Thursday, July 21, 2016

Summer Seeds


With the heat and afternoon thunderstorms, it's hard to get outside and stay long enough to get some work done.  I have slowly been working on our front rose gardens and adding new roses by cuttings.  I also planted a yellow hibiscus and large flower Luna hibiscus right by a gutter.. they are doing great!  I've been re-potting a lot of trees and shrubs to larger pots and expanding the nursery area.  I'm trying to see if large pieces of cardboard will help keep the weeds down but so far the rain is causing the cardboard to fall apart.

When it's decent enough to go outside, I've been planting a lot of seeds, taking a few cuttings, and clipping flowers for seed saving.  Of all the seeds I've planted only basil, butterfly milkweed, and marigolds have started to sprout.  I've also planted beautyberry, okra, Japanese maple, goldenrod, black-eyed Susan, parsley, cilantro, coneflowers, amaryllis, honeydew, garlic, and wildflowers.  Something cool also sprouted unexpectedly, multiple sabal palm seeds came up after being in the same pot with seedlings for almost a year.  That goes to show you that some seeds sprout quickly while others can take a long time but are still good!

My organized seed starting bench.  

Organizing seeds in larger containers.  

After watching videos on how to save seeds, I found how easy it is to save marigold seeds!  Look how many are on two dried flowers!!!

Around the yard:

Expanding nursery area.  Firespikes and crape myrtles added to the angel trumpets.

This hydrangea was dug up from a larger plant and I thought it died, but after a week of neglect, it has new growth!


Tomatoes from our garden.  The Sun Gold Cherry tomatoes grew from the side of our compost bin.