Lettuce Sprouts

Starting Seeds 2009 Part I

I was so happy to be able to plant some of my seeds today.  A few weeks ago, I went through my seed packets, decided which I wanted to start indoors and which would be directly seeded into the garden, and counted back from when I’ll transplant them to figure out when I should start the seeds.  One of my goals for this year is to start some of the annuals for our flower garden.  It seems silly to pay for a flat of flowers when I could just as easily start the seeds at home.  Another goal is to time things better, so I don’t end up with pot-bound seedlings waiting too long to get into the ground, hence the use of my calendar instead of just planting whenever I want.  It’s still very early, but today I planted 3 flats in our breakfast nook.

Flat 1: baby lettuce mix, mache, spinach, red cabbage

Flat 2: johnny jump-ups (violas), blue butterfly pansies, mixed color pansies

Flat 3: white impatiens (Okay, you caught me! What did you want to see more boring soil? These are last year’s impatiens.  But this is what I hope they’ll look like in my back flower garden.)

In a few weeks, I plan to start some herbs inside, and on St. Patty’s Day, I’ll plant peas, mache, cabbage and broccoli outside.

Are you making plans for the garden or starting to plant seeds?

Morning Glory Seeds

Believe it or not, I’ve already gotten started on the seed saving aspect of the Growing Challenge.  While snapping pictures of dormant perennials for the Sunday Stroll yesterday, I decided to pick off some of the morning glory seed pods to save for planting next year.  Our morning glories were so abundant, vibrant and beautifully blue, so I’m very happy to have saved the seeds for next year.  I kept meaning to get them in the fall, but repeatedly forgot.  I’m going to pop them open and pick out the seeds, but couldn’t do that with my gloves on outside!  If you’re going to save morning glory seeds, be careful that you store them in a safe place because they are poisonous if ingested. 

Last summer’s morning glories