seed starting

Monthly Top 10 Plants at Campiello Maurizio (March 2023)

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‘Twas a long month last month… It was so long I’m late to post this, and it was so cold it induced a lot more numbness in my hands and feet than I’d like to remember. Overall, this spring has not made me smile much—yet. I hope it does soon. I suspect that it will, but the cold has created a frosty chill.

I want to smile again and feel more like my cheerful self. It was not a good winter, and to be perfectly honest, my holiday season was an overturned apple cart that I’ve not yet completely baked into tarts and pies. C’est la vie. We all have sudden surprises.

This is what happens after you’ve lived a bit of an isolated existence due to chronic illness for several decades. I’m learning life lessons later than is ideal, but I’m living. That is all that matters.

Life is change and turmoil.

Life is adaptation and renewal.

Life is death and birth.

Life is decay and decomposition.

In the garden, we find all of this, and at the start of April, I can say I’m finding myself in a garden revival here at home. I can no longer tolerate looking at certain mistakes, poor choices, and am trying harder to make better ones.

Gardeners often rejoice after making good choices. Some feel so overcome by this that they make dramatic career changes, or at least hope to do so. I suppose I did that at one point, but I care more about growing small crops, and working directing with crop propagation. As I work to design my garden with more intention, it’s funny how differently I feel about the plants. They reflect more of me, and I’m self-conscious about that.

There is no reason why at this point I shouldn’t feel self-satisfied about all of this. I’m working extremely hard doing additional strenuous physical labor on my days off. It’s the self-righteous smugness that ruins something like this, and any hint of my own ego stings. The egos of others in my industry is pain enough. So often they make me cringe. That’s part of any creative industry though. It’s funny how hyperaware I am of nipping any bad habits in the bud. Careful artful pruning is something I can obsess over for hours—days even.

Pruning with great relish, and rejuvenating my days, is bringing me great inner happiness. This last weekend I lost myself in the Buxus sempervirens. No, I’m still not smiling, and I don’t quite feel like myself again yet. I’m working on cultivating that too, at least I’m regrowing more of the me I missed so much. Like with any garden, it will take time and patience. For now, I’m happy to be slightly chilled, lost in the maze that is my own labyrinth of self discovery.

I will emerge when it’s time.

One: Who doesn’t love to see blooms in the spring? I honestly don’t have many, and I wish I had more this year. These Crocus versus ‘Pickwick’ flowers at least welcomed me home at the curb for many days.

Two: Each year I’m reminded of the green flower phase I went through years ago when I first planted my garden. One of the plants I found at a sale was Anemone nemorosa ‘Virescens’. It’s been a perfectly reliable plant for me and it has spread slowly.

Three: Pulsatilla halleri ssp. slavica is a new one for me. An alpine plant useful in containers and rock gardens, this one will be going into a nice hypertufa container and we’ll see how it does.

Four: It feels to me like I’ve been taking the same photo of this Viola glabella colony for years now. Originally purchased so I could sell the seeds of this native online, it’s not been a project that I’ve ever been able to harvest much from but the clump continues to slowly spread. Maybe this year, it will be “fruitful”.

Five: There’s no need to re-introduce the Queen of my plant-y realm, but if you’ve not yet met her, this is Camellia japonica ‘Black Magic’. I adore her.

Six: One of the things I take great pride in is being able to grow more ferns from spore. They’re all special to me. Sadly I’ve lost a lot due to doing too much at once and neglect, but these have made it! Cheilanthes wootonii aka Myriopteris wootonii—this one is a beauty.

Seven: Here is yet one more crop I’ve had in production so I can eventually offer seeds of it for sale online. Lunaria annua ‘Variegata Alba’ is not disappointing at all in terms of its variegation. I can’t wait to see it bloom.

Eight: I feel like this is always in my Top 10. That copper-colored new growth on the Adiantum venustum just gets me every time.

Nine: All of the seeds. There’s just too much ugly in my garden after this winter and I’m becoming keenly aware that I need to take pride in my expertise when it comes to seed propagation and to the importance of what I do. I have decades of experience now and I cherish to my core the other professionals in my world who’ve acknowledged, honored, and shared this keen interest with me. Domestically and internationally we’ve had private discussions about conservation and dissemination. I love seeds.

