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MaryM
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| Posted: March 02 2012 at 2:23am | IP Logged
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Sarah, the idea of growing milkweed from seed intrigues me though I've never tried it. Sounds like it was tricky from what you describe. Have you ever tried "wild" seeds? Would they do well since they are already established in that geographic area. I picked a couple pods for decoration this fall and think I might try to sprout them - figure I'll probably have to do the freeze thing.
So in looking around the internet I did see that several butterfly sites sell or give away seeds - though there isn't any selection on most. Did find this one that sounds promising (though not personally tried, obviously). Butterfly Encounters - they sell a pretty wide selection of varieties. Has descriptions of native areas and if it is hardy perennial or frost tender perennial.
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CrunchyMom
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I did some winter sowing at the first of February, and I've had some luck! I need to transplant a bunch of German chammomile seedlings this morning.
I might try more of it next year if I can save more containers and things and do more veggies and things.
Today is supposed to be nice, and my husband took yesterday off for the baby's first birthday, and the house is in exceptional shape, so I think I will focus on getting my veggies squared away today. Our last frost date is April 15, so I'm okay. Even though it seems to be an early Spring, I don't want to plant things early because I fear a late frost that could still come.
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CrunchyMom
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Angel wrote:
The problem I had with ordering at the end of February was that some places were out of what I wanted -- Southern Exposure most notably. I'll have to buy sweet potato slips locally if I want to plant them, and I was hoping for some of SE's purple and white varieties (in quantities less than 100 slip). I also wanted Jimmy Nardello peppers, but I had to get them from Baker Creek.
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I'm trying to grow my own Sweet Potato slips. I think I might be a couple of weeks late, but I'm hoping that is okay since you aren't supposed to plant them until the soil is really warm, a couple of weeks after the last frost. However, for a lot of warm weather crops, I've heard "Mother's Day" as the rule of thumb, that things planted then quickly catch up with things planted earlier, so I hope its okay. If it doesn't work out, I can always buy slips from the local nursery. We eat a TON of sweet potatoes, and we are planting an entire 4x8 bed of them, so I hope it works out. Maybe we can try for some exotic varieties for fun next year.
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Lindsay
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[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR
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Christine
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| Posted: March 02 2012 at 2:25pm | IP Logged
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Being from the Pacific Northwest, I have learned a lot from Ed Hume (Hume Seeds) over the years. In light of this thread, I thought that some of you might appreciate his clip of the week which just happens to be Selecting and Starting Seeds. I have always had good luck with his vegetable and flower seeds. The kale that I planted from seeds last February is still providing us with kale leaves to cook and eat.
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Christine
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JodieLyn
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| Posted: March 02 2012 at 3:17pm | IP Logged
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Nice clip Christine. I might have to check out some of the others too.
But I don't think I can start seeds inside just yet.. I can't plant in my garden until mid-May at the earliest, Memorial Weekend is the local first "day" to plant outdoors to avoid frost.. and even then it's not even close to 100% but you have to take some risks to get a garden at all. 
Anyone know about how long once a plant comes up until it's the right size to plant in the garden? If you're planting in 3-4 inch pots? I'm thinking about 6 weeks?
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Angel
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| Posted: March 02 2012 at 3:33pm | IP Logged
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JodieLyn wrote:
Anyone know about how long once a plant comes up until it's the right size to plant in the garden? If you're planting in 3-4 inch pots? I'm thinking about 6 weeks? |
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It depends on what you're planting. Start tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant 6-8 weeks before the date of your last frost. In NY, we could never plant until after Memorial Day, so I started seeds toward the end of March. Here I should be starting seeds right now, but I still have to make a place to start them, and um, receive them in the mail.  Our date of last frost is about April 15, I think.
If you live in a short season area and are starting squash and melons inside, you only want to start them about 3 weeks before planting, in peat pots so you don't disturb their roots. Squash (including pumpkins) will do better just direct-seeded, though. Melons I never had any luck with no matter how I did them.
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Angela
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JodieLyn
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yes, short season... 4 months from June until the end of September.. but in a cold year we could get some frost in either June or September. I'm not even trying melons though I know some people here can manage some. We need the jumpstart on just about everything.. the only things I direct plant are radishes, carrot and nasturiums.
I'm just not sure about the peat pots they don't seem to deteriorate well here but maybe that's just me?  But I'm willing to give it a try.. so squash? winter and summer? I may have to replace some pots anyway and if I can't get the free ones again (from a local nursery that's for sale this year) I may try peat pots for those since I have several varieties of both summer and winter squash.
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CrunchyMom
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Instead of peat pots, you might try newspaper. There are some tutorials online, but I bought the pot maker from Lee Valley. My boys love making pots!
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Lindsay
Five Boys(6/04) (6/06) (9/08)(3/11),(7/13), and 1 girl (5/16)
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[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR
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Angel
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| Posted: March 02 2012 at 5:27pm | IP Logged
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Squash, cucumbers, and melons just don't like having their roots disturbed. So if you can start them in a biodegradable pot, they'll do better. I usually just tried to find short season varieties. Summer squash will get going so fast that you should be able to direct seed it, but I would have some kind of row cover available. A lot of people I knew in NY used black plastic to warm the soil as well.
