SNAPDRAGONS for 2010 - WHOSE IN?

Awww jon, I went and ordered the da- - g twinny thing! but Im hoping to get it at the nursery instead.... have not mailed it in just yet.

I write mine on a steno pad.. got 4 pages of gory details for the dream garden... Me thinks I best stick to the nightmare. Be cheaper that way.

Lemon lollipops is a twin cute too!

You're probably gonna have to order it Blossom. Do they carry many of the brand spanking new plants at nurseries in your area? They carry very few of the new things down here. I can count on one hand the number of new varieties I see down here each year. I only saw five new 2009 flower varieties down here in 2009 that I was looking for and/or had grown. They were Ptilotus "Joey", Rudbeckia "Tiger Eye Gold", Rudbeckia "Denver Daisy", Gaillardia "Mesa Yellow" and Gaillardia "Sunburst Burgundy Halo".

One good thing is that you already have plenty of seed packs to keep you more than busy for 2010.

Yeah I know that.. but Im a cereal killer.. so the line of progression contains regression too!.

Well, as for new and different, I wil have to be on the scout. Right now the local haunts are still dumping Christmas sales on us and only one that I can think on has seeds out and they do a good deal of house plants (yeah, tropicals LOL!)

Some of the other things I am looking for is taro. IN BLUE! Saw a lovely one last year and was going to get it but it was too late in the season and I was not wanting that big of a house plant! Space was a serious issue so I had to bite the bullet and not get it.

Im going to have to go to the ma and pa's for different! I do not have a tendency to go to Lowes or Home Depots.. but maybe this year I will take a tour just for grins, but I beleive I will be wasting my time there.

Oh well Blossom. I think it's gonna be March/April before you start seeing anything new and/or different up there. Afterall, it's only Jan 2 !!! LOL Maybe you should try a few zinnia seeds under the grow lights. Y'all got quite a few zinnia seeds in your supplies right now.

SIGH.... It seems like winter has a iron grip here for 6 months, when I know it's only been 2...
This pic I found REALLY cheered me up(what will be in about 3 weeks?)>

What really cheered me up>

LOL! Yeah, maybe I will pot up one or two zins.. after I dump the PM begonias.. they all of a sudden took a serious header on me and they look like gonners. Gonna have to get fresh soil for any zins.

Im also going to try some radish. I have an aquarium and am gonna fill that thing with dirt and see if I get any indoor salad from them in 25 days! LOL!

Right now Im watering the shelves of plants and weeding out the old wood to make room for the aquarium under the lights!

And jon, I will be happy to bottle up a few of my ladybugs and send them to you... they I am sure would take care of your aphids and maybe those thrips!? I will go empty the vacuum bag as I just sucked up a huge pile of them and God knows I have tons of them to share! LOL!

Danny, that snow bank looks like MY backyard!

You're right Blossom. Radishes mature really fast. Maybe there's some lettuce that would grow also. I've been picking lots of lettuce the past couple of days and gave some to my neighbor yesterday. Just don't try growing any corn in the house Blossom!!! LOL

Strange thing....I never see ladybugs down here. I know they're good to have around. My geckos (Pete & Repeat) have been kind of lazy lately at hunting down the bugs around the pool. I can tell cause I'm seeing more and the boys are getting kind of skinny.

Maybe you can find a "Rieger" Begonia around in your area right now Blossom??? They are generally grown as winter houseplants for Northern climates. They come in around 8 different colors.

I had 3 reigers and they sucumbed to PM.. I just tossed them.. so now I have room on my shelf to start something else! I kinda think they were the culprits of bringing the PM to my wax begonias to which I am also going to toss. dang! And I am down to 3 of my pretty rex which are struggling. So no more begonias until spring..

I want to try some tuberous begonias in baskets this year... I dont want seed though, I want to do cuttings. I will be looking for mommas of them this year and will also replace my wax begonias and do cuttings of them later too. I saw some real lovelies last spring and maybe this year I will get them.

I am into hanging baskets! DUH! Had close to 70 of them going last year between my tomatoes, vinca, petunias, potato vines, baby sunroses, mixed annuals, some herbs and the calibrachoa, coleus and the 3 kinds of spider plants. This year, l will have many more baskets since I have a jump on sunroses and spiders. I have some potato vines surviving nicely and some new vinca, but not the vinca I want and will do also some others like the snaps and the sweet peas and some strawberries. Did strawberries last year,they did well. Multiplied like rabbits in the baskets and filled my tire bed of them!

Im anxious to see the snaps though in the baskets! I liked my little bargain dwarfs that I had in boxes last year hoping the twinny or lemon lollipops or whatever I get does equalluy well or better.

