Garden

[gardenman]

The first four pansy seedlings have emerged! There should be another 23 coming behind them.  Spring is coming!

[KitTkat]

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@gardenman wrote:

The first four pansy seedlings have emerged! There should be another 23 coming behind them.  Spring is coming!

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@gardenman

I just love to watch seedlings pop up through the soil. I find myself checking multiple times a day once I seed in anticipation. Thanks for the pic, it makes me all the more excited to soon begin another fun season of planting. Forgive me if you mentioned it in another post, but if I may ask, what varieties of pansies are you growing? 

[gardenman]

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@KitTkat wrote:

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@gardenman wrote:

The first four pansy seedlings have emerged! There should be another 23 coming behind them.  Spring is coming!

---

@gardenman

I just love to watch seedlings pop up through the soil. I find myself checking multiple times a day once I seed in anticipation. Thanks for the pic, it makes me all the more excited to soon begin another fun season of planting. Forgive me if you mentioned it in another post, but if I may ask, what varieties of pansies are you growing? 

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These are the Cool Wave series, mixed colors. They trail like the Wave series of petunias getting two to three feet long and reportedly covered in flowers. (At least until the higher heat hits them.) And like you, I check on them constantly. I'm up to twenty of the 27 seeds up and growing as of this morning. If you Google "Cool Wave Pansies" you can read more about them. They're pretty tough, and neat little plants.

I like to start a whole flat of seedlings at one time, so after I'd filled the 27 cells with the Cool Wave Pansies, I had 45 empty cells. Those all got a sprinkling of my saved Dahlberg Daisy seeds. The Dahlberg Daisy (thymophyla tenuifolia) is a neat little plant that flowers nonstop all season. It's got this very finely cut foliage and lovely little yellow flowers along with a scented foliage that people either love or hate. I've never seen it in any local garden center, but it's a very good little plant for me. It grows true from saved seed and the seeds are a snap to harvest. It grows slowly from seed however.  This is a bit early for me to be starting it, but it's also very cold tolerant, so it can start spending days outside come March with no trouble, freeing up space under the lights for the later sown plants. 

Next I'll be starting up the lobelia seeds, which are also slow growing, but also cold tolerant. That'll probably take place next week or by mid-January anyway. Alll three of those plants, the lobelia, dahlberg daisy and pansy, can take quite cool weather, so they can go out long before it's safe to put out the more delicate plants.

[Lilysmom]

@gardenman, I love seeing this.  Keep us posted on your progress. Makes me believe Spring is not that far off!  LM

[gardenman]

@Lilysmom

Spring's not that far off. Day's are already getting longer again. Around January 21st our temperatures will have bottomed out and our average temp will start to rise until around July 21st. By early February my first daffodils will be poking up through the ground. By early March the daffodils and other winter hardy bulbs will be flowering. Around the middle of March I have to start mowing the grass. Last year I went from shoveling snow one week to mowing the grass the next week. In April things really take off, then in May all danger of frost is gone. Spring's not that far away. We'll start getting spring-like days in February.

[Lilysmom]

@gardenman, good Lord, in Feb we will probably be under several feet of snow.  For that, you have my envy!  LM

[gardenman]

@Lilysmom

February is our snowiest month, but you do typically get a few days where the temps rise into the fifties, and if you're lucky, the sixties, giving you a hint of spring. On rare occasions you'll even hit seventy. The middle of March is the time of the year here when it's like someone flips a switch and you go from winter to spring. Early March you're still getting snow, then the snow pretty much stops and everything starts to take off and grow like mad.

Last year we got a dusting of snow on March 13th then on the nineteenth I was out mowing the grass for the first time. It's a fast transition here from winter to spring.

[KitTkat]

@gardenman

I've planted trailing pansies and violas before, I think they were the cool wave series of pansies, can't remember what the violas were called. I had moderate success with them, but now they are available at my local floral shop, so I just buy them there now. I usually take seeds from my pansies and plant them the next year, but this last summer we had a bad drought so I didn't get as many collected. Soon I'll be ordering seeds, and the next step planting them. Hooray!

[Lilysmom]

@KitTkat, you just gave me an idea.  I think I will try clematis around the stumps.  That area will now get full sun! 

Sorry to go OT.

@gardenman, pls post pics as your flowers grow.  Love seeing them!  LM

[gardenman]

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@Lilysmom wrote:

@KitTkat, you just gave me an idea.  I think I will try clematis around the stumps.  That area will now get full sun! 

Sorry to go OT.

@gardenman, pls post pics as your flowers grow.  Love seeing them!  LM

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I'll try to remember to post weekly updates on the flower seedlings. They really do give you hope that spring is coming, which is nice on a day like today when the temps are in the teens and it's snowing outside.