I did some gardening this weekend, including planting about 50 more plants in the parking strip garden, transplanting some seedlings, and reorganizing the greenhouse a bit.    And I was so glad that I dove deeper into the greenhouse because I found one of my myriad Clivia seedlings was blooming.

This stunner is a six- or seven-year-old seedling that is blooming for the first time.  The scape was up under the shelves, and I almost didn’t see it in the overstuffed greenhouse.  I’m so glad I did, though.  I’m thrilled to finally be reaping the rewards of patience in growing some Clivia cultivars from seed, as I’m getting some cool, gorgeous flowers.

Another view…this is a “Quail x WL Nakamura” cross.

Slightly different view.

And another view.  Lots of flowers for a first-time bloomer.

Another first-time bloomer, this is a “Salmon x TL Peach” cross.  It is so light, it is almost white, with just a few splotches of pink and yellow petal stripes and throat.

More views–you can see the other buds coming along.

Here is a second-time bloomer, but the first flower is deformed, with only three petals.  The color is great, though, a very light apricot yellow.

The Pleione formosana bulbs are blooming in the greenhouse now.  I love these Himalayan crocus flowers.

Antoher view.

And another.  this pot had six flowers this year.  I have a bunch of baby pseudobulbs starting now that should bloom in a year or two.

The Masdevallias continue to put on a show.

There are three plants here in 4″ pots, each with several flowers open at once.

One of the prettiest things in the greenhouse is this dying geranium leaf.  I’m not sure why it turned such bright colors!

Out in the Doug fir bed, the Anemone blanda has a few more flowers than last week.

This Hellebore hybrid in the Doug fir bed continues to look good, at least from a distance.

Closer up, you can see the dark spots on some of the flowers that showed up this year.

An even closer view.

Here is the Hellebore that brother Tim gave me 20+ years ago.  It has a graceful habit, but you have to get pretty low to see what the flowers look like inside.

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The spots inside are worth kneeling down.

 

I’m decorating the front patio area with potted spring bulbs as they start to flower.  The hyacinths are all blooming this week, so I’ve added a bunch to the show.

Cheerful pansies in a bright blue pot.

The Camellia near the orchard garden is opening flowers in the warm sun this week.  This is about the size of most of the flowers.

But somehow, there is also a giant flower on the plant–this one is like three buds opened as one flower–it is huge!

Another flower in the sunlight.

 

We had a perfect day for planting in Seattle, so I set about getting some of the perennial seedlings I started last year into the parking strip memorial garden on the south side of the house.  It was difficult, slow work, but I’m hopeful in a couple of months it will pay off in a boisterous, bloom-filled garden.

The challenge of planting is that there is an 8″ mulch of wood chips over the entire parking strip, so that has to be scraped away from the landscape cloth.  Then, I cut Xs in the cloth and use a trowel to create planting holes.  Hardpan is only a few inches down, so it is a tough slog trying to get holes big enough even for 4″ pot-sized starter plants.  My strategy was to dig wider holes that needed, put Epic Starter Mix in each hole, along with some half-composted fir needles.  Then, I turn the plants out of their pots and pull their roots out into a flatter disk, then push them into the holes and add some soil on top and pull the landscape cloth back towards the plant.  For the more robust plants, I’m confident this treatment will work out.  But for the more delicate ones, I’m not so sure…I guess we’ll know soon enough.

So far, I’ve planted some of the following:  Columbine, chaenorhinum, sedum, Kenilworth ivy, catmint, geranium, asters and Agastache.  I will keep working on the garden tomorrow to get all of the plants I have so far into the ground.

There isn’t a lot to see yet, but I got about a 6′ length of parking strip planted today.

Below are some other things of note in the garden on St. Patrick’s Day.

A little pansy in a patio pot recovering from an unpredictable winter.

A tiny dianthus flower braving the March coolness.

Most of the primroses are pretty sad looking, but this blue one is a bit more chipper.

Pots of little narcissus.  These are adding a bit of cheer to the front patio.

Close up.

My plum tree is full of flowers–a much bigger bloom than it has ever had.  I didn’t see any pollinators, but we should get a big crop of plums, anyway.  I just need to figure out how to protect them from the critters!

Close up of the plum bloom bounty.

The honey berry couple that I’ve got growing in the orchard garden has done very little in the three years I’ve owned them.  But this year, even though they are still pretty small, they are blooming.  I’ll be surprised if any berries appear, but you never know.

Weedy Daphne showing off what makes it such a weed:  very prolific blooms and berries!

