‘Dig’ The Earth

In the past few weeks we have had incredible ups and downs in temperature.  Since about the 8th of November it’s been mostly down, way down.   The week before it was in the 60s and 70s and then January came out of nowhere.  Nights have been down in the 20s and our heating system in the house has been running overtime.

Even with these extremes in weather I’ve witnessed something amazing happen.  The iris corms that I planted earlier in the fall actually started to sprout.  They’ve been rained on, snowed on, frozen and thawed and they are still green and growing.  For instance on Tuesday it snowed, then it warmed up and the little green leaves were still as bright and perky as can be.

The other plant that has me completely flabbergasted is the Nippon Montauk Daisy that is planted in a container on my back patio. My tremendous pregnant belly has precluded me from bringing in all my potted plants by myself so this plant and others have braved the cold, snow and freezing. Every time it warms up even a little – like into the upper 30s – the leaves bounce back and it doesn’t look wilty anymore.

I’ve only got a few more weeks before the baby comes. With what little energy I have left I’ve been trying without much success to get my winter sowing started. Last year I think I started too late and left too few “breathing” holes in the containers to be successful. Just seeing how resilient these plants have been makes me want to try again.

Even though it seems I’ve had more failure than success at this endeavor it wasn’t a total loss.  There are some Japanese Irises that are growing; they are no more than 1/2 an inch tall, but they are growing.  Also, some of my daisy flats have germinated and are growing.  If they survive for me to transplant I think I’ll put them in a holding bed for this year and next year I’ll find a “permanent” place for them.

Things I’ve learned:

Using a container with a tapered top is not advisable unless you have large enough openings cut in the top and sides to allow water in.  Many of my little flats dehydrated and never germinated because of this problem.

With a wide mouth container be sure you’re openings are large enough for evaporation to escape – slowly.  You don’t want your flat to be too wet, but also you don’t want it to dry out too fast.

Use bleach when cleaning out old juice cartons.  The paper harbors juice and particles that will mold in moist conditions.

Try to keep your flats out of direct sun and make sure they are thoroughly moist – not sopping wet – constantly until the seedlings are ready for transplant.  I cut back on manually watering my coreopsis too soon and they died.

Oh, well.  Guess I’ll try again next year.

On an exciting side note:  It seems veggies and flowers aren’t the only things that will be growing this season.  We just found out we are expecting another baby.  They’ll be joining us in late December.  It will be a welcome addition to our lifelong garden of love.

I’d felt a bit dejected over the fact that none of my little greenhouses had shown signs of life.  So, today I decided to move them to a more exposed area with more sunlight.  As I was doing this I noticed green. I thought, “Could it be?”.  Sure enough one little flat of all the ones I planted has sprouted.  Want to know the kicker?  I don’t know what the heck it is.  No, not because I didn’t label it.  I most certainly did label it.  The seeds, when I received them, were marked ‘UNKNOWN VEGGIE’.  Can you believe it?  I finally have a sign of success and I don’t know if the plant is broccoli, cauliflower or chard!  It’ll be fun figuring it out I guess.

There has been a bit of a lull in the sowing process lately.  I’ve been trying to fly under the “husband radar”.  All my tools and seeds got put in a cabinet out of sight.  Hmmm.  Could this be a case of “out of sight, out of mind”. 

The wintersowing experiment is still underway though and I expect to have many more mini greenhouses outside before the end of the week.  Yesterday and last night we got an ice storm with about 3″ of snow on top of it.  Good for the flats outside already, bad for driving. Ugh!  I can’t wait for spring. 

What? You may be asking, but when you have winter sown seeds precipitation, especially snow is a welcome occurrence.  Just because I set the little greenhouses outside doesn’t mean I don’t have to keep them from dehydrating.  The snow is very welcome because not only does it act as a source of water but it also acts as an insulator.  I even took some chunks of snow and placed them inside some pots that I put in our outbuilding. 

This will water the plants slowly as it melts.  As it is 9 degrees this morning it will be several days, if not weeks for the snow to melt inside the poorly insulated building.  I did discover something quite phenomenal yesterday though.  When I pulled all my outdoor containers into the outbuilding I also moved my cuttings of boxwood to

the building too.  I doubted they would survive the cold and neglect, but the flat has not frozen and the cuttings are still green.  Some have even gotten moldy which really surprised me as cold as it has been out there.  Since my last post I’ve put several more little “greenhouses” outside.  They are planted with White Swan Echinacea, Apricot  Beauty Foxglove, Lavender Foxglove, Streaked Breeder’s Mixed Hosta, Elegans Hosta, Cream Goatsbeard, Dwarf Goatsbeard, Hen & Chicks Blend, Purple/Yellow Japanese Iris, Lamb’s Ear, Lavender (Herb), White Liatris, Missouri Primrose, and Tenesee Coneflower. 

I’ll keep you posted on their progress.

February 12, 2008 is the date I will remember as the start of my winter sowing experiment.  I’ve spent most of my “free” time – time in front of the TV or sick time – making mini greenhouses for a winter sowing project.  It was fully intended to begin in mid-December, but sickness and other more pressing projects got in the way.  Anyway, on February 12 I was able to get five mini flats out in the snow.  They were Coral Nymph Salvia, Dolce Petunia, White Daisy, Soapwort, and an unknown veggie (seed looks like broccoli seed).  We’ll see what happens.  I hope they do well.