You know I didn't get around to deadheading the hibiscus yet, but guess what? Mother Nature decided to help me out a little...
I don't know about you, but with me most gardening tasks don't happen on a schedule. Instead, they rely on me noticing something: "the grass is so long", "there are a lot of weeds in that bed", "that plant is dead", "there's a bamboo shoot coming up in my neighbor's yard", etc.
You know I love my bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) tree, right? Well I was looking at it yesterday...
So I noticed something just the other day about the Pachypodium lamerei that overwinters in my living room...
I haven't posted about it yet, but I recently returned from a much-needed vacation trip to Florida. One thing I brought back with me:
As winter drags on, it's becoming more difficult to find interesting things to post about. I'm avoiding the seed catalogs this year as I always buy too much and I'm intent on using my existing seed stock, so what's there to say on another grey, cold morning?
What do you see when you look at this, the view out of our kitchen window?
Like many gardeners, I buy a lot of seeds -- especially in the mid-to-late winter months, when seed catalogs hint at the excitement that next season's plants will bring. The problem is, I rarely use more than a few seeds from any packet each season -- maybe half a packet in a crazy year.
I'm quite happy with the Alocasias this year:
Most years the lure of the seed catalogs combines with an early taste of spring fever and I end up ordering seeds without regard for what I might already have leftover from previous years. The same applies when I visit local seed displays, with the result being that I usually have much more seed than I can use in a single season.
I don't like to post about the same topic twice in a row, but after putting the sunflower seeds onto the soil to sprout, I left for the weekend and the three days that they were meant to be growing underneath the heavy weights have already passed.
The sprouting experiment that is.
Have you ever grown your own sprouts or shoots? I have both in jars and in special sprout trays, and I must admit that I don't find it to be as simple as they say it is. Even though I believe I've always followed the necessary schedule of rinsing, it seems that I have about a 50% chance of getting edible sprouts from my efforts. After a failure I get discouraged and end up putting thoughts of healthy, fresh sprouts out of my mind for months or longer, until I get the urge to try again. I haven't tried for well over a year, possibly two.
Jewels of Opar is not the only plant that's producing masses of tiny red gems in my garden right now.
If you're like many people, you have a bird feeder in your garden or yard. You probably fill the feeders with a mix of seeds: sunflower, cracked corn, millet, possibly nyjer, and other small seeds that you can't identify. Maybe you've realized that most birds go for the sunflower seeds first, so you've switched to that and gave up on the mixes.
I really hate early spring cleanup, when I remove all of last year's growth, the remnants of what was a greener, warmer, happier time. It's true that I enjoy the often architectural stems and pods that remain sturdily standing after months of cold snows and winds, but the main reason I hate cutting them is that I'll have nothing to look at for several weeks. The new growth is so slow to emerge most years, cautiously peeking, wondering when it will be safely warm again.
I found out about a new organic seed company a couple of weeks ago, and it surprised me for two reasons. First, I was surprised to learn that new seed companies were still being created. Based on the amount of seed catalogs that I already receive, it seems to me that there are plenty of choices already in this market.
I've finally gotten some seeds started. I'm thinking I should have done this a couple of weeks ago, but the below-normal temperatures may have been confusing me. Looking at the calendar though, a last-frost date of May 10 or so (I usually just use May 1 as it's easier to remember), counting back 6-8 weeks means I'm right on time!
Recently I talked about trying to decide what seeds to order from home-state company Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, and that's when my neighbor let me take whatever seeds I wanted from his school's collection. Although I found a few that I wanted to try, there was still one thing I wanted to buy from Baker Creek...
My posts about:
© Blogger template Shush by Ourblogtemplates.com 2009
Back to TOP
