Greenhouse Activity

I'm happy to say that I have my greenhouse up and running. It is full of tiny little tomato seedling, squash plants, and flower seedling all of which I started in the house. There are also a few store bought flowers: a calla lily, some Autumn Joy sedums, and 2 small stone crops for my rock garden, all perennials. I also bought 4 begonias covered in pink blossoms to plant in one of my tubs.

This week I transplanted tomato and squash seedlings into bigger pots:
April 29: transplanted 14 Early Girl tomatoes and 12 Spaghetti Squashes
April 30: transplanted 6 butternut Squashes and 7 New Zealand tomatoes (Got the seeds from Lori, my son-in-law's mother)
May 1 Transplanted 9 Purple Russian tomatoes (Grown from heirloom seeds from my friend Judy K)

I also cut slips from some of my over- wintered geraniums this week and planted them in pots:
April 25 and 26: Samba Red and Apple Blossom white.
May 2:  pink regal geraniums





While cleaning out my triangle bed a few days ago, I managed to find some over-wintered snapdragons which the deer didn't eat. I sprinkled some seeds straight onto the flower bed and sprinkled some on top of a pot of soil in the greenhouse. I learned last year that Snapdragon seeds need to have the cold winter to crack the seeds which allows them to germinate; plus they need light to germinate as well. They won't grow if you bury the seeds.

Last Sunday (April 28 my diligent hard-working spouse helped me to re-do my rock garden. He took off all 50 plus rocks, and then we dug up the majority of the clumps of grass taking over the 2 tiered bed. I had to dig out a number of my perennials, maltese crosses, siberian iris, creeping sedums, and flax, as well as a few white daisy clumps. We put black plastic on the slop of the bed, then covered that in black landscape tarp. Then we hauled all the rocks back onto the sides and slop of the bed. I added some good Sunshine Mix soil and replanted some of the perennials. The Siberian Iris  as dead in the centre so I divided it into 3 clumps and planted 2 of them elsewhere, one in the bed at the side of the house (after digging out some invasive campanula bell flowers) and the other piece went into my stackstone bed near one of my morden roses.






I cleaned that particular bed yesterday and finished it today. Lots of grass and grass roots came out of there. I also uncovered my rose bushes, took the burlap off and removed the mound of peat moss and mulch.  I am pleased to see that most of the rose bushes have buds on the branches! In the past, if the winter was severe, all the top branches were dead and the rose bush had to end up new stems from the roots. I guess I did a good job of protecting them this winter which was one of the longest and coldest in the 7 years we have been here.


This morning it took me almost 2 hours to clean up my round Angel bed (called that due to the Angel statue there.) The tall Karl Forester grass (calamagrostis) was lying flat on the ground so it required major clipping as did the monkshood perennials and some of the maltese crosses from last year. Na dog course I had to dig out loads of grass and roots trying to take over.  My heliopsis is very big now and will have to be divided this year. Just in time for the Plant Swap on Mother's day weekend!

( http://www.bluestem.ca/calamagrostis-karl-foerster.htm)