Sunday Seeds & Sprouts 2012: Week 2

Tags

celery, frugal gardening, gardening, green onions, kitchen garden, scallions, seedlings, seeds, sustainable living

It’s all over Pinterest: every blog telling you how easy it is to start celery and green onions from their ends. And it is easy. This was another “experiment” we used to do as kids. No matter whose directions you follow, please, please, please remember to use only organic celery. This veggie is at the top of the dirty dozen.

This weekend we started celery in a small plant saucer, since it was a bit deeper than the saucers in our dish set. We also started the scallions (or some people call green onions) in a jar. Look at the roots!

Organic Celery and Scallions Started

Also in our window sill garden: Pumpkin is still amazed by the fact that the sweet potato is all roots and only has two small dots are emerging from the top, while the potato is all plant and no roots.

Friday night we sprayed the seeds we planted last week. On Saturday Pumpkin noticed the tomato seedlings popping up from the soil. He was amazed that a plant could grow two inches over night. We’re patiently waiting for the peppers to emerge.

The Tomatoes Emerge

Another highlight of weekend garden preparation is purchasing a stainless steel compost pail (with charcoal filter, so no odors escape) for my kitchen. No sense running out to the compost bins each time I have a handful! Now the waste is hidden in a sleek container I keep next to the sink, so Hubster doesn’t accidentally throw the egg shells down the garbage disposal.

Week 1: Tomatoes, Peppers, Sweet Potatoes & Potatoes

Did you start any new seeds/plants this week? What other preparations did you make for your garden?

Tulip Seed Pod

Tags

bulbs, gardening, landscaping, propagation, seeds, spring bulbs, tulips

Tulip Propagation
I recently mentioned to someone, I had produced a large tulip seed pod.

Her: “You mean bulb!”

Me: “No, I mean seed pod.”

Her: “No honey, tulips grow from bulbs.”

Me: “And they also can grow bulbs from seeds.”

The conversation went around a little as she still seems to think she’s right. She encouraged me to do a little reading. Unfortunately for her, I already had. In fact, I’ve tried to allow some of my tulips to seed over for 4 years now. I know the plant uses all its energy to generate the seed pod and the bulb is spent for the next year or two, until it regenerates its own energy again.

Tulip Seed Pod

Propagation #1
Tulip bulbs (like most bulbous plants) naturally split from year to year, creating smaller bulbs which will take a few years to produce blooms. These new bulbs will produce blooms the same color as the parent tulip.

Propagation #2
By not trimming the dead tulips bloom, the seed pod will begin to form, if it was properly pollinated. The foliage needs to be completely brown, before the seeds are ready. When the seed pod is ready, it’ll brown and begin to crack open. This is the time to collect the seeds from the tulips. Once the seeds are sown, you’ll have to wait to see what they will look like.

There are many reasons the second method had not yet worked for me. I’ve cut all my pollinated tulip blooms for centerpieces. Animals each the flowers. Thunderstorms snap the stem of the flower before the seed pod is ready, it all depends on what other tulips were used to pollinate this.

Growing little bulbs from the seeds can be less or more work depending on what method you plan to use and what outcome you want.
Method #1
Sow seeds in loose soil, several inches down. Cover and allow mother nature to do the rest. Weed if necessary. You may lose some to ants, grubs and other garden pests.

Method #2
Put seeds in a plastic bag with a little peat moss. Keep seeds in the crisper drawer for just over three months. Plant each seed in a soil tray and water. Keep the soil moist, not dry and you’ll begin to see growth. After two leaves have grown, plants may start to brown and die back. Continue to water until all foliage is brown and dried up. At this point you should have tiny bulbs. You may lose some due to lack of watering or over-watering, so carefully monitor your soil. You can transplant them into separate pots and maintain them until your fall planting season.