December 29, 2007

Days become longer

Winter solstice joy made me get prepared for new season. I realised it today and it must be totally intuitive.
I have a green box filled with seeds, that I used to buy in excessive amounts when I was about to get a garden and continuing for the first year I already got one. I can't explain it today how it happened that I filled it so easily.

There is seeds of many beautiful annuals and perennials, that I will or I will not use - some of them I do not like anymore, for some of them - somehow - there is not enough space in my garden anymore...

I think I may swap them with other gardeners - there is still time to do this.
Whatever amount of seeds I have, still of course some plant's charm hit me unexpectedly and somehow... there is enough space for them :)

My last 'fallings':

- I bought some seeds: meconopsis, lagerstroemia indica, asclepias, ophiogon (did not arrive yet) and centranthus,




- I sow lagerstroemia on 8th of December already. I recycle for this purpose plastic boxes remaining after shopping - to make hot and humid bed for them. After three weeks my lagerstroemia looks like this:


My plans:
- make the veggie rotation crops planning,
- learn more about good vegetable seeds. Actually I found very interesting website offering organic seeds. I still have plenty of them from my first seeds heat in 2004 :) so I will use some of them - but one day they all will be gone...

Maybe coming year will be a good year for growing chilli - I never did this before :)

Recommended reading on Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners, 2nd Edition

7 comments:

Philosophical Karen said...

That is such a good idea with reusing the plastic containers. I will have to remember that.

Unknown said...

Love your seed box, Ewa! If you've not grown Meconopsis from seed before, please don't be discouraged if they don't germinate well; they do best from freshly harvested seed from plants, rather than packets, but if they're foil wrapped they might be okay. I'm referring to the blue Meconopsis, don't know about the other species because I haven't tried them, but the blues are spotty in germination and slow slow slow to grow into anything bigger than a thumbnail.

Ewa said...

Karen,
Reusage of plastic containers is good recycling and also if you grow them in these and on the heater, there is no way they don't germinate :)

Jodi,
I've never grown Meconopsis before, so I will report my achievements.

Lisa at Greenbow said...

Ewa, your box looks like a treasure chest with all of those seeds in it. Good luck with the sowing and growing.

Iowa Gardening Woman said...

Oh, I love your seed box, it is beautiful! My seeds are in bags, not nearly so organized or pretty.

I am looking forward to seed starting.

Garden Wise Guy said...

Ewa: thanks for stopping at my GardenWiseGuy blog and commenting about the Sedum 'Dragon's Blood'. It's such a useful plant to add contrast and takes very little water.

It stretched my brain to see Lagerstroemia starting from seed, although that's probably not uncommon. It's a tree I grew up with around my neighborhood near Los Angeles. I love it every day of the year, from its beautifully formed leaves, to the great branch structure, delicious flowers, then the fall color and bare bark that it shows off during winter.

I live in coastal Santa Barbara, California, and the summer fog we get makes this a difficult plant to grow. We always get powdery mildew on the leaves.

I really enjoy your blog and will be adding it as a link on my website. I hope it brings some traffic your way.

Have a chlorophyll-filled new year.

Billy Goodnick

Barbara said...

Oh Ewa, this post or better this box is very familiar to me. I guess I have seeds which is quite old now as I also bought too much of it in the beginning.... I wonder whether you'll be successful with germinating meconopsis....a wonderful plant. I also use plastic containers and yoghourt boxes for my seedlings.
I hope you'll have a wonderful 2008 full of positive surprises (also in your garden!).
Have a good time Ewa!
Barbara

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