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Showing posts with the label from seed

Cut and Come Again Zinnia Seeds - For Sowing Indoors - January 2024

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I've said it before:  I'm a foliage gardener.  I'm most comfortable talking about, working on, planting foliage plants.  I'm also a shade gardener, so that's (kinda) why I'm a foliage gardener.  Last Fall, I began to address a significant garden deficit:  conifers .  Via CSCF. Conifers Should Come First .  Those conifers came in a flurry in the late Fall. But, so too, did something else:  flowers.  I planted some new (to me) perennial flowers: Midnight Masquerade Pentsemon , a Pow Wow Wildberry Echinacea and some May Night Salvias - all in the IB2DWs extended bed.  I also tucked in a pair of Stachys monieri Hummelos (Betony) on the other side of the driveway that has upright, purple flowers.   In my 2023 recap post , I included a mixed list of lessons learned/things to think about going forward and included on that list:  plant more flowers.   Get out of my comfort zone and think about adding flowers to a combo bed and cut garden.   I started the 2024 season

Are These Catalpa Tree Seedlings? August 2022

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Last week, I posted some photos of the process of late-season Catalpa tree seed sowing in a few seed cells that we had on hand and talked about how I hoped they'd germinate and we would (maybe) get a few seedlings to harden off before the frost hits in the next six to eight weeks.  I started the Catalpa tree seed project back last last year when I harvested a few Catalpa seed pods and tried to get them going two ways:  first by putting them in the fridge for the Winter to get that cold stratification.  And, by also popping open some brown seed pods and direct sowing some of them in a couple of spots.  I covered that Catalpa tree seed sowing here in a post on Christmas Day .    Back late last year, I planted these seeds in two spots:  along the fence.  And in a large wine barrel planter.  Both, frankly...on a total whim.   The ones along the fence have never amounted to anything. Between laying on a thick layer of mulch and seasonal weeding, these things didn't have a chance.

Kentucky Coffee Tree Seedlings Transplanted to Larger Pots - August 2022

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Ten days ago, I shared a photo of the (now) going-on=two-year-old Kentucky Coffee tree seedlings that I've kept in small 1-quart nursery container since they germinated.  In that post, I talked about how each of the small containers contained multiple small seedlings and it was time to both separate them and upgrade them to larger containers.  With the planting of a few new items in the garden, I found myself having a few 1# nursery pots that I could re-use.   I got started by pulling the seedlings out of their current homes (14 months since germination) and began to split them up by tearing the root masses apart.  Below, you can see one of the seedlings root system after I divided the clump: I started with just ONE set of the trees to ensure that they can handle the division of roots.  I figured there were two routes here:  divide the clumps.  Or, simply transplant the double seedling and cut off/prune down the weaker of the two.   Here, below, is the first of those two divided

Kentucky Coffee Tree Seedlings - June 2021

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 Back at the end of April, I was sitting at one of the kid's softball practices at a local Downers Grove park when I found these huge seed pods sitting on the ground.  A quick search showed me they are from Kentucky Coffee Tree seed pods.  How neat.  I posted a few times last year about how I found a few of these in our yard (thanks to an Arborist) and learned how they are/were native trees in Illinois .  So, I grabbed a few of these seed pods and brought them home.  A few days later, I cracked them open and harvested the seeds.  Here, below, is a pod cracked in half: And, here, below, is a look at how many seeds I was able to get out of the pods: A look online told me that I could get these seeds to germinate if I soaked them overnight and yanked out any that floated.  I had a few that floated, but most of them stayed at the bottom.   In the photo below, you can see  Soaked at end of April: I took those seeds that didn't float and planted them in a soil mix on the first of May