“Disseminate” being my word for 2023.

From Wiktionary: Etymology. From Latin dissēminātus (“broadcast”), past participle of dissēmināre, from dis- (“in all directions”) + sēmināre (“to plant or propagate”), from sēmen, sēminis (“seed”).

Ten: Lastly, I will add the hybrid Salix whips I bought for next to nothing off of EBay many moons ago. My living willow arbor continues to change and grow as I do, but this year I’ve had to attack the huge branches that I let grow too large, and too heavy. These threaten the integrity of the whole, and I got lazy, and was too scared to prune them off. Being scared can be a rush though when you have a chainsaw in hand. The crash could break things.

But what is worse, sitting back passively, doing nothing and watching nature take its course, or taking action? You decide. I mean we all make these choices daily, don’t we?

Knowing it might crash, and I might too, is scary. The odds are not in my favor since I waited so long, but I can still steer this ship ashore. And it’s not really a ship, so if I screw this up, I can begin again. That much I know to my core.

And yes, we all have that power to decide daily.

All I can say, is that it feels great to prune. Let’s grow.

Starting Seeds at Home with a Professional Seed Propagator, Former Seed Seller, and Seed Advocate

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First off, let’s just begin with the basics of what I do here at home. Long ago I started with a few packets, and then there were more. I disliked the disorganization, so I started a spreadsheet. Since I grow all categories of plants, this means that I have a library of most of what I’ve attempted to grow over the years. This also means that I can then toss away those seed packets, and you’d think this means my life would be more organized, but well, let’s just say that’s only sorta true.

You can see the basics of the sheets here. I have the botanical Latin name, the common name, the week they should be started, where they’re from, roughly how many plugs I’ve sown if they’re plugs, and roughly how many final plants I will have in the crop.

When you should sow the seeds is essentially found on the back of commercial seed packets.

In this case it’s at the Last Frost date, so I’ve written LF on the packet to help me know where to store them. (I should add that I typically start seed shopping early and sometimes seeds from last year, that have been stored in the fridge since spring, are pulled out and resorted in these drawers.)

Some of my seeds are stored here in my office, but others are in the fridge. Let’s just keep this simple though since these are basically where I store the seeds that most of you are growing and that are found at nurseries this time of the year.

The drawers are marked on their edges, and this is how I know which is which. I have them marked with Last Frost, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12. Those numbers coordinate to (blank number) of weeks before last frost date. For me, that means that I usually begin with the 12 weeks before the last frost date drawer in January or February since my last frost date is usually around Tax Day. With our regions being different all over the country, this can confuse folks but once you’ve got it down it will make more sense with practice.

I mark my personal calendar and I keep track of what I’ve sown on my sheet. This year I’m wildly behind, but this seems to be normal for me.

Most seeds are viable for several years so long as they’re stored well. If I don’t sow things because I’ve fallen behind, I store them in the fridge. I even have a separate fridge just for this, and I’d recommend this if you can swing it, and are obsessed with saving and storing your own seeds. I know I am but it is not for everyone.

The seeds above are from NARGS. These are primarily bulb and perennial seeds although I think sometimes there are a few annuals. Most of these seeds I try to sow in the winter when they arrive, but if I miss that window, I put them in the fridge and then sow them in the fall. Where I live, our climate allows for perfect winter stratification so I use that too in my efforts to germination every seed I can as successfully as possible.

Most perennials will appreciate a period of cold to cool weather. If I miss the fall window I will rush to sow seeds just about right now. This means that some perennials will sprout in the coming weeks, but it also means that if they don’t, I will need to tend to them over the spring and summer.

For some folks this will make their garden space ugly, and will create extra work and watering, but I garden to germinate plants, and I like to observe this process, so I do it all year for the most part.

Sure, you see greenhouses that look nice, and you may think that would be fun to have in the summer, but if I left these in one of them, they’d cook. I won’t go in to all of that, but for many plants, it’s best to do this outdoors when it comes to perennials and trees, and keep the greenhouse for winter protection and seed starting in winter. For me, that means working in my garage but I like nice cool and crisp late winter days a lot so I can be outside with Felix.

So to review, start the perennials outdoors, during a cool season, and start the annuals, veggies, cacti, succulents, and a few other things indoors using the 12 week to LF date method.