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Angela
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I'm liking the newspaper pots.. now if I can get enough newspaper.. our local paper only comes out once a week and isn't that many pages.. hmmmmm still buying some of the portland papers would likely be cheaper than buying pots
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Mackfam
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CrunchyMom wrote:
| I bought the pot maker from Lee Valley. My boys love making pots! |
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We have that too, and we love our little newspaper pots. Except I do think making them double thickness is important.
We've got all of our seeds started and the little sprouts are up on everything except my spinach.
I still need to order our berries and my corn and a couple of other things. Oh, I hope I'm not too late for the varieties I want!!! I may be!
This has been a crazy early spring in north Alabama (guessing my weather is a lot like Angela's). Things are blooming and coming up everywhere - and way early for here. (Although it is quite pretty!) We could easily have another bad frost at this point, but I think our last frost date is April 1.
Now you all have me thinking of sweet potato slips!!! But I'm going to wait for next year for that when we expand our gardens.
AND....we're so excited to FINALLY be getting our "Garden Girls". My folks have always had chickens, so I've grown up around them. Having them here is a bit of a challenge with our menagerie, the large hawk population, and a growing coyote problem.  Anyway, we hope we've finally got a good solution and we're getting 5 or 6 Garden Girls (mid-April)....and the kids have already named them 
(1) White Rock - Louise (after my 7yos favorite book, Louise, The Adventures of a Chicken)
(1) Buff Orpington - Cupcake
(2) Black Austrolorps - Lucy and Ethel
(1...maybe 2) New Hampshire Red - Rosie
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Mackfam
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| Posted: March 03 2012 at 6:48am | IP Logged
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wahoo92 wrote:
| Anyone know (and preferably tried) a reliable source for milkweed seeds? |
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I don't have a source to recommend, but I'm all ears, too Sarah! We ordered some seed (expensive!!) last year and none of ours grew.  I read somewhere of someone that just got a milkweed pod and had success from that and I think that's what I'm going to try. But, I don't see it a lot around here. I guess I need to start looking better - or rather- perhaps I just need to enlist my resident Botanist/naturalist daughter and let HER find it for us!
I'd welcome hearing others experiences if they've tried to grow milkweed, or have had success doing so intentionally.
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Jen Mackintosh
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Angel
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| Posted: March 03 2012 at 8:03am | IP Logged
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I found an interesting online tool this morning: Dave's Garden Last Frost Dates by Zipcode. You can put it in your zipcode and it will show you not only your typical last frost date, but also a breakdown of low temperatures by percentage for various dates.
Looks like mine is April 9 (to be safest), so yours is probably something similar, Jen. (By the way, it's good to see you posting about seeds and not tornadoes this morning!!!)
Lindsay, how are you starting your own slips? Just with sweet potatoes from the store?
Our Whole Foods recently had localish purple sweet potatoes for sale. This is making me think. How much space do you need to start your own slips? We have plenty of space to plant, but not so much space to start seeds.
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Angel
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| Posted: March 03 2012 at 8:13am | IP Logged
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Mackfam wrote:
CrunchyMom wrote:
| I bought the pot maker from Lee Valley. My boys love making pots! |
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We've got all of our seeds started and the little sprouts are up on everything except my spinach.
I still need to order our berries and my corn and a couple of other things. Oh, I hope I'm not too late for the varieties I want!!! I may be!
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Jen, you know you can just start spinach in the ground now, right? It likes cold weather and will germinate in cool soil. The seedlings look like grass leaves when they first come up, though, so my major difficulty the first year I grew spinach was not being overzealous and pulling them!
If you're ordering from Southern Exposure, you may have problems, but everywhere else I ordered from seemed to be ok as far as still having seed. Just got my order from Kitchen Garden seeds yesterday, along with a box of onion seedlings from Territorial. 
Andy forgot to order raspberries this year (or didn't get around to it; he's in charge of the orchard), so he was going to go out to Lowe's this morning and see what he could find. All the fruit trees we bought from them last year made it, surprisingly! The plums are almost done blooming, and now the peaches are out. They are gorgeous!!!
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Pilgrim
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Mackfam wrote:
AND....we're so excited to FINALLY be getting our "Garden Girls". My folks have always had chickens, so I've grown up around them. Having them here is a bit of a challenge with our menagerie, the large hawk population, and a growing coyote problem. Anyway, we hope we've finally got a good solution and we're getting 5 or 6 Garden Girls (mid-April)....and the kids have already named them
(1) White Rock - Louise (after my 7yos favorite book, Louise, The Adventures of a Chicken)
(1) Buff Orpington - Cupcake
(2) Black Austrolorps - Lucy and Ethel
(1...maybe 2) New Hampshire Red - Rosie |
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Jen, at the risk of sounding ignorant(I guess, because I *am* ignorant of this ), why do you call your chickens your "garden girls"? We have chickens, and I'm curious as to if there is another use for them we aren't employing.  Our oldest dd and I really like our chickens, or I should say our oldest TWO dd's. Our twin dd last year, when she was only 2, would go right up and pick them up, no fear at all, and she'd hold right on to them wing flapping and all, just keeping her eyes shut 'til they stopped, too cute.
