Signs of Spring

Spring is coming, it is just taking its time.  Here are some crocus coming up in my lawn just as the snow recedes.

Plants for the Project Grow Plant Sale

The Project Grow plant sale volunteers have been busy starting this year's plants and we now have some pictures.

The first is of tomato seedlings that were planted two weeks ago.  The seedlings in each small pot will be pricked out first to 4 packs and then later to 3" pots for sale.  We started about 12 flats of tomatoes using 18 3" pots per flat.  Each pot should have 18 usable seedlings in it.  That is a whole lot of baby tomatoes!

Two week old tomatoes

The next picture is of Genovese basil seedlings which were started 3 weeks ago.  All the basil plants were transplanted to 4 packs yesterday.

Three week old basil

Finally we have pepper plants.  These were also started 3 weeks ago and we have transplanted about half of them to 4 packs.  In the background you can see primroses and delphiniums I started for myself.

Three week old peppers

We start all this stuff under fluorescent lights.  Indoor lights are the easiest way to get seedlings started but we try to move them to a tiny heated greenhouse as soon as we can to get them accustomed to cooler temperatures and outdoor sunlight right away.  This also prevents them from getting too leggy which can be a real problem with tomatoes started early under lights.

You can read about the 65 varieties of tomatoes, 20 different peppers and 5 kinds of basil Project Grow is growing for the sale here.  If you can make the sale you can also advance order plants and pick them up a week before the sale.

Perennial Flowers from Seed

One of the advantages of growing perennials from seed is you get a lot more bang for the buck.  Even small starter perennials you get at Colemans's, Alexander's,  or the Farmer's Market will cost $1.50-$3 per plant.  Large perennials cost $5 to $15.  The big ones make sense if you need instant results - like you're trying to sell your house - but growing plants from seed allow you to be much more extravagant in how many plants you use.

Another advantage is the selection.  GeoSeed offered 8 different kinds of Primula acaulis this year, and that is besides the other 21 varieties they are offering of other species.   I chose Danova and paid $5.35 for a packet of 100 seeds.  They came up like radishes and I ended up having to thin them out.  Even after doing that I had 28 primrose plants for $5.35.  Of course, I am  not exactly sure where I will plant 28 primroses, but it is a nice problem to have and they only need to be about 8 inches apart so I will come up with something.

Danova seedlings sown on January 30th

Danova primroses

There are disadvantages to growing perennials from seed.  With many perennials you want a clone of a specific plant, not a seed grown strain.  For example, bearded iris, peonies and daylilies are almost always sold as clones of named varieties.  These plants will be exactly identical - your 'Festiva Maxima' peony will look exactly like every other 'Festiva Maxima' in the entire world.

Peonies, iris and most daylilies are only available as clones, but many other perennials such as dahlias, hardy asters, echinacea, hellebores, and hardy geraniums are available as both seed strains and particular clones. Whether or not this matters depends how similar the seed strains are to the named clones and how fussy you are about obtaining a particular plant.

Some plants are also not really worth germinating from seed.  For example, I love bleeding hearts (Dicentra spectabilis) but they are available everywhere for very little money.  The seed is difficult to germinate without stratifying it outside for months and they self sow quite readily outside so you soon have more than you need.

Lisianthus at Two Months

Here is a picture of how the lisianthus look two months after they were sown.  Much bigger than the head of a pin but compared to the speed many other things grow they are creeping along.  The biggest ones are about the diameter of a quarter, maybe a bit larger.

Fairly soon I will transplant them into small liners (72 cells per flat) and eventually they will go into larger liners (36 cells per flat).

Parsley Root

If you have never had parsley root you can find it at Hiller's and at Meijer.  It looks like a small white carrot and is sold with the greens still attached.  Eliot Coleman says you can eat the greens as you would parsley though I never have.  The roots kind of taste like parsley in the same way celeriac tastes like celery.

It's not cheap. A bunch of 3 or 4 roots costs $2 or more.  If you like it, the cost makes it well worth while to grow.

Fedco sells a packet of 'Arat' for $1.90.  You can also get an older variety called 'Hamburg' from J.L. Hudson Seeds (no connection to the old department store) for $1.50 per packet. Both are open pollinated. The Fedco catalog says, "Enhance your soups and specialty dishes with these nutty-flavored roots redolent of a parsley-celery combination".  Fedco claims Arat is sweeter and more uniform than Hamburg.

