My new toys and a fresh start :)

Yesterday, I finally got in a specialised store and purchased sowing trays, peat moss and lime sulphur (to use later on my roses).

A panoramic view of all my supplies:


And some other cutting edge technology :D: plastic take-away boxes, which can accommodate either 6 square pots...


... or 8 single-use coffee cups, which I shortened in half. I used a heated metal skewer to make drainage holes:



Last night I prepared and filled in the soil mix and today I started my 'first wave' of seeds:
Salvia splendens
Iresine
White lagerstroemia (but I'm not sure that what I have collected is actual seed )
Asclepias curassavica
Thunbergia alata
Verbena hastata 'Pink Spires'
Phlox 'Creme Brulee'
Celosia 'Caracas'
Lisianthus 'Rosy'
Caesalpinia Gilesii The link points to a superb garden of a Bulgarian forum mate.
Cytisus battandieri

Soaked and awaiting tomorrow is a batch of purple lupins and Stipa tenuissima.
Lupin seeds will be sown in transparent egg boxes and coffee cups, because I read they didn't like pricking out. So are caesalpinias.

This is what it looks like now...


The above list is probably less than 15% of all my seeds for this season, but I will distribute the effort over time and sow some of the perennials and biennials later, or spare some seeds for next year. To my huge satisfaction, this pile of trays and boxes takes only 1/3 of the windowsill space I can freely allocate now.

 

Nice one Angelina! You've made a good start. I've not started anything yet!! Been so busy tidying up and dividing stuff I've not had time.

 

wow that looks like you have hit it running

hope they all look great

 

Thanks John!
Instead of guessing, I placed a thermometer inside one of the boxes and its shows slightly above 20 C.
On the other window, the reading is between 19 and 20 degrees (C).

The temperature in the room is currently 22.
At night, when the local heating dies completely, it falls to about 19.

However, I have a strange device - a driver's seat heating and 'massaging' blanket. The massaging effect is mildly sadistic - a low-frequency drone, which opens cracks in your tooth enamel and leaves you slightly fuzzy and squint-eyed... :D

I'm just testing it in a heat-only mode and it seems to work. It's probably a good thing to place the trays and boxes on at night.

 

The seeds will love it ... :D

Ah, on mature !! reflection that might be better.

 

Excellent Angelina - only one small point. In time you will find you need far more. Its a rule of gardening - whatever you think - you always want more. But an excellent start.

Your temperatures look just right. I find seeds germinate well in my heated propagator but its temperature is never more than about 22C, at this time of the year. Its about 6C more than the ambient - but I don't keep my house that hot.

 

Wanting more is... the driving force of everything I do.
In Bulgaria we keep the houses hotter and anything below 18 is considered (and perceived as) freezing. :WINK1:

However, today I prepared a second tray for sowing and this time I sieved the soil, which resulted in quite a substantial loss to coarse grains, little stones and chaff, but filling the remainder in the pots made me feel like an ice-cream seller.



Another nice surprise was the discovery of a timer in one of the kitchen drawers. It's working, so I'll use it with some normal desktop lamp to increase the hours of light for the trays.

And the best news - the plastic boxes seem to be working like magic! I started the seeds on 2 March and today I have all lisianthuses developing (5 have germinated quite positively and they were expected to do so within 2-3 weeks, not in 3 days!), 1 phlox, 2 caesalpinias and all stipa tenuissima!

I strongly hope that we will be able to cover the sides of the greenhouse and put up the polythene by the end of next week. Then I will have room to move the less tender seedlings there, for initial acclimatisation. This will free some window space for another batch of seeds indoors.
I just dream to see the flow of the process!
And my Chiltern seeds order arrived today. It's a lot.

 

Excellent Angelina,

You're becoming a small Botanic Garden

 

Ziggy, I'd love to.

Just for the record, thunbergias and lupins are popping up.
And, as we are enjoying a nice, but negligibly thin fresh layer of snow , I just ran out to bury some pots of Hydragea serratifolia, Amsonia tabernaemontana, Gillenia trifoliata, and blue poppy (Meconopsis Betonicifolia).

I started taking notes in a booklet calendar: what I do and what germinates each day. Otherwise, I will lose control of the situation.

 

Good luck keeping up with your babies! You're gonna be busy!

Chiltern seeds is a great site isn't it! How big was your order?

And good luck with the Mecanopsis - I can get them to germinate, but then manage to kill them!!

 

longk, it'd be a great success if I manage to germinate the poppies.
My Chiltern seeds order is 17 plants in total. Among them, a mix of hardy ferns, 2 rhododendrons and 2 roses.

Next week, a friend who's a professional grower of rhododendrons, magnolias and Chinese peonies, will come to give me a tutorial on the rhododendrons. He said it's almost 'late' to sow them, if I meant to overwinter them outdoors with no protection. And also gave me the happy news that if I put some aside for next year, they will have lost viability by 95%.

It's the first time I ever ordered seeds from overseas, I will have to see the results. Just on first impression, their packets contain a lot of seeds, but no growing instructions. With Thompson & Morgan it was the other way round. For instance, about 18 seeds of Cytisus Battandieri were accommodated in a little box with a colour photo, and inside you could find a small multilingual 'technical manual' + a sealed bag of vermiculite.

My sowing session continues, however. Last night, by about 1:00 am local time, I started the following plants:
- some hardy red hibiscus
- Lupinus arboreus (both these I had to pre-soak);
- Lisianthus - Red, and 'Arena Green'
- Lagurus ovatus. And after consulting this post, I'm pretty certain that I could distinguish the seeds amongst all the fluffy flowering.
- Isotoma 'Blue stars';
- Ageratum 'Red Sea';
- Echium Pininana;
- Leonotis nepetifolia;
- Celosia varieties;
- Cleome serrulata 'Solo' and some other cleome variety, which I collected from my home stock;
- Heliotrope arborescens 'Marine'
- Impatiens 'Yellow jungle'
- Phacelia tanacetifolia
- Lavatera arborea 'variegata'
Edit: Forgot to add Ipomoea Alba to the above list.

That's the way it looks now:




But next week, after I sow all the rhododendrons, we'll probably have to move out of the house.

 

Angelina - with Chilterns just sow as per normal. If they do need any special treatment they add the instructions to the packet.

 

Thanks, longk. I thought so, but I prefer to be on the safe side by having some hard-copy material to refer to. :WINK1: Only the four ones on the previous post, which needed pre-chilling, had instructions on the packet.

 

The only two plants I think will be difficult to keep alive unless in a greenhouse all Winter are Lagerstoemia and Caesalpinia, they need to be a couple of years old at least to take below zero temps which I presume you get. Did you soak the Caesalpinia seeds? Good luck with all of them.