Seedlings
So In December I received the challenge from my Wife to transform the garden. I do have experience of growing things from having an allotment. I have another Blog about that at the following address http://allotment-news.blogspot.co.uk/ but being completely honest my father-in-law is the person who raises all the seedlings and chits the potatoes etc. So the first thing that I did was to go out and purchase a whole load of Seeds and dig up some old seeds from the back of the shed.
Its amazing how little seeds can cost. I have managed to pick seeds up for as little as 49p for 100, even if only 40 of those germinate I am going to be really happy. In a later post I will cover the seeds that I purchased and give a bit more information about them.
Not having planted seeds before (Successfully) The first thing that I did was find out what seeds could be planted in January and about the 5th of January I planted up the first seeds. Now just because the packet says "can be planted indoors between January and March" doesn't mean plant them all up.....!
Having now researched planting times etc. I have found out that the way to work out when to plant, is to find out when the last frost day is for your area and to plan for the seedlings to be planted out after that day. In my case here in Milton Keynes that would be around the 15th of May. Doing a little bit more research you can find out how long it will take for your seedlings to germinate and be big enough to fend for themselves.
There is a lot of information on the internet related to American planting Zones. Most of England would be classed as Zone 7 Scotland and the Lake District would be Zone 6 and the Highlands would be Zone 5.
The Plants that I had that where able to be planted in January were Sweet Pea, Geranium F2, Aquilegia and Lobelia. These plants are fairly hardy. The Aquilegia plants where planted outside in a Cold Frame. all the other plants germinated very quickly but the temperature in the cold was too cold so they only came up last week. These wont flower this year they are for next year so I'm not too bothered about that. All the other plants were started in small containers in a plastic bag to keep drafts out and the temperature steady. Bellow are pictures of how they are doing now
Sweet Peas
When the plant has developed 3 leaves pinch off just above the 3rd leaf. This causes the plant to fill out and to put out another set of shoots. We have just been away and these plants dried out a bit and so they lost a lot of leaves. In the Bigger pot I planted 5 seeds 3 developed and in the smaller pot I planted 4 seeds only 2 survived. These can start to be moved out at the end of march. They will need to be acclimatized I'll cover that in a later post.
Geranium
These Geraniums are F2 which means
Web definitions
- The progeny resulting from self hybridization or inbreeding of F1 individuals is called Second Filial or F2 generation.
F1 plants would produce the best flowers but through breading the plants can be made more resistant to the things that effect F1 plants for example more drought resistant. I planted 6 seeds 5 developed 3 of which i moved to the cold frame unfortunately those 3 died as you can see these 2 are doing quite well. My plan is to move these into a hanging basket. one of my neighbors has some of these in stone pots on his drive I liked them so that's why I bought these.
Lobelia (Trailing Color Cascade)
These are for the hanging basket as well. I intend to plant these out through slits in the hanging basket liner. I moved these into these pot today. they started off in a Chinese takeaway plastic tub I had intended to only put a few seeds in to see how they would grow but then I realized that I had put them all in... and they all seem to have germinated.
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