That late winter blast we had a few weeks ago with snow and temps in the 20s zapped my camellia buds.  They are brown and dead.  A few good ones remain, but none of the flowers are open yet.

Anemone blanda in the Doug fir bed.

Hellebore in the Doug fir bed.

Fritillaria imperialis lutea maxima is somehow happy in the dry mostly shady Doug fir bed.  It is slowly forming a clump.  Three stalks are up this year, and two of them have flowers.

Here is a happy surprise.  The foxgloves I planted in the Doug fir bed last year did almost nothing and I assumed they had composted themselves, but instead, they came back really strong this year.  These are Foxy, which is a really dwarf seed strain.

Masdevallia blooms adding some glamor and interest to the greenhouse.

A slightly different view.  I love the way the flowers look head-on and from the side.  There is so much movement in the shape!

More orchid blooms.

A closer view showing some of the rich designs on each bloom.

Another orchid in the greenhouse…the first Pleione formosana flower has opened.

Another view.

This pot has six flowers coming on.  I need to figure out the proper way to divide/separate out the older pseudobulbs, as there are many that are not blooming that are blooming size.  I will tackle this once blooming is over.

Wow!  Look at all the flowers this Lewisia is attempting to share!  I’ve had no luck with these at all in the greenhouse, so if this one does open all these flowers I will consider it a victory.

Not a great photo, but this is the first honey locust seedling from the seeds I planted probably back in January.  I expected these to be up a long time ago.

Nasturtium already blooming in the greenhouse.

For St. Patrick’s Day, my purple shamrock is rocking the greenhouse shelf.

This Corydalis is blooming in a pot on the back patio.  It is a bit less showy than last year, but still exquisite.

 

 

I took a quick wander around the yard today and took the below photos.  It has been so warm that spring is pretty much here!  We’ve almost hit 60 degrees several times in January/February, and nights are mostly in the 40s now.

The koi are getting active already. I love the reflection of the bare branches in the pond.

More reflections in the pond.

Brilliant Masdevallia orchid in the greenhouse.  The three plants have fewer flowers so far this year, but it is still pretty early.

Wide shot of Masdevallias.

This mushroom popped up in one of the pots of Pleione orchids in the greenhouse.  It seems like a good omen.

The original Pleione pot has about seven big buds starting that will evolve into flowers in a month or so.

The Coelogyne cristata has new buds coming and the pseudobulbs are wonderfully plump.  It is possible we’ll get a great number of flowers this year.  It is also possible we will get none.   This early, I can never tell whether the buds are leaves or flowers!

I really think this one is a flower bud!

A giant garden disappointment.  I had planted out hundreds of perennial seedlings in the raised veggie beds to winter over.  Some of them made it, but as far as I can tell, many of them disappeared.  The yarrow seedlings appear to be all gone, which is shocking, considering how healthy they were and how hardy they are…not sure what went wrong.  I still have a lot of plants to go in the parking strip garden, but will need to grow even more this year!

There are a few crocus clumps around the yard.  This one is on the west side of the Doug fir bed.  The large clump only had one flower.

Another view.

And one more.

My timing was pretty bad.  The sun was out all weekend, but I missed getting the open crocus!  Then I tried again the next day, and still missed them…but they are pretty even when they aren’t open.

This is the Hellebore in the Doug fir bed.

These are the crocus along the brick bed near the front porch.

More crocus.

The plum tree’s buds are really swelling.  I’m hoping they don’t open too soon, before the bees arrive.

Here is the Hellebore that came from sister Cate’s garden.  It is blooming beautifully and early.

Another view.

And another…

This is the plant habit.

These appear to be baby Hellebore seedlings.  I will pot them up and see if I can get them to maturity.

I am happy to see the Geranium “Summer Snow” plants that I spaced around the orchard garden are growing well.  I should get some impressive flowering from them this year.

This is a shot of the greenhouse in its current, stuffed-to-the-gills state.  I open the door some days to get fresh air in there, as the Cymbidium buds are getting fungus.

More attempts at Crocus photography.

And a  few more.  I might yet catch them in sun, when they open up fully.

Every year, I promise I won’t buy or try to start nearly as many seeds as the prior year.  And every year I fail miserably in this resolution.  I was so sure I could do it this year but have experienced failure on an epic scale.  I started by just ordering a few “necessities,” but then more catalogs came and I had more free time, so I stumbled across more seed possibilities online.

In the end, I ordered seeds from several US sources, seeds from Australia and seeds from the UK.  All combined, I have about 100 different types of seed to start in 2018!

