Preparing for Spring – Part One
Most of the seed catalogues arrive around Christmas and now is the time to decide what you would like to grow this gardening season. Every year the seed companies produce something new for us to experiment with. However, unless you can produce the right conditions for growing plants from seed indoors you may find the results disappointing. For this reason, I leave the growing of tender annual flowers to the professionals. The nurseries have a wide choice of variety, colour and size, all ready for planting outside at the appropriate time. I restrict my choice of annual flower seeds to those that can be directly seeded in the garden and essentially look after themselves. If they re-seed themselves next year that is a bonus.
Local naturalist and birder, Jim Wilson spoke at the January River Valley Garden Cub Meeting about 'Living in Harmony with Wildlife on your Property'. Pictured above: Garden Club President Tracy Parker and Jim Wilson.
Bachelor’s Buttons (Black Bull) is one that I will try this year. It has chocolate flowers and grows to 30 inches. Calendula (Scotch Marigolds) now come in a variety of colours from pale yellow to bronze and if dead headed regularly will flower all summer until frost. Cosmos come in all shades from white to dark red. They tend to be tall, 3-4 feet. New this year is “Sensation Candy Stripe,” white with rose edges and pale stripes. Morning Glories make a good addition to trellises and fences growing 6-8 feet. New this year is “Carnival” which is candy striped in shades of blue, white and pink. Nasturtiums are good value as leaves and flowers are edible adding interest to summer salads. The flowers come in all shades of cream, yellow, orange and red and the leaves, depending on the variety, are various shades of green. One is marbled green and white. One of my favourite annuals is the poppy. They come in all colours and sizes, both single and double, and will reliably reseed the following year. To keep them flowering all summer they need to be dead headed but remember to leave some seed heads for the following year. New this year is the California Poppy “Purple Gleam” which has the usual attractive blue/green foliage but the flowers are deep lilac instead of the usual cream/yellow/orange. Sunflowers are spectacular and easy to grow. They now come in shades of red as well as the usual yellows. Children love to grow them as they grow so fast. The varieties that provide bird seed are a bonus. (Beware the racoon!) I love sweet peas but have had little success with them in the past. I shall try again this year. There is a perennial sweet pea (Lathryus Latifolius) which might be worth trying as it is said to be salt, wind and drought tolerant and at a height of 6-8 feet, can survive where little else will.
Perennials grown from seed are very good value for money. They can be started early in the spring or later in the summer. I find I have more success by planting later as growing conditions outside are easier to manage than inside with our “dry as a desert” and” low light” conditions. Very few perennials will flower in their first season but seeds germinated in summer will produce healthy plants which, if set out in the garden, will make a wonderful display the following year for only a fraction of the cost of buying from nurseries. I see that there is now available a Coneflower (Echinacea) mixture “Paradiso”, a mixture of white, pink, red, yellow and orange blooms, guaranteed to flower from July to October and hardy to zone 3. Perennial asters (September Ruby – tall and “Pinkie – short) are easy to grow and are beloved by butterflies and bees as is Butterfly Flower (Asclepias) which is available in pink and white. This will flower the first season if planted early.
For this column I have consulted two catalogues specific to Atlantic Canada and one from Ontario. They were Vesey’s, Halifax Seed and Dominion Seed House. There are many others which are available on line and have interesting and unusual offerings. Have fun!
