Garden season is in full swing over here with every snip that I prune. So I thought I'd just do a look around of what I have been working on in the past month, and take you with me.
Above you saw the wreath. I found that at HomeGoods as an all Lavender wreath and added the dried cotton stems and the silvery lambs ear to spruce it up for my front door.
I bought a whole flat of creeping Jenny and potted up the rusty Chandelier yesterday. I bought 6 concrete pots from Michael's Craft Store. I couldn't pass them up as they look hand made.
Creeping Jenny is usually a shade plant, but as long as I keep it watered it usually does ok. I am hoping these concrete pots hold a bit more water then the old vintage globes I used last year.
Remember the Tulips I left in the garage all winter? Well all but 2 are coming up.
Color me happy!
Now for the seeds I am trying to germinate. Let me preface this by saying I am not an expert.
I get a bug in my ear (pun intended) and want to try something.
One of the things I learned was Mother Nature did not help my optimistic outlook of how long these seedlings would have to live in my kitchen.
I was off by about 4 weeks.
The other thing I was off about was using a heat mat and a fan.
I might have gotten better sprouts. The gnats I grew are doing tremendously however. Most seedlings are leggy and reaching for the sun. Never fear though, they got to be outside today, so hopefully some are not too far gone.
Corn and Pumpkins seem to germinate twice as fast as anything else I planted. Of course this blonde royally goofed and started the pumpkin about 3 months too soon, but at least I started it.
Now I can cross it off my bucket list.
I used plastic spoons as markers to keep track of what I planted.
Is it wrong that I am extremely excited about the artichokes? I am going to try my hand at getting them to flower. I have visions of them in some backyard galvanized pots with purple petunias or lavender.
My sprout numbers are this; without using a heat mat or a fan I got about 30% to germinate except for corn. That was 70% germination rate.
Rita over at Panoply sent me some Mexican Sunflower Seeds and I got two to germinate so I am super excited about those. The sad one of the left is a petunia. Burpees seed petunias to be exact and out of a whole seed packet I got one to germinate. Not super excited about burpee seeds. I may have gotten more but I literally dropped a lot of seeds in some dollar store dixie cups and let them hit my south facing window in my kitchen. No heat mat no fan. Just plant and go.
I bought 3 blue ceramic pots. The large one shown below is a 40 dollar one at Costco and I bought two 20 dollar ones at Tuesday Morning. I forgot to get a shot of those but I potted the smaller one with a Mock Orange Shrub that I cannot wait to see if it smells as good as people keep telling me it does.
Below you'll also see my new Birch Tree ready for a hole in the ground. That baby is supposed to be a big boy, (fifty footer) so he will go in the back portion of the yard. Plus a Saucer Magnolia Bush I scored for 20 bucks at Menard's.
Menard's also had Hosta's for 2 bucks a piece so I bought these for my front porch.
I stayed within my spending budget so I will wait til next week to search for more flowers to fill these up and also to do other pots.
I pulled the outdoor furniture up from the basement and started getting the backyard ready for Brawd's Beer and BBQ's.
Don't worry I am still aggressively saving for our backyard fence. I am on a 20 - 40 dollar budget of spending on frivolous things like flowers or crap. I estimate it should take 2-1/2 months to save up the last thousand we need for our backyard fence but it WILL happen this year.
Even if we have to eat bologna for dinner. I will fry it of course but you get it. :-)
I added some junipers, petunias and rannuculous to the 2 backdoor pots this year.
Now I need to just finish up my bed clean out, mulching in the backyard and potting up about ten more pots.
Then it's water water water and fertilize time!
Come on 70 degree's!
