For holiday gifts this year I took organic seed orders from two friends and pledged to provide them with starter plants in the spring. This is helping to motivate me to carefully time my seed starting and transplanting so I don’t have to go back on my word.

Today, I transplanted the first batch of seedlings–over 200 of them! They included some viola, nicotiana, leek, onion, shallot, cosmos, calendula, and two types of salvia.

To keep up with my commitments I had to start more seeds today, too, including kale, collards, spinach, two kinds of tomato, cucumbers, dill, and cilantro. There are other seeds that I will start tomorrow and next weekend.

I took a few more photos of things around the garden and greenhouse today, including the first open Cymbidium flower.

There are some beautiful things blooming in the garden and the neighborhood. Even downtown, I came across a beautiful magnolia street tree in full bloom.

Here at home, there are a few things budding and blooming in the greenhouse.

There are flowers outside, too, of course. Early March is pretty calm with just a few bright flowers here and there. But late March is a kaleidoscope of brilliant colors and interesting shapes. They don’t all get along tastefully but they provide a wake-up call after the gray and dreary winter.

I took a walk around the neighborhood yesterday and I noticed some things blooming. Despite some very cold spells this past winter the flowers are coming fast and furious.

While my main focus for current and future gardening is native plants there are non-native ornamentals that add color in the winter.

Very few things bloom in January. Snowdrops are often starting to flower then. In mild years, some crocus, Pieris japonica, and hardy calendulas might be blooming. Hellebores also start blooming for us in January some years.

By the time February rolls through the snowdrops, hellebores, and Pieris are in full bloom. Toward the end of the month, Forsythia might be blooming and the winter hazels are starting to open. Crocus make a big show in February and the early narcissi are right behind. Camellias love a dry, warm February–they will burst into a riot of sometimes obnoxious color. Daphne laureola might be in bloom and might be adding a sweet fragrance as it colonizes innocent ground. Bergenia plants, usually hideously ragged after the winter wind and rain, throw up bright pink spikes in February. The rarer white and light pink forms are much prettier in flower but equally hideous in leaf.

Recently, the Erodium ‘Sweetheart’ plants I grew from Chiltern seeds are blooming shyly in February. Iberis will bloom this month, too, and Aubrieta. Corydalis solida will sometimes get some flowers open just at the end of the month, setting off the beautiful fresh mass of blue-green leaves.

My admiration of Pleione orchids has increased over the years as my original plants have increased and one new hybrid came into my life. Given that, I decided to add some new varieties to my collection. I found an excellent seller on eBay (787paulm) who offers different clones of these wonderful orchids. I ordered two new ones and when they arrived, Paul had thrown in a gift bulb for free.

Paul is local here and the bulbs landed very quickly–huge and healthy–bigger than any of my bulbs, and all of them have buds developing. I have no idea if they will actually flower. I potted them in moss gathered from the lawn with potting mix underneath. I’m particularly excited about the yellow hybrid, Golden Gate, as that will be very different from the pinks that I already own.

Pleione bulbs reproduce rapidly when they are happy. My bulbs produce multiple new bulbs and bulblets every year. The bulbs bloom the following year while the bulblets take several years to reach blooming size. There are enough of them for me to try some outside this year; they are hardy here (zone 8, 10 degrees). They would look nice in the woodland garden. Stay tuned for that experiment.

I went to water some orchids in the greenhouse today but the water barrel had so much ice, I couldn’t get at the water! We started the week with a dusting of snow and ended on some warm-ish, sunny days. But the ice and snow are sticking around just to remind us that it is still February and winter won’t let go for a while.

In anticipation of spring, I’m starting more seeds. Last week I planted petunias, nicotiana, and verbena seeds. They are being pokey about sprouting but the petunias are up.

Another fun seed that has sprouted is a hoya seed I’m growing for the On the Ledge Sow Along.

There might be another seedling or two coming along in this pot–it would be fun to have a couple of different kinds.

