Super Salvias!

Hiya nibor, glad the scent is different. Yes flowers are late but had a month or more so far. Will get Tangerine now

 

I never found S.elegans (the tangerine one) hardy. Is the "Pineapple" one hardier.

 

Longk, elegans is not hardy but because it is so vigorous it makes a large flowering plant next year from this year's cutting.

 

I must admit that I can buy it for about £1.50 around here so it's not worth the effort (very defeatist I know).

This is the one that is frustrating me cutting wise - Salvia discolor...............


Try as I might I cannot get one to take.

 

maybe Nibor can give us a bit of help Longk

 

Just bought salvia elegans Tangerine. Not many leaves but I think the scent is different to pineapple sage.

 

I bought seeds of Pineapple Sage from SmartSeeds. Only 10 seeds, so none to share I'm afraid ... but if I manage cuttings you are welcome

 

Just gathered about 100 Farinacia "Victoria" seeds. Will be in the seedswap

 

Kristen, you are inspiring me to sow seeds. I'm fairly good with cuttings but I guess I should get more into seed-sowing mode if only for greater variety of planting

 

Hmmm ... here's my 2p-worth then:

I make a spreadsheet for each seed packet I buy

First column : Planned Sowing Date

I try to do two batches per month, so I just put 1st or 15th of the month, and then I use 2nd / 3rd etc. [as the date] if they could be sown a bit later - so on the 1st (or whenever I get around to it, around about that time!!) I sow everything listed for 1st, then 2nd, and so on ... and when I run out of time / seed trays / compost ! the rest have to wait for the next occasion. So my pseudo-date is a means of prioritising seed due for sowing in a particular fortnightly batch.

Making the spreadsheet is very time consuming. Looking up each variety on Google and deciding how to germinate it.

Other germination columns: Temperature, Expected days/weeks to germinate, any stratification etc. requirements

Cultivation columns: Hardy/Half-hardy Shrub/Herbaceous/Annual etc, Height/Width, Colour+Month(s). This gives me a ready-reference once the plant is outside and growing. I usually save any nice pictures of the plant that I stumble over too (I use the name of the plant for the image filename, on my computer's C: drive - so for example QuercusRobur01.JPG )

Vegetable seed that you buy from Suttons / T&M / Unwins etc. has great instructions on the packet ... and most vegetable seeds would germinate if you so much as look at them!! ... but the sorts of things I am trying to grow come in a packet with 5 seeds, most are "difficult" AhHem! to germinate, and I thus want to give it my best shot, and quite often the packet just has the plant's name on it.

I try to pre-separate seeds that need sowing immediately (if I know which they are) so that they get researched promptly and then sown, but the rest take me until the turn of the year before they are fully catalogued ...

OK, that's the research done

You can sow in compost / soil of course. I use a John Innes Seed Sowing Compost (soil based) which is very sandy and free draining. I find that makes pricking out easier as the soil falls off the roots easily - whereas with MPC often two plants have rooted into the same "lump" of MPC and thus root damage occurs.

If the seeds need covering I use a thin layer or vermiculite - which I think cuts down on algae growth. Watering from the bottom, rather than top, helps with that too.

If seeds need a period of cold stratifying you can just stick the pot outside for the winter. There is some risk that extreme wet is too much for the seed, plus mice etc. may steal it for food.

An alternative is the Baggy method. Put the seed on some moist paper in a zip-lock bag; easy to stand a whole row of such bags in a shoe box until they germinate

I use coffee filter paper, moistened with a fungicide [need one specifically for seeds - I still use Cheshunt Compound, but its no longer sold I think]. Make sure you get some air in the zip-lock bag too.

I buy zip-lock bags with 3 white "write on" panels on them. I write the ID No. (from spreadsheet), plant name, and then the date of its NEXT movement, and how long it stays at each stage. For example if I "sowed" a Baggie on 01-January then this would be an example:

01Jan Stratify +3C for 3 months
01Mar +22C Germ 10-22 days, else Stratify +3C for 2 months

So this will stay in the fridge until 01-March. All the bags in the fridge are in a Tupperware box in chronological order, so I only have to look at the top couple to see if their "next date" is past due, and then "process" them accordingly.

So sometime after 01-March that bag comes out of the fridge, and I write on it a date marked-forward 22 days - that is the date it will go back into the fridge if not germinated - and then it goes into my shoebox of other seed bags - they are on my work desk so all get checked daily for expectant! signs of germination. (Actually some are in much warmer places - like the airing cupboard - depending on what germination temperature they need, but many are happy at 20-22C which is about what my office averages, with several computers running)

The bags in the fridge get checked once a week. They don't usually germinate there, but sometimes they do. Some bags have to be in the light [once they come out of the fridge] to assist germination (and some need pitch dark)

Pricking out is fiddly ... tweezers I'm afraid. Most of these more specialist seeds are marked as "erratic germination" so they don't all obligingly get cracking at the same time, which is another benefit of the Baggy method over a pot - where pricking out early germinators would disturb the remainder.

Sorry, rambling on, that's about the Top & Bottom of it I think.

 

That was NO RAMBLE Kristen A gem of a post, thank you. You attention to detail is exemplary and you are in the top box for knowledge in my book,
Jenny

 

I need it with this one Jenny!

Whether I sown using the baggy or the conventional method, I always use the thin bamboo skewers that to get from the Asian s/markets. The extra length of them offers up the perfect balance for even the smallest seedling.

 

I have those too Kristen. Really good they are too. I have to be in a "can do" mood and be "chilled " otherwise, I just make a hash of it. I do love to see a seed tray all pricked out and watch it change on a daily basis. It is sooo exciting - what growing's all about really,
Jenny

 

It's been another lovely warm sunny day again and the bees are enjoying my salvia leucanthemum. This is a truly lovely plant, pinky/purple flowers with white tips. It's now 5' high, been flowering since mid summer and still in full flower and reasonably hardy if the winter is fair. I will cut it hard back soon and expect it to do the same next year.

 

The only thing I find when growing from seed is how to stop myself pricking out far too many seedlings , just hate throwing them away, I have to say to myself after the second tray STEP AWAY FROM THE SEED TRAY .
I have one of those Super7 windowsill electric propogators which I've used every year for well over 10 years now, best thing I ever bought, great for getting seedlings going early, especially plants for hanging baskets, later sowings go in the greenhouse.
Kids are always moaning about all the seeds in the fridge, especially when the daylilies are started off as they all go in ziplock bags in the fridge till germination which can take up to 12 weeks