Captan fungicide in like was recommended in that earlier post where I copied some instructions from a forum. I wish I would have bought some. I suppose I can try to add it now. One of the bags had a few Amur maple seeds, and I threw them out, because they were pretty bad. I kept the rest after rinsing them off and removing some of the peat (I think I had put too much in the bags). I hope they make it. No signs of sprouting yet.

Today, I started a whole bunch of seeds. In fact, I’ll have too many if they all germinate. I have them ziploc baggies between moist paper towels, some on a heating pad, others not, depending on their germination needs. Here are the varieties I am working with this year:

• Geranium ‘Orbit Apple Blossom’ (a kind of annual geranium or pelargonium) — from Park Seed
• Verbena x hybrida ‘Imagination’ — from a trade with a guy in NY from GardenWeb
• Dianthus deltoides ‘Brilliancy’ — from a trade
• Eschscholtzia californica ‘Summer Sorbet’ (pink California poppies) — picked from my flowers last year in a spot away from all the orange ones.
• Thymus serpyllum — from a trade
• Hibiscus moscheutos ‘Blue River II’ — a large white flowered herbaceous hibiscus — from a trade
• Delosperma cooperi — a cold-hardy iceplant — from a trade
• Erigeron glaucus ‘Elstead Pink’ (a hardier Erigeron than the one I grew in California) — from a trade
• Lavatera tauricensis — from my garden
• Rudbeckia hirta — black-eyed Susan — from my garden
• Penstemon — a kind I collected seeds from up in the mountains — not sure what variety; it looks different than the Rocky Mountain Penstemons I have in my garden

I hope I can handle all this stuff! I think I have room under my lights for 260 seedlings if I use Jiffy pellets or small cell packs.