I’m not clear what possesses me.  Every packet of seeds means more work and more time.  However, I just LOVE starting plants from seed.  More than anything.  It is a sickness.  And to my knowledge, there are no rehab clinics for seed starters or plant hoarders.  So, I just have to live with myself.

Despite the wet and windy weather, I completed some tasks today.  I watered the greenhouse plants.  The main Pleione formosana pot in the greenhouse, which is probably six years or so, has been producing little pseudobulblets every year, and this year more than ever.  So, I grabbed a bunch of them and potted them in some moss mixed with perlite and starter mix.  There were sixteen babies in all!  If all of those get to blooming size, that will allow me to pass some on to friends and plant sales in a year or two.   Also, I want to plant some outside to see how they do.  They are hardy in our zone.  A great plantsman that sells Pleiones, Strange Wonderful Things, shows this picture of them planted in the garden:

The rest of my tasks were seed related.  I checked on the coleus and begonia seeds that I planted a few weeks ago.  There are probably 20 coleus seedlings up, but it didn’t look like any of the begonias germinating.  But then, just now, I decided to take a picture for this blog.  And as I brought the seed tray (a repurposed egg carton) into bright light and started taking pictures.  And suddenly, there were the baby begonias.  They are up, for sure, but are they ever tiny!  I think they are the most diminutive seedlings I’ve ever grown.  So, you won’t see them very well in the photos here–my phone couldn’t even focus on them, that’s how tiny they are.  But I would guess there are 15 of them up and growing!  Hurray!

If you look really closely, you can make out some teeny tiny begonia babies.

A different cell with begonia seedlings.

And here are the coleus babies.  Some of them are coloring up, already.

I started these seeds in Espoma seed mix with a top layer of sphagnum moss.  I put the tray in a plastic bag and placed everything on a heat mat under LED plant lights.  It seems to be working.

There are some great YouTube videos on almost any topic.  I happened to be watching one on growing bonsai from seed and I was surprised when the host was scarifying seeds.  He showed how you can clip hard-coated seeds by clipping the seed with nail clippers.  I had tried this before, with mixed success.  He showed that you should clip the “eye” of the seed.  His reasoning is that this is where the baby plant is waiting and the best place for hydration to reach.  I decided to try this technique.  Brother Tim and I had found some seed pods on a honey locust tree (Gleditsia triacanthos) recently,

(see example of pods above) so I thought I’d start with those.  I clipped them as I saw on the video and dropped them in the water. They plumped up well overnight and I planted them in a 4″ square pot this morning and watered it well. While I was at it, I dropped some maple seeds from my favorite neighborhood Japanese maple into the water to soak, and some seeds off my giant Echinops ritro plant.  I potted those up this morning, too.  Lastly,  some of the seeds I got from the UK were Cyclamen coum seeds.  I soaked those overnight, as well, and potted them in a tiny pot.  All of the seed pots got labelled and moved to the greenhouse.  I’m excited to see what comes up!

These arboretum cyclamen inspired me to give these plants a try.

Brother Tim and I wandered about Fremont and Ballard last weekend.  I saw the above Geranium maderense outside The Indoor Sun Shoppe.  I have a seedling in the greenhouse that I will plant outside next spring.  I hope mine gets to be this big and healthy!

 

 

 

 

I ordered some seeds from a new company this year, along with the companies I typically use.  HPS (Horticultural Products and Services Division) sent me an impressive catalog.  I took it to the cabin and picked out a  few things.  They are geared toward the commercial market (nurseries, etc.), but they have a few items in lesser quantities.  Here is what I ordered, and they landed at home today:

Begonia “Funky Pink”

If I’m lucky enough to get some of these seeds started, I plan to grow the plants on the back patio.  I read directions on the Begonia Society site and plan to do my best to sterilize and use sterile medium and grow the plants close together.

Parfait Raspberry Hybrid Dianthus

This dianthus cultivar has really large, showy flowers and will look great in patio pots and in the garden.

Bambino Marigold

For patio pots and interplanting with veggies in and around the raised beds.

Mimulus Magic Blotch Mix

I’m crazy for monkey flowers, but I’ve had limited success raising them from seeds.  Since these are pelleted, I’m hopeful I’ll be a bit more successful.   The goal is to place some in pots on the back patio and maybe some next to the pond, as well.

 

I discovered a great gardening community called Epic Gardening.  Kevin Espiritu is the owner and he’s got a great energy and insatiable curiosity.  He explores new topics with each podcast and video and welcomes guests, too, who are often easily relatable new gardeners.  The topics range from hydroponics, sustainable gardening and houseplants, pests, diseases and other ideas.  It is a fun indulgence on these non-gardening winter days.