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Pilgrim
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| Posted: March 03 2012 at 8:32am | IP Logged
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Another idea for milkweed seeds is to see if you have any friends/acquaintances who have milkweed on their land. 
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Mackfam
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| Posted: March 03 2012 at 8:35am | IP Logged
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Angel wrote:
I found an interesting online tool this morning: Dave's Garden Last Frost Dates by Zipcode. You can put it in your zipcode and it will show you not only your typical last frost date, but also a breakdown of low temperatures by percentage for various dates.
Looks like mine is April 9 (to be safest), so yours is probably something similar, Jen. |
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According to that site, ours is April 16. I really liked the breakdown on his site of averages.
I know that the zone map just got revamped with some zones getting broken down into a and b zones. We've always been right on the edge of two zones, falling geographically into the warmer zone, but our weather averages reflect the cooler zone, so the subdivisions of the zones actually makes sense for us. I would have thought that nestled between all these mountains we'd tend toward the warmer 7b, but actually our weather follows 7a more closely and that's where we fall now. I read about it in an article in the latest Alabama Gardener magazine. Anyway, here's a link to the updated zone hardiness map they discussed in that article.
Angel wrote:
| (By the way, it's good to see you posting about seeds and not tornadoes this morning!!!) |
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No kidding!!!!!
Angel wrote:
| Jen, you know you can just start spinach in the ground now, right? |
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Yes, but my boxes aren't in yet so I was hoping to get them rolling inside....but I don't think they like it. Rob is going to pick up our big order of rough cut oak from the little lumber mill down the road this morning (assuming they don't have any tornado damage!!), so I may have to start my spinach again in a couple of weeks once the gardens are in.
Angel wrote:
| If you're ordering from Southern Exposure, you may have problems, but everywhere else I ordered from seemed to be ok as far as still having seed. Just got my order from Kitchen Garden seeds yesterday, along with a box of onion seedlings from Territorial. |
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How exciting!!!
I'm ordering some of my remaining stragglers from Territorial and (hopefully) ordering my berries from Raintree Nursery.
Have any of you ever tried a fig tree? It's one of the reason I haven't placed my orders because I'm waffling on that one.
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Jen Mackintosh
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Wildflowers and Marbles
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Pilgrim wrote:
| Jen, at the risk of sounding ignorant(I guess, because I *am* ignorant of this ), why do you call your chickens your "garden girls"? We have chickens, and I'm curious as to if there is another use for them we aren't employing. Our oldest dd and I really like our chickens, or I should say our oldest TWO dd's. Our twin dd last year, when she was only 2, would go right up and pick them up, no fear at all, and she'd hold right on to them wing flapping and all, just keeping her eyes shut 'til they stopped, too cute. |
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That is a really cute image I have of your sweet 2yo holding onto that chicken in earnest!!!
Why garden girls? Not an ignorant question at all! I should have explained better!!
Because we'll have ours in and amongst our gardens, composting for us. We wanted the chickens to range and not live in a fixed coop, but can't for a number of reasons. Our solution is to put them in a charming little mobile chicken coop. (The common term for this is chicken tractor, but it's not really a tractor....and it doesn't sound pretty to me. ). Anyway, for this year we're going with a kit which will ship UPS and we'll build (coop with roosting boxes attached to a small, enclosed yard). It's all self contained and we'll put them within the garden to work and do their happy-little-chicken-thing....and then....once they've worked one area, we'll move the garden girls to another area - coop, enclosed yard and all. It doesn't take up a large amount of space, and allows us to keep our small number of chickens and keep them working in fresh areas. This also allows us to move them to a sheltered side of the house in the case of tornadic weather, which we clearly have to deal with regularly every spring.
So that's the story of the garden girls. Girls because they're hens. Garden because they'll work in the gardens.
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Jen Mackintosh
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Wildflowers and Marbles
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Angel
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Mackfam wrote:
Have any of you ever tried a fig tree? It's one of the reason I haven't placed my orders because I'm waffling on that one. |
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We have 2 -- one Mission, and one Brown Turkey. They are tiny little trees and I'm not sure if they made it or not. They're supposed to grow fast, and I guess they must because they're really little right now. They don't look like "trees" at all.
They are supposed to grow well here, though. Wish I could tell you more, but since they're Mediterranean trees, I wonder if they just take a little while to wake up in the spring?
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Angela
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Jen, will you have them(the chickens) in the garden with plants? We've been looking into this more lately, as to what plants are poisonous to them, and what one's they'll destroy, etc. I know at my parents when I was younger, we had trouble with them eating our tomatoes, and so did a friend of ours. Just curious.
I saw one family that named their "chicken tractor" their "eggmobile". I thought that was cute. We want to do meat birds in a "chicken tractor" sometime, like dh's godmother does.
Okay, sorry to have gone somewhat off topic.
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4Real Forums : Our Lady's Loom, Larder, and Laundry
Topic: Seed Talk
