Garden

[Lilysmom1]

@LonestarBabs , I totally get it about the weeds.  Those I missed  late last year are shiny,  green and thriving in my garden.  You would think the ****** snow and frost would kill them but no way!!!  S

[JustJazzmom]

My first sign of Spring is the return of the blackbirds both red wing and blackbird with yellow bars to my feeders. They arrived this past Tuesday. I usually see the males first who are probably the scouts to the flock.

[gardenman]

We'd better get an early spring this year. My seedlings under the new grow lights are growing too fast. Here are a couple of photos of the lobelia that were started in late January. The first photo is from February 22nd after about a month's growth. (Bear in mind it typically takes about two weeks for the seeds to germinate, so this is about two week's growth.)

The next photo is from this morning.

Lobelia starts out as dust-like seeds and typically aren't in flower until sometime in late April/early May from a late January sowing. Suffice to say the new plant lights have accelerated that timing a wee bit.

The geraniums are also growing much faster than normal. I have to rethink my seed starting timing with the new lights going forward. The lobelia are about where they'd typically be in early to mid-May and it's not even mid-March yet. Yikes! The lobelia will be having to be repotted and moved to the cold frame a bit sooner than expected. Oh well, there are worse problems to have.

[Kachina624]

@Lilysmom1    Such a beautiful setting for the statue. 

[Kachina624]

I love lobelia in a mixed hanging basket.  Unfortunately it's a cool weather plant and shrivels up and dies here on June 1.  Can't take the heat.  It's such an iridescent blue.  People who live in the mountains grow it. 

[DiAnne]

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@Kachina624 wrote:

I love lobelia in a mixed hanging basket.  Unfortunately it's a cool weather plant and shrivels up and dies here on June 1.  Can't take the heat.  It's such an iridescent blue.  People who live in the mountains grow it. 

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@Kachina624 

I like to tuck lobelia in my pots to fill in the blank spaces.  It comes in so many colors now and does well in the PNW.  

[Kachina624]

@DiAnne    Interesting.  I've never seen it in any color but the blue. 

[Lilysmom1]

Isn't it lovely to hear them and see them @JustJazzmom ?  I leave my headphones home when I walk these days so I can enjoy the sounds of Spring.  S

[Lilysmom1]

@gardenman , I better get busy with my seeds!  S

[gardenman]

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@Kachina624 wrote:

I love lobelia in a mixed hanging basket.  Unfortunately it's a cool weather plant and shrivels up and dies here on June 1.  Can't take the heat.  It's such an iridescent blue.  People who live in the mountains grow it. 

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I'm pretty lucky here. The lobelia tends to hang around until September before fading too much. I tend to grow the Crystal Palace variety which comes in a nice dark blue, but you can get white, red (well, reddish), light blue, and kind of purplish colors of lobelia also. I've pretty much grown them all at one time or another but end up coming back to Crystal Palace. It's typically very slow to start from seed and is one of those 12-16 week plants for me. Well, before these lights anyway. Now it's more of a six-week plant for me. Yikes! I've got to repot them into 4" pots pretty soon. They're in a 24 pack cell now so those are typically big enough to hold the plants until they get moved to baskets or 4" pots, but not this year. That flat of plants is drinking about a half-gallon of water a day under those lights. I have to water them daily and by the next day, you wouldn't know I'd watered them at all.