Planting Day update...with pics!

It has been almost a month since planting day. I thought I would share my progress with pics.

Here is a sample of what I have started under lights...

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Has anyone tried growing alpine strawberries from seed? the stick marked Rainbow treasure are strawberries. I am going to put them in baskets. They have beautiful pink flowers.

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And this is my gardener-in-training helping with transplanting...in her jamies!!

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And this is what we finished yesterday. Transplants always look pathetic for a few days!

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Wonderful pictures! My mom operated a small greenhouse for years and sold started flowers and vegetables to the community. When I see your pictures I can smell that warm, wonderful fragrance of fertile soil.

Oh wow!! Now if you haven't taken me way back in time, I don't know what could have. That is incredible and you are very fortunate to have lights to get things going, and the warmth of a greenhouse. Back on the coast I had a nursery. Just run by me, but my oldest gal was my helper. I would come out in the morning and all kinds of stuff would be transplanted into cells, hours before I was able to get out. We had lights too, and rows and rows of benches. My greenhouse had an old oil furnace and we used warm and cool florescent lights, one of each for each bank of lights. These lights were below the benches where we worked, slated benches. Oh it was the times of our lives. I loved how petunias, in particular, were so short, as I see yours are. You have appropriate lighting, that is for surely, and temperature too. Once transplanted and recovered from shock for a couple of days, those plants would skyrocket. The one plant that I disliked transplanting and so did Daughter, was the lobelia, horrible, we used to try to get a clump of 3-5 seedlings with 4 clumps per cell. Finicky stuff, crystal palace lobelia was my favourite of the lobelias, even for hanging baskets. We grew everything in there, from seed, some cuttings, some transplants from the garden. Days of wonder and joy, working in that warm and humid environment, when it was cold and ichy outside. I miss that, and this was just a joy to take that walk by your side and see your fine work. You have a little garden tenderer being honed to work by her Mamma’s side, lovely!! Have an awesome day, CynthiaM.

It has taken me 10 years to do a good job of starting plants under lights. I used to baby them, put covers on, carefully plant the seed in rows, sterilize everything and for some reason had issues with germination and damping off. Now, I throw the seed onto the starting mix wet it down to dissolve the pellet and put it under the lights. No more covers and fussing. I have much better and more even germination. I think the heat mat makes a difference. I will be sick of petunias when I am done, as I have over 2000 of them, but they sure put on a nice show in the summer. Lots of them are for the town pots and planters. I got sucked into starting some flowers for the town.

I love lobelia, but refuse to start it from seed. I bring it in as plugs, along with the bacopa. In the end, I grow flowers for my friends and neighbours, and the vegies for myself. It is a great hobby!

Ah, bacopa. I originally only grew it by cuttings. I would have a few mother plants and would take hundreds of cuttings, they root so easily. Then one year I saved seed from a mamma plant. Never did cuttings again, the seed was just too easy, smiling. Ya, damping off can certainly be a problem. I only had that occur a few times, but quickly got that handle on how to prevent. My biggest concern in the greenhouse was with the sunshine mix and warmness, was the fungus nats. Sometimes, particularly with the impatiens, the low pH of the mix would get black slimey stuff growing on the top of the soil, no matter how much I allowed drying out betwixt waterings. That occurred only some years and was a plain nuisance. Did not other the plants,but those black nats would bug the crap out of me. Enjoy the greenhouse. Yes, thousands of petunias, you will be very sick of that for surely. Have a wonderful day, CynthiaM.