I think powdery mildews a big problem with begonias. I get the feeling the Rieger Begonias are short lived anyway. Had to toss my first Rieger begonia in October. It looked fine when I went away for a week, but when I came back looked horrible. I think the person that waters my plants (when I'm away) just pours the water all over the plants. Got a new Rieger in November and it looks awesome for the time being.

70 hanging baskets....holy moses. Are possibly more this year???? LOL I only have two. One with "Hulahoop" Petunias. The other one has "Wolfgang" in it. He's my carnivorous "Pitcher Plant" that helps "Jaws", "Pete", "Repeat" and "Wiliiam" (Venus Fly Trap) control the insects out back. LOL

Yes, it is interesting that there are trailing snapdragons, and a couple other new plants we've never considered as trailing plants.

about 40 baskets
had cherry tomatoes
in them
last year! LOL!

Jon, you do realize I am a full time gardener, ranchwife dont you!!

I'd never thought of vegetables/fruits in a hanging basket before. Yes, Blossom is the full time gardener and amorecuore is a part time year round gardener............I think. LOL Blossom gets some breaks in the winter though......albeit not my choice. You're the ranchwife aka prairiewife that watches the tide go in and out. LOL

Aaah, my awesome tide unlike the oceanfront, but water all the same! Life on the bog! You either learn to love it and roll with it or ya leave! It keeps llife interesting jon, very interesting, just like the sun, the wind, the rain and even the forboding the snow!

Life is good until the power goes out and the cows need milking!

Yeah, the only difference in our waters is the salt content. I'm actually closer to the swamp (Florida Everglades) in comparison to the Atlantic Ocean. The ocean is 11 miles east of me and the Florida Everglades is less than 2 miles to my west.

It does suck when the power goes out. Imagine losing your power for 9 days, in the Florida summer, when a hurricane rolls through. It last happened in 2005. I wasn't gardening back then, but I'm sure I won't be too happy losing many plants when it happens again. This area can, and has flooded a bit...but it takes a good 8-10 inches of rain in a day to do it.

I have to ask about the chickenpoo tea=) I know a guy who has chickens and doesn't garden so I'm pretty sure he'd part with some of their #2 for me. Does it have to dry and cure for a certain amount of time before making the tea? Then...how do you make the tea and how much do you use? Yup, pretty much need to know the whole process:lol:

Thanks!

Well jon, I will keep the cold weather. Least we can dress for it! Im not big on airconditioning anyway. Especially in the summer. Hate that going in and out of chilled air in the heat with a passion. Too hard on the body system. Dont like going out in the chill, in the winter either but if I have my choice, I will take winter to a warm house than airconditioned to a hot outside. Once the warm weather is here though I do live outside.

dmac - chicken poo tea is tricky and you have to go by eye on the color of the tea. My chickens dirty their drinking water in the summer so what I do is take that water and pour it into some other buckets and dilute it. And there is always gooey poo in the bottom of the water tub and that gets dumped in those buckets... It is high in nitrogen so you have to becareful as to what you water with it as some plants require less poo content than others. Mums are heavy feeders so they love the high nitragen and can handle a darker tea with the sediment in it. I use a lighter colored tea for other plants like impatiens or coleus or other container plants... you will know if you have gone too far in too much of the tea as the plants can burn from it. So my advise is to try a little at a time.. You can always add more, but once you are over the line the plants can be hurt and will either turn yellow and die or need a period to recover. You know how a tea bag dirtys the water.. you can have clear dirty or dirty dirty colored tea and any shade in between.! I think they have testing kits that you can get to monitor your tea, but me personally I do not bother with them. You can ask at your local nurserys. I go on the lighter side of the tea. watering a little more often vs the darker tea and a killer dose in one shot!

A little chicken poo goes a long way.

Horse manure tea is the same process... you put the manure in buckets of water and dilute it. I pour the "dung residue" on certain plants too in my beds to add the humus, but horsemanure carries plant seed and therefore you will be weeding those horsemanure tea fed plants more often than say those fed with chicken poo. Horses cannot process some seed and it goes through their digestive tract and out in their dung. Cows do a better process of digesting and carry less seed to their dung. Horse manure is also lessor in nitrogen content. Cow manure is higher than horse and chicken manure is higher than cow.

You could filter that horsemanure tea to catch the seeds. But me personally I prefer to use the horse manure as compost rather than tea and incorperate that into the garden in the fall and I shy away from doing the manure tea on that one. I will handle my horse dung in two ways... 1) I will compost my horsemanure. Composting helps kill the weed seed, but it also drains the manure of its own nutrients and that can be a good thing or bad dependign on your soils needs. There is an art to composting manure properly and most people do not get it. Most horsebarns just pile the poo and think thats how they are supposed to compost it and that is a wrong method. You need to arriate it, add organic matter to get the process going so it heats and age it. They think oh, manure, its good stuff and well it can be or not.

