2010 Annuals

This year I am growing all our annuals from seed. We usually purchase them but it seems the last few years they have become excessively expensive to purchase. I ordered all the seed from Park Seeds as they offered a good selection at reasonable prices. The total cost with shipping was $26 and this will fill four urns, two window boxes, a couple pots and provide bedding plants for the perennial borders. If I was to hazard a guess starting my own annuals will saving in the range of $120 dollars easily. Here is what I am growing:

This group will be planted in the cast iron urns
out front and second floor window box.

This group will be out back. The two Impatient's will be
planted in the cement urns and the cement pot in the shade
garden. The Fuchsia was overwinter from last year and will
be hung above the shade garden.

This Black Eyed Susan Vine will be grown for the second time.
It will be grown on the fence planter for added privacy.

These will be planted in the front perennial border if I can find any room.

*I will be following up soon with a post on the some ornamentals I am growing from seed shared by Granny & Miss M.

Sowing Schedule: for pot sown veggies & ornamentals

I started another spreadsheet, this time for seed sowing dates. All dates are based on my planting schedule last year, the only difference is dates were adjusted a bit to the proper lunar time. I will also be doing a schedule for direct sown veggies as that time approaches.

We have lift off!

After doing some lunar planting, that I post about below, I have a sprout already. It is a 'Bonsai' Pac Choi that was sown last night around 10pm. That's germination in just 18 hours, can't complain about that. Of course it is a brassica that germinate fast already though. I hope the peppers and celery fallow suit as they can take ages to germinate.

In other germination news I have some celeriac & scallons growing that I also planted by the lunar schedual:

Giant Celeriac, seed from Miss M.

Brilliant Celeriac, seed from Kathy.

Red Scallions, seed from Thomas.

Lots of Lunar Planting Tonight

Tonight I took advantage of the last lunar date for sowing above ground crops for the next few weeks. I sowed almost a full flat of stuff and I am starting to wonder if I will run out of grow light space this year. I had to move the propagator on top of the fridge for this sowing because of lack of space under the light. I think I need some more lights... Here is a list of what was sown:

• Red Celery - eight plants
• Big Chile II Peppers - six plants
• Ancho Pepper - two plants
• Early Jalapeno - two plants
• Elefantenrussel Pepper (yellow cyan) - two plants
• Pustagold Pepper (sweet whitish pepper that turns red) - eight plants
• Golden California Wonder Pepper (from Granny!) - two plants
• Quadrato Rosso D'Asti Pepper (from Granny!) - two plants
• Tatsoi - eight plants
• Pac Choi - eight plants
• Vates Kale - four plants
• Tuscano Kale - four plants
  
• 'Little Gem' Romaine - eight plants

In doing all this sowing I realized I am going to have a lot of peppers! To fit them all in some will be planted by the square foot in a raised bed, some will be grown in a hanging basket and others will be planted on top of upside down tomatoes. Last year I started some of my peppers really early and they grew much better then the later sown one. This year I decided to start all the peppers early.

The greens I started will hopefully start going out in the coldframe in a couple weeks. They should provide some early salad greens which I have been craving lately. The red celery is the same ones I grew this past fall. I am hoping they turn much redder when grown in stronger sun.

I have some Pasilla Pepper seed coming in the mail that I was not able to sow today. I will start them as soon as they arrive, it will provide a good comparison to lunar and non-lunar planting. The next thing coming up will be sowing all the Brassica's on March 15-16. The growing season is coming!

Some Snow Finally

Last Monday we received our first big snow storm of the winter. It certainly was a long time coming this year. To this point we have had snow but it has always been low amounts. After the storm we ended up with about 20cm (8in) and it was greatly needed as things were starting to get really dry. Sounds like more is on the way for Thursday and Friday, bring it on!

We of course headed out in the midst of the blizzard to take some picture, here are a few of them: