I just received my second or third order this fall from www.hardyplants.com
They include all kinds of hard to find seeds which I will winter sow:
Welsh poppy, meconopsis blue poppy, 3 kinds of veronica, 2 or 3 kinds of penstemon, and three kinds of phystogia. I sent to New Zealand for their great strains of delphiniums too. T&M charge far too much for them. This is [HYPERLINK@www.hardyplants.com]
These seed people pride themselves on the out-of-the-ordinary. I planted their special Japanese iris seeds in March, but I still got three. I will put them out again this winter, and I am positive I will get many more.
Most of their seeds are about $2.65 and under, down to $.99. Postage is reasonable too.
a great company for an incredible number of flower varieties
Thanks for the link, Gloria!
gloriag . . .have you grown meconopsis? If so, what are your growing conditions? I bought seeds last spring Think it might grow in certain cooler, wetter areas of the property but I never got around to planting them.
gloria, thanks for the link. I can't believe the number of different kinds of just violas they have listed.
David_Paul,
This will be my second attempt. Here in Richmond, we have blazing heat and high humidity, not the ideal for this flower. I am moving to zone 6b where the altitude is 2850, the summers are cool and winters colder. I think they will have a better chance of survival there. With your winters in CT, I would think you could grow them. I would winter sow them if I were you and let nature do the stratification.
Gloria
Thanks for the great link. I always wear out the pages of the T&M catalog looking through it but they are expensive so I seldom do more than look. I noticed that there were not too many pictures so I think what I wll do is use the T&M as a visual guide and order from this place.
Telly,
You can google rare plants and hit images. Almost always you can get several pictures. The amazing thing is that sometimes, one or two pictures are obviously mislabled.
Also, some times they have a note: sorry we are sold out at this time. Check back later. BUT if you click on the name of the plant, another screen comes up which says you can leave your email address and they will email you when it comes in. When I have done it recently (I just found this!) they say I am number 1 on the list. That means not many people do it!
Great tip Gloria!
Gloria, thanks for the link, they have one of the Delphiniums I've been looking for :)
Curious, where are you moving to - somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mtns? We have a friend in Staunton (just west of the Blue Ridge) who had Meconopsis bloom a couple of years ago but never checked back to find out if it has continued to thrive in his gardens.
I am moving to Floyd, VA, Floyd County. Pop. under 15,000-one stop light in the county- County Seat Floyd under 500 pop, altitude 2850'. They "should" take.
I can't wait to get down there!
gloria, nice area and such a neat town - what a switch from Richmond! You'll have to check out a couple of places there that I love - Slaughter's (sp?) Nursery and Granny Janny's Hostas. My friend's sister from Greensboro built a house in Floyd and we went down for a visit a couple of years ago. Found some incredible deals at Slaughter's and when we stopped at Granny Janny's realized that Jan's husband was one of Rick's professors from Virginia Tech - it had been about 20 years since he'd seen him and they had a wonderful reunion :)
Check the Garden Watchdog before ordering from this place--Hardy Plants AKA Specialty Perennials. There are quite a few negative reviews (including mine).
Thanks for reminding me about Watchdog. Ouch! Many people have really been burnt by this company.
Gloria - Floyd is a neat town. My DH and I took the drive off the beaten path through Floyd on our way north from Fla. to NH last May. I told him I just had to go back there, because when I was 10, we were taking my older sister up to summer camp in Christiansburg, VA. We had been driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and suddenly the brakes on the car started smoking. We had to go to Floyd to a garage to have our brakes fixed. That was a LONG time ago, but I remembered the cute town. It is still a nice place. Hope you enjoy living there!
Thank you, DonnieBrook, tonight I just learned that we close on Monday. Wow! I have so much to do! I love Floyd and the surrounding area. Route 221 runs parallel to the Blue Ridge Parkway; all one has to do is to turn east off 221 and there the Parkway is!
Remember it well........that was our route....and a lovely one it was. Good luck with your move! Love the Parkway!!
Tetlytuna...by "T&M" do you mean Thompson & Morgan?
Forget who mentioned it but someone said Value Seeds is Thompson & Morgan's discount operation:
http://www.valueseeds.com/
All seeds $1.99 or less. Shipping is $1.99. Lots of seeds are .49 and .99 cents. The style looks like T&M. Some packages are small but 10 sungold tomato seeds for 99 cents is a buy. I grew sungolds this year from Thompson and Morgan. Got 100% germination. The plants were over 14 feet tall. Two plants produced more than I could give away (and everyone loves sungolds).
Selections change. All the seeds at the link above are available but I've found more not listed by clicking around at Value Seed's growing guide:
http://www.valueseeds.com/guides.html
Thanks for the link to Value Seeds. I just had fun making a list. Nice assortment of plants and great prices.
I agree! That's a good find! Thanks!
Wow - 14 feet tall! You need scaffolding for that.
14 feet!!! Yikes....that's almost 3 of me high!! Whoa! How the heck do you pick the tomatoes???
I bet the Jolly Green Giant stops over to help pick the tomatoes.
Its a sad sight today. I'll post a photo tomorrow. The bamboo scaffold began to topple when the plants hit the ten foot mark and headed back down.
Would you consider topping them at 5' next year?
Oh, My, D-P, I can't imagine growing them that tall! What do you use for fertilizer?
Donniebrook...lime and 10-10-10 from 40lbs bags the manager of a big box let me have for $3 each because they had split open. Applied both as directed by the ag lab at UConn. Did mix in some decomposed cow manure into the double dug raised beds but I suspect bringing the garden up to what the ag lab suggested was the main factor.
Think the manager gave me the price on the fertilizer because
1. It was the start of the season and he didn't want his help to waste time cleaning up the torn bags
2. I was being an educated idiot. Been reading for months on what fertilizer to get. I asked for weird formulas like 0-10-15 and 5-20-10 He finally said, "Look its all the same stuff...tell you what I'll do....."...
This message was edited Nov 16, 2007 9:25 PM
Nobody can argue with whatever you did and the great success you had.
We have one tomato left and then it's over until next July. It seems like such a long time!
Wow, David! I think I'll give that formula a try just for fun here! I have some lime and I think I have some balanced fertilizer. How interesting! Thanks!
Donnie...I'm so glad in planting my first big garden I didn't do what I've done when I've tossed in plants here and there: haphazardly buy a box of this and that and spot fertilize. Some areas might be slightly different but I have a pretty good idea of what the baseline is for almost an acre of land. It is also nice to know what the aluminum and lead levels are. We're on a main road, not far from the turnpike, the house was painted who knows how many times with lead paint, there were outbuilding no longer here and people have lived on this road for almost 4 centuries. I figured lead levels might be high. But they are not. Just above background, nothing to be concerned about. The soil test was five bucks. Best gardening investment I've ever made.
Now I have buy bags and bags of stuff to improve the lawn....lol...
But I know the high nitrogen fertilizers (30-3-3) are the opposite of what I need for the lawn I'm naturalizing all these bulbs in. At least for now.
Very interesting, D_P! I plan to do a soil test when we get back up to the farm. I'm happy to hear that your lead paint and older house are not showing up in the soil test. That is our situation as well with a 1763 house.
Do you use milorganite at all?