Critter, enjoyed your article yesterday and Wind yours today!
Gardening: Cottage Garden Seed Swap & Chat #32
I am so sorry that the purple and white ruffled petunias are white. I am so bummed. Mine haven't sprouted yet.
Thank you for sending me the new Datura seeds. You are an angel. I will send you some postage money.
I missed the articles. How do I see yesterday's articles? Thanks
But they're awful pretty, and white is so versatile!
mine always get to long and with nothing in the pot and then I have to cut them back and it take so long for them to bloom again
Lynn, you can go to Critter's home page and they have a list of the articles that she wrote.
You guys I don't w ant any postage that's not going to break me :) Just enjoy!
Tonya that white is really pretty! It will look good in my moon garden :) Lynn, you can't help what color the seeds turn out to be lol We all take that chance when we send seeds :)
I kinda like not knowing its like a big surprise as long as I know what they are color is not that important to me since I will always find a good spot for each one of my babies
Oh Lea, sorry to say I wouldn't hold out much hope for the Holly. Seems most of the variegated forms are marginal here in the ground, and sometimes come back from the roots if killed back, but with the roots above ground survival is unlikely.
Kelly, lovely, pristine white Petunia! Oh I think that was a most pleasant surprise, it will go with anything and shine!
Lots of Peppers sprouting, just waiting for 4 of the 14 pots to germinate.
need to start my pepper next week
This message was edited Mar 13, 2009 2:17 PM
Well Neal, live and learn :) maybe I can take it back to the nursery if I can find the paper to it, that's a trip in it's self as much paper work as I have around here lol
leBug.. I woudl take em back and get yoru money back. and buy anothe rplant. If ya have osmocote hey that just fine. I get the home depot stuff cuz it lot scheaper than osmocote, btu osmocote is great too. : )
Hey white petunias go with any color and who knwos what color the kids wil be cuz ya gona have hidden genes in there. Might just get ya a new cultivar color : )
I love brugs they are so beautifull the blooms are so big but also delicate
geminiI forgot to thank you for telling me about the neitral ph-maybe those ones weren't ready for any fertilizer.I gave them alittle the last timeI watered them. btw my daughter didn't get sick from the piece of acorn or the lily bulbs! I'm surprised I didn't give you all a scare! Poison control said either one was highly toxic in small amounts. But Beware kitty cat owners -I think lily bulbs will kill a cat!
KL if you told me I was getting purple petuniasand I got that instead I'd still be in love with it - What a pretty petunia that is! Great for a moon garden. Save me some for next year!! :)
animals are pretty smart I have been growing daturas and castor beans for years and the dog and cat smell them and walk away but then go and eat all my spices they know they smell the toxins
but some animal like humans lol have no common sense or instincts lol and they go and eat all kinds of stuff that make them sick hahahhaha
I grow lots of plants listed as toxic to pets, but have never had one eat any. Guess its survival of the smartest around here,...obviously excluding myself, LOL.
as you will also notice dear rabbit and other animals do not eat toxic plants either
I've been lucky with my two kitties too. No poisonous plants have been eaten to date. :)
I did have my first kitty knocking over a plant on the window sill! At least I found it soon enough to save it. Thepot was broken though,and it wasoneofmy faves. :(
lol cats have better sense of smell than dogs so no problem with them either
the things to watch is young kids that dont know any better I use to make sure until the kids turned I think 3 I would not pick of eat anything off the plant so they didnt get the idea that stuff could be eaten of plants because they dont know the difference when they got older I told them if its in the veggie garden you can eat it lol
Yeah - no matter what you grow to keep those pests away, they're smarter than you think :-) The squirrel in my front yard did some numbers on the sunflower seedheads in the fall (I didn't get a darned seed off of over half a dozen flowers), and you could tell one morning he'd jumped from a sunflower to the castor bean, but didn't stay long. One bent leaf and that plant wasn't touched the rest of the year.
Star & Neal, I'll try and find the receipt for it, but I keep all of my receipts for the money that I spend of dad's so it will be a hunt and I still haven’t gotten all of my paper work done from the nursing home filed right, is it's in there just need to go thru it and organize, right now I'm doing paper work for trying to get him on the Medicare D for drugs he never has been on it and that's a trip in it's self, will it ever end :) On a good note he is at least settled in now it's taken me all of this time to get that done :) I sure don't envy anyone having to go thru this, if I could have asked my sister what she did for mom it would have been a lot easier but she is no help at all with anything except the check book! If she can't have anything to do with that she doesn't want anything to do with us :) She never let me know what was going on with mom and did everything while I was working 12-15 hours a day and another part time job. I would call her and ask what was going on and she would just say I've taken care of it. She is the type of person that will take me to court when this is all over so have to watch my P's and Q's!