The other seeds that will get started this weekend are vegetable seeds that need a long headstart to succeed in our short summers. I’ve committed to providing seedlings to a couple of friends, both flowers and veggies. That adds a level of pressure but it also excites me to know that I’m getting some younger people excited about plants. I’ll sneak some native seedlings in there, too!

Today was a perfect day for getting some garden cleanup done and some grafting!

Here is the cleaned-up memory garden. It doesn’t look like much right now. It will transform into something completely different in a month and for about six months after that.

Clean-up involved cutting back some dead stems and pulling a few weeds. I just left the stems where I found them in case they house any insects. They will get covered by the bursting vegetation and break down into the soil by the end of summer.

I found some nice clumps of crocus blooming today and couldn’t resist some photos.

It is a tight race between crocus and iris when it comes to the flowers I most photograph in the spring. Below are some more of the forced dwarf iris that came into glorious bloom this week. This dwarf iris bulb mix was very different from other mixes in that it didn’t have any yellows but had the very light blue/whitish flowers, instead. Stunning!

The last thing I did outside was to graft a few cherry branches onto the seedling cherry in the driveway bed. I grafted one branch from a sweet cherry on there and one from the pie cherry. There are already two grafts on that seedling. It keeps throwing up sucker-ish branches so I just keep wanting to graft. I’m not super confident in the timing or my expertise this year but it was worth a try.

The dahlia, forget-me-not, and gaura seedlings were large enough to transplant so I potted them on a few weeks ago. There were 25 dahlias, 13 gauras, and far too many FMNs. I found space for the dahlias and gauras in the greenhouse, but only a few FMNs ended up there and the rest were pretty roughly transplanted in clumps to pots and placed outside. No time for delicate hardening off–just popped them into cold soil and into a cold world with my best wishes for their continued success. Next week’s temperatures will dip into the 20s–I’m hoping the usually hardy Myosotis will handle the cold alright. I want to get them planted out under the tulips in the memory garden. I’m not sure they’ll grow fast enough to make the spectacular show I envision. I’ll try, though.

The happiest early spring blooms have come from the little iris bulbs I forced in the refrigerator. I planted them in November and started pulling them from the fridge in January. The first pots took a few weeks to bloom and some bulbs were blind. Subsequent pots were more successful.

The greenhouse doesn’t have a lot blooming–just this holiday cactus.

I picked some flowers outside for a cute arrangement in the house last weekend.

The outdoor plants believe that spring is here–especially in some of the warmer areas around the city. Here are some cheerful photos from my wanders around the city.

The weather provided plenty of opportunities for me to perform some garden chores this weekend. I chose to stay inside instead and work on computer screens. I did get outside long enough to look around and shoot some photos. The garden is waking up already!

Snowdrops and crocus were stealing the show today. I had to replant a few allium and narcissus bulbs. The damn squirrels won’t leave stuff along this year and they have rooted out a bunch of the bulbs.

Not blooming, but growing madly are the garlic plants in the old raised bed under the Douglas fir.

The sun was so bright it shone right through the leaves on my Sinningia ‘Freckles’. The little leaves of this houseplant are spectacular.

Spring-flowering bulbs need a period of chilling in order to bloom properly which can make it tricky to plant them later in winter here in Seattle. I decided to take a chance, however, and ordered about 200 bulbs, tulips, daffodils, and alliums.

My understanding is that bulbs need 12 to 16 weeks of cold weather in order to bloom. We have at least ten days coming up below forty degrees. I’m hoping for continued cool weather through March to provide for a colorful April, May, and June.

The bulbs were late clearance items from Tulip World. Here are some of them:

Another challenge in late bulb planting is finding spaces to plant them. The garden is pretty full and I had already planted a bunch of tulips in unmarked places two months ago. Trying to avoid those bulbs isn’t easy. Ultimately, I put about 35 tulips along the west property line in front of the greenhouse, a line of about 35 parrot tulips along the sidewalk in the memory garden. I also planted a bunch of tulips and daffodils in the front of the foundation planting in our little dog yard on the south side of the house. I tucked alliums into the memory garden in bunches of three and also along the driveway in the orchard garden and in a couple of pots along the south side of the driveway. I also planted a few tulips and alliums in the orchard garden.

