Today my talinum calycinum bloomed for the first time. What a charming flower! The whole plant is cute– very tiny. It’s amazing to see this 1.5 inch tall plant blooming. The stalk of the bloom must be 3 or 4 inches!
I wasn’t able to get a picture of this bloom, but hopefully I’ll get one soon. Unfortunately, each blossom lasts only for a few hours in mid-afternoon.
I think the last of the rain we got in our recent deluge was Sunday morning. Before it had all started Saturday morning, I’d put a cover over one tub of plants I didn’t want to drown. I left it covered. In fact, I forgot it was covered until about 30 minutes ago. It was a beautiful, mostly sunny morning. Rain was supposed to be out of our forecast except for about a 20% chance of rain.
I guess we’re that 20%. In the blink of an eye, clouds covered the sky and rain started pouring down. And it continued to pour for about 20 minutes now. A heavy downpour. My plants had been uncovered for about 10 minutes. They are now floating. (I didn’t notice the clouds until the rain began pouring. I wasn’t interested in getting drenched, so the plants remained uncovered.)
I keep going back to one of the WS lessons I wrote about previously: next year, I’m using drain holes in my containers. Being able to bottom water by pouring some water into those tubs is nice. But the rest of the time it’s a real nuisance. Next year, I’m going to lose a lot fewer plants because of this.
It’s not turning lemons into lemonade, but I did take the pots that had dead seedlings from the flood and replant them with new seedlings. (When I did this I discovered that one of those pots has its own resident worm! I left him there. If he stays there, he’ll be providing a gentle fertilizer.) My winter sow bin is still loaded with pots of seedlings needing to be individually potted up. The pots with the most recent germinations have tiny seedlings at this point, but the older pots have seedlings that really need their own homes now. Getting those pathetic (and accusing) empty pots filled up was a good impetus toward making progress. So yesterday I got 3 tomato plants (Tom Thumb grown from seed) potted into their large containers for the year and I potted up to larger pots 7 purple prairie clover and 6 New Jersey Tea plants (my plan for the front border calls for 12, so I’ll be starting more), 5 gaillardia grandiflora, and 21 pots of campanula rotundifolia. The next candidate for a pot full of seedlings to replant is solidago nemoralis. I’ve got to take a look at what’s already out there and see what I might be able to plant into the garden– I’m going to need those pots for the other seedlings! I’m also going to need another bag of potting soil!
A week ago today I was busy squeezing water from water-logged pots. As I feared, I lost a bunch of plants. I haven’t taken a complete inventory, but of the 40 pots of mostly echinacea ‘Prairie Splendor,’ I’ve lost 29. Ouch. That one will be going on my list of seeds to start more of.
I also lost a couple of my New Jersey Tea babies. They are adapted for our dry prairies and they did not appreciate all that water. I potted up to bigger pots my remaining 6. I need at least 12 for my front border. I’ll be starting more of these, as well. There’s no way they’ll be large enough to be planted out in the fall, so I’ll be growing these under lights all winter or they’ll go into a cold frame for the winter.
All my garage plants went outside last night. I finally gave up waiting for a non-windy day. The poor suckers ended up getting put out there on the windiest day! Well, it’s no big deal with Darwinian gardening. Low stress. Hopefully most will be okay with the change.
I pricked and potted up 48 WS babies yesterday: 40 echinacea ‘Prairie Splendor’ and 8 ninebark shrubs.
Sunday I hit the jackpot of free plants. A friend’s sister was dividing her plants and had used all she could already. So she generously shared and I came home with a couple hundred dollars worth of great plants, including: 2 phlox paniculata ‘David,’ one veronica ‘Fairytale,’ 3 shasta diasy ‘Becky’, a clematis ‘Henryi,’ 2 huge pots of hostas, and about 20 nepeta ‘Walker’s Low.’ I’m down to about 6 nepeta and 2 shasta daisies to plant plus the others which are in pots and not as urgent, and I hope to get those done today. Once I’m done with that, I can start planting out some of my garage plants!
As hoped and (mostly) expected, the 2 days of snow cover didn’t appear to have any adverse effect on the winter-sown sprouts outside.
They seem to be doing well. New sprouts are appearing almost daily. Soon it will be easier to keep track of what hasn’t germinated rather than what has.
Here’s the current list of what has sprouted:
Looking at those teeny tiny sprouts it’s hard to imagine them ever making it on their own in nature. I know they do, but it’s an amazing thing. I’m going to be waiting until mine are bigger before chancing their survival out in the garden. As you can see, not all of the seeds I’ve sown are natives, but the vast majority are.
This winter was my first time at winter sowing. I won’t have a final verdict on it until this fall after I see what has germinated at good rates and then what has done well of the plants planted. However, today is exciting because I have my first sprouts of the year! I have a lone liatris pychnostachia. Hopefully he’ll be joined by some others very soon. That’s supposed to go into my pocket prairie. I also have a container of achillea cassis with a bunch of sprouts a container of aster oblongifolius (also for the pocket prairie, as well as my front border).
The first sprouts are so exciting. Spring really is coming! It won’t feel like it the rest of this week, but I’ll know that my baby plants are growing under cover during this cold week to come.
Of course this means that I’ll be outside checking all my containers every day now. And soon I need to get the containers of annuals and perennial poppies out there. With any luck, I’ll end up with so many plants I’ll still be planting at the end of the growing season this fall. The garden needs that many plants.
Last night when I went to the garage to water the plants under grow lights, I was surprised and delighted to find that a rose cutting had bloomed. It was so lovely to see on a snowy day. My rudbeckias still haven’t bloomed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a plant that takes so long to bloom from the bud. These better be spectacular; I’ve been waiting a long time to see them!
My rose seedlings of this year are still far from blooming, but I thought I’d share some from a previous year. Not all seedlings bloom this nicely. Many get tossed after the first bloom. But some are pretty right from the first. Subsequent blooms may be even a bit better, having a few more petals or showing some fragrance but by-and-large the first bloom is a good indicator of how that rose is going to bloom. Here are a few of the prettier seedlings I’ve grown.
My rose seeds are starting to germinate in earnest now. It’s always exciting to see them start popping like popcorn. Of course, now I’ll have to pot them up and get them under lights. That’s far less exciting. At the moment the germinated seeds are all coming from two plants. One is a Little Darling and the other is a seedling of Deep Purple. If the seedlings from the DP seedling take after the mom but in different colors, I will be very happy indeed. The DP seedling has dark red blooms– scentless, unfortunately, but not surprisingly– in abundance. At its peak, the plant is smothered by the profusion of blooms. Even if I ended up with more seedlings that look just like it (which is, after all, highly likely given that they are OP), I’d be pretty happy. I’d have red blooms like mad. But the same profusion in another color would be awesome, too. I’m not expecting anything particularly interesting from the Little Darling seedlings, but I could easily end up being pleasantly surprised. I did those mostly because I had a bunch of hips and didn’t want them to go to waste.
admin | 
06 17th, 2010| 