The other thing I recently discovered is an app called PlantSnap, which is designed to identify plants just from pictures that you have on your device or take using the app itself.  I tested the app on my phone and it did a good job of identifying most things–probably 90%, including passion flower, hardy fuchsia, lewisia, and pineapple sage.  For plants that the app can’t identify satisfactorily, you can send the photo in and the team at PlantSnap will identify it and send you the result.  The app still needs a lot of work, of course, as it is very new and there are millions of plant species/cultivars.  There is a shrub in a planting here in North Seattle that I haven’t figured out and the app didn’t identify it, either, and the experts identified it, but I’m not satisfied with their answer.  I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about an app that can do this work, as one of my favorite things to do is identify plants for people, and now they won’t need me!

 

Last Sunday, brother Tim and I walked around West Seattle.  Here are some things we saw:

Above a rock wall very close to Tim’s apartment we found a cute garden with this white Lewisia still blooming.  It was fun to see a white one, as most of the recent hybrids are much less subtle.

Also not far from Tim’s place, there were a few of these Rudbeckias in a parking strip.  I think this is Rudbeckia lacinata.

Brother Tim in front of some holiday decor.

This Passion vine still had quite a few flowers.  It is a hybrid and the flowers were pretty showy though the vine was massive.

We found a tree topper at the West Seattle Antique Mall and I brought it home for Leon’s topper art.  He put it all together today and it looks wonderful.

 

 

 

 

For a few years, I thought about getting a “camera trap” for the cabin to see what kind of wildlife is around there.  I finally bought one about a month ago, but couldn’t get it to work on our last trip to the cabin.  I’m kind of glad because I got it to work last week here at home and I can’t believe all of the birds that it has captured!

Here is a Chestnut-Backed Chickadee:

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Hummingbird:

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Hummer bathing:

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Chickadees fussing:

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Nervous Chickadee:

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Attack from above:

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Ugh!  Not a bird:

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Female Junco:

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Male Junco ready for his close-up:

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Junco pair and Golden-Crowned Kinglet:

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Kinglet having a vigorous bath:

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Male Junco:

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Red-Breasted Nuthatch taking a dip:

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More Nuthatch silliness:

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So far, I’ve caught hummingbirds, black-capped and chestnut-backed chickadees, red-breasted nuthatch, golden-crowned kinglets and dark-eyed juncos!  That’s pretty amazing, considering the camera was only set up on two different days so far!

The rat film shows how the camera works at night, too.  I was trying to capture raccoons but got the rat, instead.  We set traps accordingly and have killed three so far.

Stay tuned for more surprises in the coming days.

 

 

We’ve had some dry weather and sun, but cool weather.  Still, a few plants are blooming outside, and a few in the greenhouse, too.  I like to inventory the flowers around the yard on Christmas Day, but I bet I won’t have time this year, so I took photos a bit early.

A dianthus blooming in a pot near the driveway.  This single, brave bloom looked chilly and wet but added some color to a gray day.

Rose hips on the crazy wild rose at the end of the driveway.  These are festive, and I probably should make tea with them, but I never remember before they disappear.

This Verbascum has gotten huge and fallen leaves are wedging in between its woolly leaves.

Lamium looks fresh this time of year.

Close-up of the Lamium leaves.

Algerian ivy from brother Tim trying to escape from the Doug fir bed.  The leaves are real stand-outs this time of year.

Ivy close-up.

Aucuba looking shiny fresh.

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A single white borage blooming in the veggie bed.

Very hardy geranium blooming in a pot near the veggie beds.

A few streptocarpus are blooming in the greenhouse still.  There are so many plants in there, I can’t get close to these to get a better photo!

I was a little surprised to see these nasturtiums blooming at the back of the greenhouse.  It doesn’t look like it has gotten cold in there at all.

Seedling pelargonium blooming at the sunny end of the greenhouse.

Plectranthus humbly flowering in the greenhouse.

Another streptocarpus that doesn’t seem to know it is December.

When I opened the greenhouse door, a sweet smell overwhelmed me.  It was the angel’s trumpet, with two perfect blooms.

The second bloom and there is another bud coming!

 

We just spent six days up in Tonasket at the cabin.  We were treated to a little snow, a lot of wind, and some incredibly gorgeous scenery.

 

When I wasn’t hiking around the ranch, I was planning the 2018-and-beyond garden.  I put two orders together from catalogs that I brought with me.  I’ll be ordering way too many seeds again, but I have plans for all of them.  Whether I can keep up with all of that remains to be seen!

