End of February Tour

Yesterday, I had a basil scare.  I was nearly convinced it had downy mildew somehow and was literally ready to trash every plant in my house and sit in the corner and cry.  Luckily, Gail talked me through it and it wasn't even downy mildew, just mold- probably brought in from the citrus trees.  The morale of that story is- whether it's you or your plant that is sick, don't Google.

I spent this morning weeding some of the flower beds that were...just...brutal. I got half a black trash bag of weeds. 

Anyhoo, I took some updated pictures of the plants!

Here is the forest of Snapdragons.  I'm interested to see what colors I will end up with. The plants look very different from each other, which is extremely interesting (I purchased a dwarf mix).  Next year I might go the route of selecting a few varieties and being able to know which plant is which variety. 

The peppers are working on their third and fourth sets of true leaves.  The first picture is a purple jalapeno.  I don't think I'll ever give up this variety of pepper- the flavor of the pepper is outstanding and the plants are unique with their purple highlights.

My itty bitty Komachis are getting their first true leaves!  They were so tiny when I transplanted them that it's relieving to see the new leaves coming in!

Brain flowers liking their new homes! (One of the ones I kept has three cotyledon! Stoked!)

More pansies coming in.  If I hadn't been weeding this morning, I would've been potting these bad-boys up!

Primrose and spinach popping through! I want the rest of the greenhouse to pop up- I just got the shipping notification from Burpee on the last of my flower seeds for the year ;)

I forgot all about posting about this.  Last year I had a "conjoined twin" brandywine.  Ultimately, we ended up calling it "Megaplant" and it was enormous.  This year, one of the Costolutos is conjoined as well...completely joined at the stem (not roots).  I know most people get rid of one of the twins, but I'm interested to see what it will do.  I like oddities...especially when it happens to organic, heirloom plants!

Leaves are coming in strong on the tomatoes!

Lime cluster on the lime tree....there are nine limes coming in here. Second picture is a different cluster.  There are more, but you get the idea!

Poor lemontree. It sits lower to the ground than the limetree, so literally every time we walk by, we knock into it.  I've knocked off no less than three flowers, Kile (my husband) has knocked off a bunch, and if it isn't us- Hula has been chewing on it occasionally.  It wants to fruit, but apparently we aren't going to let it.  

Brains....Brains!!!

No, this post isn't about zombies.  At least I hope not.  Today, the preschool crew and I transplanted the brain flowers.  Well, I did most of it, but they helped where they could.

I think there are four colors of brain flower...red pink orange and yellow. You could definitely tell they were going to be different colors by the color of the stems.  

I potted up 18 and probably wasted about that.  It was so hard to decide which to keep. I only hope I kept enough of each color!

TUBTRUG!!

I also potted up one of the pansies that had come in, and the garlic chives!  

My two helpers for today placing the pots into some fish emulsion water.  I ended up watering from the top too, though, because I'm too impatient to let them sit.  And Hula had her eye on the whole tray.

Teeny Tiny

So my komachi balloon flowers finally came up all the way....but I'm too impatient to wait for them to get first leaves to transplant them.  What? They're taking up too much space sitting in the empty greenhouse. See?

But, they are still itty bitty teeny tiny, so they must be handled with tons of care.  

My Buzz Lightyear helper filled one of the pots for me...

I popped out the cell with the bottom end of the spoon...very cautiously...

Carefully broke up the dirt so I could find the teeny tiny plant within.

Poked a hole in the potting soil....

Then put the little guy in his home! Then repeated.  Three more times. And again with the chives- which, I had no idea barely have roots at this stage. So we'll see if I essentially murdered my chives or what.

Tah-dah!

Sowing Soiree

My friend Kat came over yesterday and we had a bit of a planting party!  I decided to do a little spinach to grind up for my parakeets and of course I had to start the beautiful primrose I got for my birthday!

My babies, always wanting to lend a hand

Kat's greenhouse to be!

Ready to be sown!

All sown! I ended up with 4 spinach, 2 primrose and a dill!  And like any addicted gardener, I ordered some seeds last night- Arctic Fire Dianthus and Mix Hybrid Petunia! 

Moving on up!

Okay, yesterday was my birthday and while I want to say "oh, I was just lazy and didn't feel like doing anything"- that's entirely not true. I potted up my tomatoes! Some were teeny tiny and some had first leaves coming in- but I just wanted to get them all done.  Grabbed my trusty tubtrugs and gathered the preschool crew and we went to work!

Big baby hazelfield! That's my red for this year...it's not a huge tomato, but it's a good-sized red.

Here they are! All transplanted! With the exception of one Egg Yolk (my little yellows).

And oooh take a look at my snaps- they are sprouting all sorts of leaves!

The komachis are trying to make their way into bigger containers! Hopefully I can transplant those fairly soon, since the rest of the 36 cell greenhouse is empty. Except for the chives.

Speaking of my chives, my friend Katherine got me a stake for my non-existent chives for my birthday.  We all had a hearty laugh. I love extremely thoughtful gag gifts! 

 

But oh wait, THESE CHIVES?!?!?!

OR THESE?

That's right. As of today, I now have chives.  It was an exciting day in the Rainey gardening world.  Also- all my brain flowers are up! So excited about those. No pansies yet though.

And another extremely sweet birthday present from another gardening friend (the lovely Cherye) were these gorgeous primrose seeds.  And as my gardening mentor Gail always says- you don't receive seeds from a friend without planting them. So they will be going into a greenhouse just as soon as I take another spin through the seeds at Lowes and make sure that I've started all I want to.  Odds are the primroses won't be alone in that greenhouse.

One last thing- the preschool crews' carrots and radishes that I've barely touched started getting first leaves. Tiny little carrot leaves- love!

$*%&@ Chives!

I'm pretty sure I've said that at least once a day since the beginning of this gardening season.  Which was December 30th, 2012 when I started a couple basils and chives.  Basils grew beautifully, chives never sprouted.

Fast-forward to starting the snapdragons- threw some chives in the greenhouse, hoping to get them then.  No dice.  No chives for me. Here is a picture of the second failure...although I'm sure you had a pretty good guess what it looked like.

I was almost 100% sure that it was the pack of chives I got from Lowes...so I tossed them and bought a new pack. 7 days post sewing, I'm starting to give up hope of ever growing chives.

What I don't understand is how I grew so many last year.  Although I didn't thin properly and between the crowding and the extreme heat of last year, they did not make it. But, the point is- HOW DID I GET THEM TO COME UP LAST YEAR?

Well, I'm still hanging onto hope for the regular chives, but while I wait and hope and hope...and hope...I started some more seeds last night.  For the triangle bed in my driveway, I'm doing a border of celosia/cockscomb/brain flower...whatever you would like to call it.  So since they are a later bloomer than I would like- I am alternating them by starting half the border inside and direct sowing the other half when April comes. 

Also, I started pansies (late, I know.) and a couple spearmints- for the kids. My two, my niece and I made some sweet planters and the kids planted some spearmint in them- none of which came up.  So I'm started them under the light. Oh, and garlic chives. I will get chives.

Re-hydrating the pellets never gets old.

All sown!  Good luck and god-speed.  Especially to the chives.

I just love having so many stages of seedlings under the light!  The greenhouse, the open greenhouse sprouts, the recently repotted, and the gettin' bigger repots!