{"id":3987,"date":"2018-01-22T00:01:33","date_gmt":"2018-01-22T00:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenescapades.com\/blog\/?p=3987"},"modified":"2018-01-22T00:01:33","modified_gmt":"2018-01-22T00:01:33","slug":"my-addiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gardenescapades.com\/blog\/2018\/01\/22\/my-addiction\/","title":{"rendered":"My Addiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>Every year, I promise I won\u2019t buy or try to start nearly as many seeds as the prior year.\u00a0 And every year I fail miserably in this resolution.\u00a0 I was so sure I could do it this year but have experienced failure on an epic scale.\u00a0 I started by just ordering a few \u201cnecessities,\u201d but then more catalogs came and I had more free time, so I stumbled across more seed possibilities online.\n

In the end, I ordered seeds from several US sources, seeds from Australia and seeds from the UK.\u00a0 All combined, I have about 100 different types of seed to start in 2018!<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not clear what possesses me.\u00a0 Every packet of seeds means more work and more time.\u00a0 However, I just LOVE starting plants from seed.\u00a0 More than anything.\u00a0 It is a sickness.\u00a0 And to my knowledge, there are no rehab clinics for seed starters or plant hoarders.\u00a0 So, I just have to live with myself.<\/p>\n

Despite the wet and windy weather, I completed some tasks today.\u00a0 I watered the greenhouse plants.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 So, I grabbed a bunch of them and potted them in some moss mixed with perlite and starter mix.\u00a0 There were sixteen babies in all!\u00a0 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.\u00a0 \u00a0Also, I want to plant some outside to see how they do.\u00a0 They are hardy in our zone.\u00a0 A great plantsman that sells Pleiones, Strange Wonderful Things<\/a>, shows this picture of them planted in the garden:<\/p>\n

The rest of my tasks were seed related.\u00a0 I checked on the coleus and begonia seeds that I planted a few weeks ago.\u00a0 There are probably 20 coleus seedlings up, but it didn\u2019t look like any of the begonias germinating.\u00a0 But then, just now, I decided to take a picture for this blog.\u00a0 And as I brought the seed tray (a repurposed egg carton) into bright light and started taking pictures.\u00a0 And suddenly, there were the baby begonias.\u00a0 They are up, for sure, but are they ever tiny!\u00a0 I think they are the most diminutive seedlings I\u2019ve ever grown.\u00a0 So, you won\u2019t see them very well in the photos here\u2013my phone couldn\u2019t even focus on them, that\u2019s how tiny they are.\u00a0 But I would guess there are 15 of them up and growing!\u00a0 Hurray!<\/p>\n

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If you look really closely, you can make out some teeny tiny begonia babies.<\/p>\n

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A different cell with begonia seedlings.<\/p>\n

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And here are the coleus babies.\u00a0 Some of them are coloring up, already.<\/p>\n

I started these seeds in Espoma seed mix with a top layer of sphagnum moss.\u00a0 I put the tray in a plastic bag and placed everything on a heat mat under LED plant lights.\u00a0 It seems to be working.<\/p>\n

There are some great YouTube videos on almost any topic.\u00a0 I happened to be watching one on growing bonsai from seed and I was surprised when the host was scarifying seeds.\u00a0 He showed how you can clip hard-coated seeds by clipping the seed with nail clippers.\u00a0 I had tried this before, with mixed success.\u00a0 He showed that you should clip the \u201ceye\u201d of the seed.\u00a0 His reasoning is that this is where the baby plant is waiting and the best place for hydration to reach.\u00a0 I decided to try this technique.\u00a0 Brother Tim and I had found some seed pods on a honey locust tree (Gleditsia triacanthos) recently,<\/p>\n

(see example of pods above) so I thought I\u2019d start with those.\u00a0 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\u2033 square pot this morning and watered it well.\u00a0While 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.\u00a0 I potted those up this morning, too.\u00a0 Lastly,\u00a0 some of the seeds I got from the UK were Cyclamen coum seeds.\u00a0 I soaked those overnight, as well, and potted them in a tiny pot.\u00a0 All of the seed pots got labelled and moved to the greenhouse.\u00a0 I\u2019m excited to see what comes up!<\/p>\n

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These arboretum cyclamen inspired me to give these plants a try.<\/p>\n

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Brother Tim and I wandered about Fremont and Ballard last weekend.\u00a0 I saw the above Geranium maderense outside The Indoor Sun Shoppe.\u00a0 I have a seedling in the greenhouse that I will plant outside next spring.\u00a0 I hope mine gets to be this big and healthy!<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every year, I promise I won\u2019t buy or try to start nearly as many seeds as the prior year.\u00a0 And every year I fail miserably in this resolution.\u00a0 I was so sure I could do it this year but have experienced failure on an epic scale.\u00a0 I started by just ordering a few \u201cnecessities,\u201d but … Continue reading My Addiction<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gardenescapades.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gardenescapades.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gardenescapades.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gardenescapades.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gardenescapades.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3987"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/gardenescapades.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3994,"href":"http:\/\/gardenescapades.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3987\/revisions\/3994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gardenescapades.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gardenescapades.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gardenescapades.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}