I would be leary of some horse manures as horsemen can have a tendency to use wormers on thier animals and those chemicals can carry into the soil. If you are wanting to stay pure organic especially for your veggies, you are not wanting manure with chemicals from treated horses. Chickens and other animals can get wormers too so you need to ask.

Dry manure can be added to water and make the tea. I do not recommend putting straight dry chicken poo on anything as you will burn whatever you are putting it on unless you are spreading it and spreading it thin. Dry dusty chicken manure is harmful to human lungs.

There are many articles posted on the internet about manures and composting. The best bet is to contact your local Co-operative extension, ask for their brochures and read up on it... The department of Ag or Soil and water can help as well as EPA.

The second method I use horsemanure is to spread it either raw or composted out on my fields. You need to be careful in doing that as you do not want to do it to close by water courses. Certain waterways are not proper to be spreading by and you certainly do not want to spread raw manure in a water way as it will pollute a stream or bog in a heart beat causing algea spawns which can kill a pond and an ecosystem.

Your Ag departments should be able to help in the proper HOW to, but I have found a lot of ignorance in the departments and stupidity on many who handle manure and people really need to take it upon themselves to get more educated on the right way if we are to work to save our water supplies and streams. I have even seen stupidity in our health departments sad to say when it comes to composting.

Yano, back in the 70's we could still find water from streams that you could still drink from. I remember drinking from a stream without harm to my person.... Today we are hard pressed to find such a thing and this old earth is not gaining in water. We are all now subjects to water pollution and recycled so called pureified water and thats a DIRTY ROTTEN shame. Sure, there are some wells out there that are still good, but drilling for a good well goes pretty deep anymore. And yeah, there are a few springs of genuine pure water, but they are getting less and less as we human pigs continue to cause harm to the planet.

Well, just my humble thoughts on this matter, hope it helps you.

Thanks BB--that helps alot. I'll ask for the fresher chicken stuff and go with a few lighter dilutions first. I am picking up some mums from the co-op so I'll make a note that they may prefer a slightly stronger mix. I'm in an apartment so I can't compost the way I'd like to but we have a large rural community around here so I have access to some stuff some big city people would be able to get--like fresh chicken poo:)

I agree with you about the water. I have to filter the tap water here as it more often than not smells like bleach as it comes from the tap. We had well water out west and there was a spring in the mountains that folks would line up for with their water jugs so they could take home fresh spring water. Ice cold and better tasting that any water I'd ever had before.

Also, I dont use any animal poo on indoorhouse plants... I opt for using a Product called THRIVE. To demonstarte fertilizer potentcy... one drop of that to a gallon. Thats what I use in the winter and also I use Oscomote pellets.

If it was not for the odor the chicken poo and the horse poo lends to its tea, I guess I would be alright with it, but not in the house! My house is an animal house to begin with with one meduim large size hound, but I prefer that livestocky odor to stay outdoors! The mutt can be bad enough! And here I am a person who spends a good part of my time outdoors with big livestock! You would think odor would not matter to me, but it does. There are good odors and bad odors and properly composted compost has a good humousy aroma. It does not smell anything at all like fresh urine or raw sewage or fresh poo! And here too another area where so many that manage a barn can go terribly wrong! I'd look for a well kept well managed livestock operation to get the best poo! But yano what, if its that clean, there usually is little to no poo because that guy is probably doing whats right by his ranch and properly utilizing that biproduct of the animals that can be a gardeners solid gold!!

Your definitely gonna wanna mess with the poo some place out doors. I suppose you could dilute it enough to use indors. Many people use fish emulsion and man that has a nasy stink to it in my opinion.. so be it as it may, a few more caveats!

I beleive they have lil composters available for those that dwell in apartments for things like kitchen scrapes and even worm farms! Yeah, some folks raise worms in their apartments! Go figure! Must be the fishermen! LOL!

Again, just my humble opinion, so ergo on a side of caution on that!

I do not endorse products for a living, but I do know what I like to use and what works for me. What these products do in performance for others, well, thats their opinion. I personally will not purchase any bagged compost especially a product that just labels it as COMPOST.. Anyone asking me why, my reply is that if I did, I would have to buy a chemical analysis kit to test it for natural ingredients. Some of the compost farms are preverbial gargabe dumps and I mean GARBAGE.. that carry anything from lead to other literal biohazard nasties in their compost becuase of their sources for material to make the a-hem compost. Its actually frightening. Same can go for some of their potting soil. And this to is why we prefer to make our own. And while having a cow, a horse or chicken might not be practical for some.. knowing a good rancher that does and being fore-armed with a pile of knowledge can go a long way to keeping truly ORGANIC if thats your bag.