You grow parsley root about the same as you grow carrots.  The soil should be deeply worked and mostly free of stones.   Sow the seed about the same as you would carrots, about a half inch deep and a half inch apart.  Once they come up thin them to an inch apart.  Mulch to keep down weeds and maintain even moisture.

Seeds sown in spring will be ready to harvest in September.  You can also sow more up to maybe mid-summer and harvest them later in the fall.  With a bit of protection (this year's snow would have taken care of that) you can leave them in the ground until spring.  

Sunflowers for Cutting

Double Quick Orange

If you are growing sunflowers for cut flowers you grow them differently than if you are growing one or two in your vegetable garden to attract birds. In the vegetable garden, it is fun to have the sunflower get as tall as possible. They usually have enormous flowers that are 8” or even a foot across. For cut flowers, you want flowers that are at most 6” across at most, and often quite a bit smaller. The easiest way to do this is by planting the seeds closer together. For cut flowers, I often plant my sunflowers 6” apart.

Moulin Rouge

Single Stem or Branching
Sunflower varieties for cut flowers are grouped as single stem or branching. Single stem flowers produce one flower per plant. Once the flower is harvested, the plant can be pulled out because it will not re-bloom. Branching sunflowers produce multiple flowers, and a single plant produces flowers for a longer season. I initially thought the branching kinds sounded better, and if you were only going to have one or two plants in your vegetable garden that might be true. However, I had trouble with short stems and unpredictable flower size with the branched varieties and eventually just grew the single stem kinds.


All the true reds and true oranges are branching varieties. Although some single stem varieties are advertised as orange or red, I thought the orange ones were more gold and the reds had a yellow overlay which the branching kinds do not.


Pollenless Varieties
In the garden, bees constantly collect the pollen from sunflowers so you never see it. However, if you cut a sunflower and bring it inside, the pollen quickly appears on the disk and will litter wherever you set the cut flower. To avoid this, you can grow pollenless hybrid sunflowers. These typically will say “pollenless” or “F1”. There are now dozens of these on the market. Here are some well known kinds.

Name	Type	Days	Comments
Pro Cut Series	Single	50-60	yellow, gold, pale yellow
Moulin Rouge	Branching	65-80	deep red
Double Quick Orange	Single	65	more gold than orange, but a pretty double
Buttercream	Branching	50-60	Very pale yellow to white
Sunbright	Single	70-80	yellow
Sunrich	Single	60-70	lemon, gold and orange

You can buy these varieties and many more at Johnny's and GeoSeed.

Buttercream

Succession Sowing
If you are growing single stem varieties for cut flowers, you need to succession sow several times or all your sunflowers will bloom at once. You can also choose several varieties with different maturities. When I was growing cut flowers commercially, I sowed sunflowers eight different times from the beginning of May until the beginning of October. I used different maturities at each sowing to ensure I had a continuous supply of sunflowers.

ProCut Orange

Direct Sow vs Transplant

Most people direct sow sunflowers but I had better luck starting them in liners and then transplanting them when they were about 3 weeks old. The bad luck with direct sowing was mostly because I was sowing the seeds in a very large garden and could not keep the soil consistently watered. I also may have suffered from birds or rodents eating the newly emerged seedlings. The method I used was to fill 6 pack liners with grow mix, wet the soil, and then put one seed in each cell about ½ an inch deep. The seeds usually emerged in about a week. When they were about 3 weeks old I would transplant them to the garden. If you wait too long to transplant the sunflowers, the plants will bolt and bloom on undersized plants.  

Gardener's Hand Cream

This recipe was given to Project Grow many years ago by a County Farm gardener. It's a great hand cream and one batch makes a whole lot so you can easily split it with one or more friends.


Ingredients
1 14 ounce jar Velvachol (see Notes below)
8 ounces glycerin
1½ cups distilled water


Directions
Put all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl and mix on low speed with a power mixer until well blended. Then whip on high speed until aerated, about 5 minutes or longer. It will look like egg whites that have formed stiff peaks. Store in jars or pump dispenser containers.

Notes

1. Velvachol is the basic ingredient in burn ointments that pharmacists make. It resembles shortening in a jar. You may have to ask the pharmacy to order it for you. Meijer on Carpenter Road will do this.  It costs about $26 for a 14 ounce jar.
   
2. You can add essential oils or any other scent if you want scented hand cream.
   
3. You only need a tiny dab of this – about the size of a chocolate chip.
   
4. The easiest way to get the hand cream in to a dispenser is to spoon it into a clean plastic bag, cut the corner off the bag and then squeeze it into the dispenser.