Garden

[SeaMaiden]

@gardenman  What a cute house🥰 Beautiful flowers! Thank you for sharing!  Some  lucky neighbors to live by you!

[gardenman]

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@Dazlin wrote:

@gardenman , thank you so much for info...ill look into more of what you said, maybe reconsider because of the heat and high humidity here.  Forecast for next week is over 97 degrees 😓

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We'll be 93 here on Sunday (if you believe the forecasts) so we're not that far behind you. Mine hold up pretty well in the heat though. Or have in the past.

[Dazlin]

@gardenman I just looked at proven winners, Laguna...none in my area, but im going to keep an eye out.  I'm heading to Walmart now, going to look around.   I have lowes and Home Depot nearby too.  I can look for seeds but may be too late to start this year.

[gardenman]

A few photos of the porch this morning, June 15th. The impatiens in the boxes are heavily budded but not fully in flower yet. In another week or so they should be pretty impressive. The clematis Jackmanii is putting on its normal grand show. It's been there about 25 years and never fails to do well.

The four new Plantopia baskets with their holes in the side are doing quite well. I'm a bit surprised at how well the marigold one is doing. Here are a couple of closer-up photos of those four baskets.

The impatiens baskets may get a haircut sometime soon. They're almost growing together already. I might cut them back to just about three inches of growth around the baskets, but I'll probably wait until after the Fourth of July to do so. It'll slow them down for a week or two, but then they'll bounce back.

The next photo update should be on the Fourth of July. I would expect the boxes to look much more colorful by then.

[chlema]

How beautiful everything looks.  Here in Delaware my flowers are doing well, especially the sunpatients.  Now if I could only find a way to get rid of the dang vines that keep cropping up, seemingly overnight.  I swear they know when I am coming out to weed because they attack my ankles in an effort to bring me down!

[Lilysmom1]

@gardenman @There is a lot of work to get the annuals to that stage.  Can't wait to see them in full bloom.

I only did marigolds from seed this year.  One of my planters got slight sun scald in the hardening off.  No flowers yet!  S

PS would love to have you as a neighbour.  Beautiful display of colour about to happen.

[gardenman]

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@Lilysmom1 wrote:

@gardenman @There is a lot of work to get the annuals to that stage.  Can't wait to see them in full bloom.

I only did marigolds from seed this year.  One of my planters got slight sun scald in the hardening off.  No flowers yet!  S

PS would love to have you as a neighbour.  Beautiful display of colour about to happen.

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I've been doing it long enough that it's not that much work for me these days. Planting 250+ Impatiens seeds gets a bit tedious, but I do it in February when nothing much else is happening so it's not so bad. It might take an hour or two. Each seed gets its own cell in a reused six-pack, so once planted they just need to be watered every other day or so. My plant light stand has shelves (18"X48") with raised edges and I line them with sheets of plastic so I just water the whole shelf at a time by filling the tray with water.

Some of the impatiens stay in the six-pack the whole time until planted out while others get moved to flats holding 24 plants. All of the geraniums get moved to the 24 pack flats as they grow, along with the lobelias. The marigolds stay in six-packs the whole time. Dahlberg daisies tend to stay in the six-packs also.

Once planted I mostly just water them every other day to start and then every day closer to going out time. Watering takes maybe five minutes and most of that time is spent filling the watering can. I just fill each shelf with water and the plants soak it up. The lights are on timers. I use yellow sticky traps above each shelf to keep any insects mired in the goo and off the plants.

Once it's time to go out, I just sit on my porch steps with a 2 cu ft bag of Miracle-Gro and a stack of empty four-inch pots. Each pot gets filled with the potting mix, then I make a hole for the seedling, pop it out of the six-pack and into the hole, firm the potting mix around it, top off the mix, and that plant is ready for the boxes. It takes less than a minute per plant. Once in the boxes, the auto-watering takes over. The total time I take in a year to do everything is probably less than 24 hours. That's for everything from planting the seeds to transplanting to cleaning the boxes out at the end of the season. It really isn't that much work and it's a lot cheaper than buying the plants.

I ended up with 230+ impatiens this year, 60+ marigolds, just 12 lobelias, 38 (or so)  geraniums. My total cost for everything (5 bags of Miracle-Gro, 250+ Impatiens seeds, 50+ geranium seeds, the marigold seeds, (the lobelia, and dahlberg daisy seeds were leftovers from a previous year,) the four new hanging baskets, the stainless steel wire and crimper/cutter for the hanging basket hooks, all cost me just a tick under $200. If you include the new LED plant lights I bought it comes out to closer to $250, but I'll reuse those for years.

The potting mix, hanging baskets, etc. were all costs I'd pay anyway. The annuals around here typically retail at $3 for 4 plants or $0.75 per plant. Geraniums are typically $3 per plant. 230 impatiens at $0.75 per plant is $172.50. (I paid $7.99 for the seeds.) The 38 geraniums at $3 each would be $114. (I think I paid $4.99 for the seeds.) The other annuals would come in right around $60. So just buying the plants one year, the plants alone, not including the baskets, soil, etc. would be around $350. I spent around $250 for all those plants, the plant lights, the soil, the pots, the new wires to make better hanging basket holders, etc.

I probably spend more time perusing the seed catalogs (the first one, HPS Seeds typically comes in July) than I do doing everything else. My poor seed catalogs get marked up in very interesting ways from the time they arrive. Anything that catches my eye initially gets circled. Then as I go through the catalogs, again and again, circled items I like get a star. If I really like it, it'll get two or three stars. Then the list-making starts. Then the total cost gets added up. Then I gasp at how much everything will cost. Then the slashing of things starts. Lots of circled and even starred items end up crossed off. And eventually, after weeks and months of going over the items, I finalize my order and send it off. I probably spend twice as much time perusing the seed catalogs as I spend taking care of the plants the whole season. The hanging baskets, railing planters, and planter boxes are all self-watering. Other than pulling the occasional stray weed there's nothing to do to them on a daily basis. They just take care of themselves.

[gardenman]

And the impatiens have burst into bloom!

Now that they've started, they should keep growing and flowering until October.

[GinaV24]

@gardenman totally awesome! Great photos of how beautiful it all looks. I have a very old clematis that was my mother's (still in the yard), not as lush as yours but I love it for my memories of her.

[qvcfreak]

You outdid yourself @gardenman  Looks so inviting. I'd love to sit on your front porch and just take it all in, Beautiful.