Here's another tip.. a good manure pile should have heat in it. A cold pile of horse or cow dung is nothing more than a literal pile of a-hem... dare I say... ...well you know.... a pile of SH- -! If there are plastic and strings and trash in it.. RUN!


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jon, I looked for Twinny Peach and Lollipops today to no avail, but I did find and got me a packet of those hanging basket sweet peas that T&M had called "Sugar and Spice"! I hope they smell as good as it sounds! Sounds like Im gonna have to get after 6'2" to make me a coldframe!

Sounds good Blossom. I generally have pretty good results with seeds ordered from Thompson & Morgan. Also like the fact that they carry some very unique flowers. I'm currently growing a few different Thompson & Morgan flowers from seed. Most of them are flowers I had never heard of before. I think their catalog is my favorite catalog to browse through

So jealous you're able to grow sweet peas. I tried them back in the winter of 2008-09 and all I got was lots of vine and no blooms.

Finally had to turn the heat on in the house tonight for the first time this winter. Gonna be in the upper 30's tonight.

Thanks BB--I have plant chewing cats so no indoor plants for me:lol: The rabbit is just a cord chewer so I've managed to elevate all the cords so he can hop about at his leisure.

I've been using the super Thrive stuff for a few years now...I'm guessing it's doing something:) Smells like those giant brown horsepill size vitamins when you open the bottle. I agree, the fish emulsion stuff smells pretty awful so I mix it up outside with the hose and watering can. I'm in a townhome type place in an end unit so I've to a nice size front bed, a good size back patio full of containers and I'm digging in a bed alongside the end of the building as well. Really need to make the end a raised bed somehow since it seems to be a low point in the yard and doesn't drain as quickly as other areas.

LOL! I am so laughing at you.. 30%!! Put a sweater on jon! Yer gonna need it! Its either that or your gonna have to find a nice warm manure pile to crawl into! Dont look at me, I have neither a sweater for you nor a warm manure pile. The poop's been spread!

Right now we are at zero. We will be in the 30's in a day or two.. and Im looking for a parka then. I would rather have zero!

Dont get too jealous on the sweet peas.. they are still seeds! LOL! They will be a first in my baskets if they grow!

Got some calendula free on the T&M purchase... Pink Surpise I beleive is what they were!

Um, you might want to get up BEFORE the sun rises to water down your plants to save them! Once the sun hits them annuals, it will be all over but your crying.

amore,
If you like T&M,you'll like Plant World Seeds another UK seed vendor. Not as many varieties but some really unique ones.

http://www.plant-world-seeds.com/

BB,
ah,that looks like my rooster the neighbor's dogs killed. He was a mean ole rooster but he was BIG and so PRUDY.

Thats my dearly departed rooster PURDY BOY, I lost him a while back.. He was an aracuana and so purdee! I dont have any roo's anymore...just 11 hens now. Couple leghorns, a couple buff orps and a few blue EE' that are babies out of my other old dearly departed EE roo who we called Robin... cold is taking its hardship on the poor girls even though they are inside 24/7 now. They skipped a day laying and sometimes I will get eggs that are froze solid and craked. Keeping water is a bear.

Well jon.. hope you got up early enuff to hose stuff.

Thanks for the link to Plant World Seeds Patty. I'm assuming they won't/can't ship to the US though?

Never got that cold here last night Blossom. It stayed overcast all night and only went down to 43. Tuesday morning will be the coldest (36 predicted). Never had any problems if the temps stay in the mid 30's or we have a quick frost (at or below 32 for just an hour or two). I've never sprayed water early in the morning to protect. For hibiscus I either bring all 50 plants, in pots, inside or I soak the soil prior to a cold night. Only time I had frost damage was when I didn't the soil.

Yes, temps in the 30's are cold to us Floridians. It's all about what you're accustomed to. We even have wind chill advisories when they're in the 20's & 30's, whereas you guys wouldn't have them unless its below zero. You tolerate the cold better than we do and we tolerate the heat better than y'all do......I think. LOL

Well, I dont know about that... I play in 102 degrees... dont like sweating, but like ya said, its what your conditioned to and I dont do the AC thing....

Patty, grrrr on the pshycho un-neighbors dog... doesnt that just make ya go balistic.

Well guys, is this thread getting too long? Should we start Snaps #2? I will get on it soon as I find a new pix.

No comment huh!
OK,

SNAPDRAGONS FOR 2010 - WHOSE IN #2

is up.. go here!

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1066795/

BYE!

Thanks!