I worried about my kittens out in the beds last year because I have so many poison plants too but I was out there with them all of the time and they didn't seem to bother them, they would sniff then walk away, those castor bean plants really worried me because of the seeds they love little things like that so I just cut the seeds off before they got big enough to fall leaving only a very few to plant for this year. I planted my daturas out of the way just incase.
see even as kittens they know by the smell hahahah to bad us human have lost our sense of smell and self preservation hahhahahah
Hey does anybody have any good tricks for removing stubborn seedheads? I've been patient as long as I can be, I'm going to start losing seedlings if some of them don't drop soon.
I think about all you can do is keep misting them a bit La, I've never had much success with it usually if they want to stay there they do, can't take them off most of the time they take the top with them :( Be patient maybe it will drop. Is it geraniums?
No they're peppers. It's old seed which is probably the problem (although I had the same issue with the cassandra seed I got from Summer Hill. I lost every stinking one of those.)
I usually just mist them a bit to moisten the seedhead and then let nature take it's course.
Regarding the petunias turning white - actually it was this exact situtation that led to the discovery of RNA. Apparently, there was an attempt to genetically create a super-duper purple petunia - and the scientists working on this were horrified to find out all their work ended up with a white petunia! So the geneticists were to work and discovered that by trying to create a super purple - the genetics sort of canceled the purple out (I used to understand this, but don't ask me to explain today). Anyway, this discovery has the potential for treating genetic diseases . . . cool, huh?
HELP WITH MY PURPLE HYACYTH BEANS please!
Well, I soaked them in hydrogen peroxide and water for 24 hours - and, well, they seemed very soft - but I planted them anyway. OMG! I had no idea (1) they would germinate so fast (2) they would grow so fast, and (3) so many would germinate.
So - some already have their first true leaves (and are almost 3 inches tall), others are still germinating.
Do these need to be in peat pots? (If so, I will plant them in large paper pots that I make). OR can I plant them in 4 inch pots?
Can these be transplanted safely? I still have about 6 weeks until we are frost-free. How big will these be by then?
Do I pinch these?
Sorry - but none of my gardening books have details regarding these.
Thanks for help.
Hi Seandor. I can only comment on the transplantability of the purple hyacinth beans. I had the same great success with germination this year in my wintersown containers and have transplanted them into the ground already. They are all happy campers. In fact, some of them I planted out then moved to another location a week later and they had no problems either. So I would say you can pot them up with no worries. Hopefully someone else will pipe up about sizes of pots. I am also interested to hear if they should be pinched. I'm not real familiar with vines, but haven't heard of pinching them before.
I've not heard of pinching Hyacinth beans either - I'd expect it would just encourage double the rapid growth though from side nodes.....I've got a few that are about to take over their shelf and MUST remember not to start them this early next year.
Rats! I thought I was supposed to start them early . . . What will they look like 6 weeks from now? I think I must pinch them.
I think you should try to train themon a small bamboo stick. I've seen people do that with morning glories. You know they are very similar in growth to Scarlet Runner Beans.
Seandor and dryad, I couldn't help smiling at your being taken over by the Hyacinth Beans. :o)
Believe it or not, the first year I grew them I barely kept 3 alive. Then I winter sowed them, had 6 growing in a liter coke bottle. They did fine. I know they germinated pretty fast, but then grew slowly till it warmed up. So how big will they be in 6 weeks in your house ... I don't know... sorry. I would hope that 4 inch pots would be enough till you get them outside.
I appreciate the positive comments on the labeling methods article... I've learned so much from the folks here!
For a listing of all DG articles (most recent first), go to the "guides & info" tab at the top of the page and then click on "Articles." You'll get not only titles but also a thumbnail image and a "teaser" intro paragraph.
My articles are indeed all listed on my member page (just click on my name and scroll down), but you'll also find a link "for more articles by Jill" at the bottom of any of my DG articles... that will take you to a page just like the article list above, but with just my articles.