Late clearance bulbs aren’t perfect and plump the way earlier autumn bulbs might be. Some have mold and some are desiccated and dead, but at least 75% of them looked good and healthy and likely to bloom well.

I didn’t attack the other chores I had lined up today, but Leon was kind enough to help lift up the side of the greenhouse where the wood foundation frame was rotting and shim it with bricks so the gap in the door closed up. He had to adjust the latch, as well, and then also adjust the latch on the nearby gate.

We also poured some cement for the maple samara wind sculpture in the native plant garden so we can get it reinstalled. The wind had snapped the pipe holding the sculpture earlier and we’re trying to figure out a better way.

I did a little watering and rearranging in the greenhouse today, as well. I noticed something interesting with my Pleione plants. These orchids form small bulbs on top of the older, mature bulbs. And the bulblets each have a long, thin leaf attached. When I pull off the old, faded leaves, the bulblets come with the leaves. I planted up about seven of them into moss and fir needles. As I was doing that I realized that this is a reproduction strategy for the plant. For plants in the wild, as the leaves fall off and get blown away by wind or dragged by animals, the bulblets are distributed away from the parent plant. You can see the bulblets attached to the leaf stems below.

Our cold snap wasn’t quite as cold as promised but still kept us below freezing for the better part of a week, with ultimate lows around 15 degrees. I am glad I took the steps to ensure the greenhouse heating system was working and that the Tonsai starts are safe. The greenhouse got as low as 37 degrees but held steady. The six inches of snow on top likely helped!

Here is what the greenhouse roof and the pots outside looked like after the snow with their snowy blanket.

I planted native plant seeds yesterday as my new New Year’s tradition–eight different kinds in nine pots.

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I packed snow on top of them to be sure they were watered/insulated. I also mixed a bunch of seeds to load into seed bombs later on and ordered some clay to use for seed bombs later this month.

Today, I worked on the seed starting station and got the lights and heat mat working and ready for seedlings. I planted some violas, dahlias, and forget-me-nots. The violas need to go into the refrigerator for a few weeks before coming back onto the seed mat, or possibly the greenhouse. They grow better cool.

Lastly, I moved some of the fern sporelings from their original container to terrariums.

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I only moved eight of the fernlets into these shiny new homes–and there are likely 50 or 60 more that need to be moved! I predict a big fern giveaway for the neighborhood this spring if I can get them to a reasonable size where they will make resilient houseplants.

My garden plans for 2022 include the removal or relocation of many non-native plants and adding native replacements. I plan to move all the shrub roses from the too-shady orchard garden and plunk them into the memory garden where they can get full sun. Those poor plants give me a few beautiful flowers every year but not very many and the plants themselves are forever looking for light.

Other plans include growing veggie starts for friends and neighbors from organic seeds and also some flowering plants and herbs. And, of course, a big focus on propagating and giving away native perennials, shrubs, and trees.

The forecast for Seattle is for a chilly, potentially snowy Christmas, with subsequently colder and colder days with lows the rest of the week of 36, 28, 21, 15, 18, 18, and 24 degrees before it gets back above freezing.

The tender plants were already in the greenhouse, but there are some less tender but more precious plants that needed to get some protection. This included 13 pots of dahlias that had been on the driveway and all of the Tonsai starts, which are between four and ten years old and too important to lose.

Here are the dahlia pots, all lined up–a baker’s dozen of them!

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I cut all the stems off and am just hoping not too many slugs made it into the greenhouse because slugs love to eat the tubers.

There were six or seven trays of young trees in small pots that I moved into the greenhouse after the dahlias we stacked inside, and that completely filled it–very little room for anything else.

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I started to order some native and ornamental plant seeds from Chilterns but they no longer ship to the US, apparently. I’ll order from somewhere else over the holiday break.