My first worry when planting the seeds of the Australian plants was that none of them would grow…that is no longer a worry.
Forgive the strange lighting on the below photos, but I forgot to take them when the sun was up, so this is just the LED lights, and it casts a blue-pink tint on everything.
The seedling setup is shown above. The cups are sitting on a heat mat and some are covered to up the humidity, while others are not. The ones that are not have shown signs of mold, so I’ve dried them out a bit.
Almost all of the Hakea drupacea seeds came up, and they appear to be robust, hardy seedlings. The first true leaves are showing. After they get two, I’ll attempt to pot them on and move them to the greenhouse.
Hardenbergia violacea seeds came up quickly. There are about twenty seedlings with true leaves already. I’ll transplant these to individual pots in early February and move them to the greenhouse–hopefully they will adjust and grow.
Only one of the Acacia baileyana “Purpurea” came up so far. And a Hardenbergia seedling came up in there, too, somehow. I’m hoping for more Acacias–the color is already great and I can only imagine what they look like when they are trees!
The Anigozathos manglesii seedlings came up looking like hair–I wasn’t sure the soil didn’t have some nasty mold tentacles or something! But it turns out to be a BUNCH of grass-like seedlings. These have a long way to go to reach their full glory–adults have flowering stems five feet tall!
No photos–but I was in the greenhouse this weekend and saw that some Cyclamen coum seeds that I planted over a year ago finally came up! There are two cute little cyclamen leaves in the tiny seedling pot! I’ll get photos next week.
I stumbled on an almanac that had the planting dates for food crops in Seattle. Surprisingly (or maybe not that surprisingly), all the dates were about a month earlier than I always believed. So, this weekend, I decided to get an early start on my peas. I planted most of them in pots today and then also planted some out in the garden. The pots are in the greenhouse and should give me some early transplants. It will be interesting to see if the direct-seeded ones try to come up soon, or maybe wait until February when it warms up a bit.
The peas are Spring Blush Tendril Peas from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.
This cultivar did really well for me last year–well, really well for our dog, Mona. She absolutely loves fresh peas and I picked a few every day as I came in from work and gave them to the dogs.