I also did some brainstorming about what I’d like to accomplish in the next 13 months in the greenhouse and garden.  Here are my random thoughts:

Garden Ideas from the Cabin trip 11/26/17

Things to Order/Buy:

12/2  Seeds identified from Pinetree and PHS catalogs

12/2 Seed starting mix from Amazon—Espoma or Black Gold

12/16  Start investigating what Sky has available for manure/compost for the parking strip bed and potting mix for delivery for all the big potting on that needs to be done

12/16 Order organic fertilizers for potting on and garden projects from Amazon smile

2/16 Order large 3-gallon pots to move Clivias into

2/16 Order orchid bark and moss for potting on Clivias and Cymbidiums

3/16 Get compost tea bags to add to water trays for the GH and shelf plants

Start looking online and at thrift stores for patio pots to use this summer—will need more of them, as will be adding some of the small trees/shrubs to patio pots this year

Wish List Plants and Seeds for the Future:

• Nicotiana sylvestris seeds
• Acanthus spinosus seeds
• Centaurea dealbata “John Coutts” seeds
• Geranium psilostemon seeds
• Incarvillea delavayi seeds
• Linum narbonense seeds
• Oenothera missouriensis seeds
• Agapanthus “Headborne Hybrid” seeds
• Cyclamen coum seeds
• Cyclamen hereifolium seeds
• Erythronium revolutum plants
• Lilium regale seeds
• Nerine bowdenii bulbs
• Gentian septemfida seeds
• Ceratostigma willmottianum plant
• Daphne mezereum seeds
• Mahonia “Charity” plant
• Philadelphus “Bouquet Blanc” plant
• Rhododendron “Yakushimanum” plant
• Ruscus aculeatus plants (male and female)
• Nothofagus—various species, seeds

Ideas to try in 2018:

• Buy or make some window boxes to hang on the fence by the compost bins and around—with vines like Thunbergera and Nasturtium
• Try growing vines up the summer-boring shrubs, like Clematis viticella hybrids up the camellia, the honeysuckle in the corner of the orchard bed, and the witch/winter hazels (4 vines needed)
• Put some sort of netting on the wall behind the tree peony seedlings and plant Eccremocarpus scaber to grow there and maybe another fancy vine—Trapaoleum speciosum, maybe? Or morning glories.
• Find another aucuba, preferable a female, to plant in the Doug Fir bed near the other one. They grow well there and not much else does!
• Plant the Paulownia tomentosa out in the garden and use it for coppicing once it settles in.

Garden Projects for 2018:

The theme for 2018 is Purge and Organize

• Sort through the outside shelf seedlings
  • Pot on the newest ones individually
  • Repot the older ones
    • Root prune with new soil, or
    • Move to larger pots
  • Determine a purpose for each plant
    • Bonsai
    • Patio pots
    • Garden
    • Sales/give-away
  • Identify, document, and label the bonsai plants
    • Photos
    • Labels with estimated start dates
  • Sort through the greenhouse plants
    • Clivias
      • As they bloom, photograph and label them so they can be identified later
      • Sell/give-away any that are no longer wanted/needed
      • Repot the remaining Clivia plants into new soil and larger pots
    • Cymbidiums
      • As they bloom, photograph and label them so they can be identified later
      • Sell/give-away any that are no longer wanted/needed
      • Repot the remaining Cymbidium plants into new soil and larger pots
    • Repot the older ones
      • Root prune with new soil, or
      • Move to larger pots
    • Others
      • All hardy plants get moved to the garden permanently
        • Eucomis
        • Sinningia tubiflora
        • Ferns
        • Daphniphyllum
        • Persicaria—move some outside
      • Repot and divide the big Pleione pot when it is finished blooming
      • Repot the Impatiens into a much larger pot—divide it if possible
      • Repot/top dress all the streptocarpus
      • Remove pots with no signs of growth (some were kept in fall just in case something is dormant in there)
      • Get rid of multiples and non-performing plants
      • Be RUTHLESS
    • Clean-up
      • Move the Clivia, Cymbidium, and Holiday Cacti to the Doug Fir bed for the warm months
      • Totally clean up under the greenhouse shelves throughout the greenhouse
      • Get rid of poisons
      • Get rid of old tubs of dirt
      • Organize pots and trays in the GH and the potting area
      • Organize the space to better use the sunlight and lower light levels
    • Greenhouse crops
      • Try to raise some crops in large pots in the greenhouse
        • Organize the space for best light and trellises where needed
          • Cucumber (2 3-gallon pots)
          • Peppers (2 3-gallon pots)
          • Melons (2 3-gallon pots)
          • Tomatoes (2 3-gallon pots)