And just to confuse you more, fern spores, tropicals, and many other plants can also all be started indoors at any time of the year that you want under lights. I do that as well. I’m not kidding when I say, “I’m all seeds all of the time.”

During the pandemic I gave away free veggie starts from a table in my driveway. Folks donated to the effort and I had supplies and my time was covered for the most part. I learned by doing this that so many veggies can be started outdoors long before the last frost date here. You just need to be sure to protect them.

Birds and rodents can ruin all of the fun so be sure to cover your flats. You will be rewarded though for your efforts and if they do happen to get into your stuff, just resow the containers. I honestly was shocked at how easy and how much fun this effort was so I will do it again this year.

While I wish I had my own professional greenhouse to be doing this in, I don’t, but maybe someday I’ll have that little boutique nursery at the beach.

There are so many ways to do this kind of gardening work. It’s so much fun to grow seed crops and to transplant them and then watch them grow in the garden. There is not one right way, what is right is what works for you. If you can perfect it, then so much the better! None of this should be complicated or frustrating. If it is you’re expecting too much, and might be trying too hard. There really can be such a thing. Try to have fun with it and experiment.

You must be patient though, and you must wait sometimes for 2-3 years for seedlings to emerge. If you find seeds for a hard-to-find plant that is often why you can’t find the plant for sale. Nurseries simply do not earn enough to care for difficult crops for years and years. There’s only so much labor that’s worth it and crops can be lost so easily the longer you sit on them. It’s why you see so many of the same mass-produced plants at nurseries which are really just retail locations that have ordered plants in from other places. A lot of labor goes into just keeping plants alive and providing customer service. Many companies simply cannot add growing their own plants into their business model too.

While the new and the novel are fun, the truly rare to cultivation plants are out there. The waters are currently being muddied a bit by false claims in some plant marketing. A rare plant is not what it used to be and you need to ask yourself if it’s rare in the wild or rare in cultivation. It’s important for consumers to be aware of this and to be savvy shoppers. Ask how your plants are propagated and where.

Rare plants in the garden are not as interesting to me though as the overall feel and the benefit to wildlife. We all grow plants though for many different personal reasons. I grow them because I love to grow and save seeds so many of my plants are species plants and I grew far fewer cultivars and hybrids than most other folks—but I still have quite a few!

Lastly, there are the many systems for sowing seeds. While I WISH I’d been paid to say this, I wasn’t at all. Honestly though, I’m a big fan of the Park Seed Bio Dome seed-starting system. I only use it at home, and on shelves in my basement, but I love it for several reasons. First and foremost, it can be used for annuals, some perennials, begonias, gesneriads, and fern spores. Your starts are bottom watered and with the dome on you can go a week sometimes without watering. Lastly, I have reused the styrofoam inserts for years, and I purchase new plugs in bulk each year. I have a dishwasher to sanitize it, and it’s easy!

This is also a nice system and I use it for the slow growing cacti and succulents. It doesn’t take up a lot of space and I can grow a lot in it. Also, it too is a bottom watered setup.

Other than that, I only use seed starting mixes in containers outside. I don’t fill trays with containers and soil and grow plants indoors much unless they’re tomatoes, peppers, or eggplants. I used to grow more plants indoors, but then I realized it was just as easy to start them indoors, pot them up, and then keep them outside with some protection.

Hope this helps with some of the basics. Please feel free to comment with more specific questions about things. I wanted to keep this as simple as possible.

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So in closing, I’m going to share this park bench with you. Last week I stressed the importance of seeking out plant knowledge IRL, and plant people. There are many reasons to get away from what is being sold online—both literally and metaphorically. The most dangerous of which is the cult of celebrity and likes. It’s a recurring theme. Get out there and wrap yourself up in your own wild and creative intuition that can lead to all kinds of discoveries, improvements in your own satisfying projects, and build friendships, not followers.

Grow that wild inner garden! All it will take are a few packets of seeds and laughing through some dumb mistakes until you get it right. Grow and glow! I’m not kidding. Let that little damn light inside shine, and shine it hard out there into the dark unknown. That’s how to be seen.

Don’t “shine” to humble brag, but do it to try to help others who need to see a light to follow in darker times.