So 4 inch pots will be okay? I have the hyacynth bean plants germinating under lights with a heat mat right now . . . Once they have their true leaves - I should transplant them into the pots, right? Then, can I take them off the heat mats? I am hoping that will slow them down a bit.
Currently, I am sowing verbena seeds I bought 2 years ago - these are a red/white/and blue packages for a "patriot" garden.
BTW - the impatiens seeds which were also 2 years old are sprouting like mad!
The spirea seeds I got last year from Wheez in Alaska have resulted in 18 little plants!
Why don't you take them off the heat mat now? I think the heat will make them get tall fast. Do you have a cooler room to move them to to help slow them down?
About the pots~
I would just check their root system out. When they have a decent root system I wouldput the up to the 4" pots. Then if they seem to dry out too fast check their roots again and perhaps you'll have to pot them up again- I highly doubt you will need to though. I grew them last year and they weren't very fast growers for me. I think they grew fast when they were seedlings but I think it just seems they get big fast because they are a naturally larger seedling. This is just what I would do. :) Doesn't Scicc grow them right on a windowsill?I could have sworn she posted a pic of morning glories growing up sticks on her windowsill. :)
Sorry -but my spacebar isn't working very well!
This message was edited Mar 14, 2009 6:30 PM
I dont wait for the second set of leaves as soon as the baby leaves are fully open I transplant them and put them a little deeper and put them in the sun make sure they dont dry out but dont make the wet just slightly damp and they will grow quick and I would go with a 6 inch pot since the roots grow pretty fast on those
ummm . . . six inch pot . . . well, I will see if I have 12 six inch pots. I can keep them under lights without the heat pad. The air temperature will be around 50 to 55 degrees - the plant shelves are in the basement. Is that too cool?
They will have light for 16 hours a day - too much?
Those conditions sound good, and you'll probably thank yourself for using 6" pots- they're vigorous growers.
if its 50 to 55 at night and you dont expect it to go below 32 and they have 3 set of leaves just plant them out and keep an eye on them so they dont go to dry if they are perennial poppies they will be ok
Seandor, I'd keep those Hyacyth beans in the cooler room wouldn't hurt them I wouldn't think, maybe just at night if you are worried about them. You are going to have some nice vines by the time you get them out, I agree with Robin about pinching them, you'lll probably just have double the trouble, like Meredith said they are a bigger vine anyway so it seems like they grow faster, I don't think I've ever started them this early so don't know for sure.
Someone here had a few (it looked like) of the Hyacyth beans growing in the field just growing wild and it was really pretty I'm going to do that this year in my field. They mounded in the middle kind of looked like it was shooting up out of the ground then the end of the vines growing out away from it, a pretty site with all of those blooms! It was probably about ten foot around. I just wonder how many plants it took to look like that.
This will be my second year for my coral bean vines will they bloom for this year, I'm dying to see those blooms!
It's the middle of the night and I'm in the middle of about 12 projects. I needed a break so here I am and I'd like to show you something (that I think is) cool. I cleaned out an old fish tank last fall and started a terrarium. I didn't necessarily want a terrarium, I was just out of space to overwinter some of my tenders and in one of my rare flashes of genius I remembered the aquarium. I didn't arrange the plants or try to make it look nice, my intent was just to use it as storage space until spring. Well don't ya know it's filled out so nicely and is now so pretty that I might just leave everything in there and forget about bringing things back out in the spring. All except the elephant ears. The elephant ears will have to go. They're banging their heads on the top of the tank.
Anyway I just noticed something that I know wasn't there yesterday. Check out this cool yellow shroom that just popped up in there. I know, I know. This has absolutely nothing to do with cottage gardening or seed starting, but a pretty picture is a pretty picture, so what the heck? I love the way the yellow contrasts with the begonia and the bright pink alternanthera. Pretty neat, eh?
Now I need to get back to the dahlias. *sigh* I started out wetting the canna bulbs and decided that while I was in the cubby hole I might as well take care of the dahlias too. So many of the tubers had already started sprouting that I decided I should just let them go on ahead and do their thing and I'd root them and have even MORE dahlias. Woohoo.
But of course I really didn't know the proper steps for rooting dahlia slips which meant I had to do some research first. And now it's 4:00 in the morning, I've got a mess in every room of my house, I'm dead-dog tired, and here I sit rambling away to you good people.
But isn't that a pretty picture?
