I had no faith in it whatsoever! I only started gardening last year. And thought I’d try seeds with some plants. I do it all in pots, since I live in an apartment.
In the seed pots I’ve got cucumber, radishes, and green beans. Around mothers day I will buy plants of bell peppers, and marigolds, which is the only flower I do. And any other damn thing I can find.
Woohoo! What’re you guys planting? It’s time!
Nothing!! Theres nothing in that greenhouse! Stay away!
/pulls curtains on greenhouse shut
Your thread title left the species of the seeds unspecified, leaving my mind free to free-associate. So it brought back March and April of my senior year in high school (back in 1977), sprouting Cannabis seeds in my mom’s flowerpots and watching the baby plants grow up. Wayyyyy better than “Sea Monkeys,” ya you bat cha.
I planted some zucchini seeds, and they sprouted, too! (Okay, so this apparently is no great accomplishment.) And also some ornamental grasses: two kinds, one sprouted and one didn’t. Now to move my husband’s grandmother’s many boxes o’ crap somewhere else so I can water the little darlings…
If you ever see a starfruit in the grocery store, the seeds are fun to sow, and produce quite an attractive house plant. I must get a nice lemon and plant that. I miss my old friend Larry the Lemon, who died last year. (Exposure and neglect. A west-facing condo balcony on the corner of a major six-lane street with CONSTANT traffic noise did not make for pleasant balcony gardening. But I digress.)
Well, so far we’ve already got the chives, lovage, thyme, and mint in full bloom from last year. The sage is still shedding it’s old leaves and unfortunately my tarragon rosemary bush wasn’t as hardy as I thought and died over the winter. 
So, we’ll kick off this year by planting some more rosemary and French tarragon (if I’m lucky enough to find it again.) From seeds, I’ll start some chervil, summer savory, and perhaps some oregano. From starter plants, we’ll get lots of basil (about four to six plants), tomatoes of several varieties, some peppers (last year it was Hungarian wax peppers) and probably that’s it. I don’t bother growing parsley or cilantro since it’s so cheap at the store down the street. Even though I haven’t planted dill, well, ever, it reseeds itself every year so there will be some random stalks of dill dispersed throughout the garden (perfect for those lactic fermented sun pickles!)
Yeah…I can’t wait til summer. I’ve also been toying with the idea of growing my own hops, but I’m not sure I quite have the room.
Ahem. Of course that’s “its” and it should be “tarragon and rosemary bush,” lest anyone think I’ve discovered a new hybrid.
Lemons?! Starfruit?! Damn, I’m at work, and can’t run off and buy some more right now! I’m sick about my gardening anyway, I talk to my plants and tell them how cute they are and how much I love them.
I’m not much of a gardener, but I planted about 30 packs of seeds and I have some green things, too!! Hooray!
I have a raised strip about 60 feet long and 5 feet wide that I had filled with good quality dirt from a landscaper. It had nothing in it! It was a blank slate!
I do have coming up: cilantro, tomato, cucumber, radish, carnation, lavender, larkspur, geranium, english daisy, poppy, ‘red hot pokers’, zinnia, salvia, ranuculus, and hollyhock. The tomato and cuke plants are already flowering and setting fruit. I have a lemon and a grapefruit, but they are sulking.
Things not growing include some tulip bulbs, gladiolus bulbs, corn and sunflowers. These apparantly are fabulous squirrel snacks. They nibbled at least half of the bulbs and all of the corn. I’m restarting the corn and sunflowers in peat pots and hope to transplant them, but I don’t think it will work.
Last, I used some pots for mixed stuff. One is a “spaghetti dinner” pot- tomato, bell pep, onion, garlic and oregano. The other is a “mexican food” pot with tomato, jalepeno, onion, garlic, and cilantro!
Hooray for green stuff!
There is nothing like growing your own plants. I recommend it for all.
I have converted half of my laundry room into an indoor growing area this year, with fairly decent success. I have tomato, zinnia, anaheims, bells, pumpkin, watermelon, sweet pea, allyssum, and wave petunias up so far, and then when it warms up enough, I can start the outside planting. Waiting in the wings: mammoth sunflower, cukes, snap peas, green beans, and some annual mix that was thrown in by Burpee as a freebie for buying so many packets of seeds to start off with.
You sound like me. A few weeks ago I planted some seeds and was very excited when they spouted. I had planned to do some major garden prep the next weekend but then I got sick and didn’t have the energy. I lost a few of the seedlings but hopefully the rest will hang on until I can repot them.
I have corn, cantalope, chamomile, dill and parsley. I put the last three in pots and the dill promptly died. I read after I planted them that dill hates to be transplanted so I just restarted more seeds in the pot I want to keep them in. The cantalope seeds I got from a cantalope I bought so they were free! My boyfriend hates cantalope though, but that’s okay, more for me! If they make it to fruithood, that is.
I’d like to plant some tomatoes but I am thinking of experimenting with hydroponics. I found a make it yourself thing online that uses a Rubbermaid storage container, 2 liter soda bottles, pvc pipe and a pump. Has anyone tried this? I was hoping I could get some grow lights and put these in the garage so I’d be less likely to get pests eating my 'maters.
I’m growing catnip from seeds so that someday I can put some in some old socks and give them to the cats to go crazy over. They’re doing pretty well (I planted the seeds on April 3rd).
A while ago I noticed that quite a few of our small red potatoes were growing eyes, so I rescued one of them and suspended it over a jar of water with toothpicks so that just the bottom was touching the water. It grew roots pretty fast and a few days ago I put it into a pot of soil. I’m not going to grow potatoes to eat, just growing the plant part.
I’m also trying to grow new plants from cuttings (philodendron cuttings mostly), but I think I’m having rotten luck.
I bought a small catnip plant. When I got it home there was a neighborhood cat on my front porch. I set the plant on the windowsill and took the rest of the stuff I bought inside. I came back out to find the stray cat munching on my catnip plant! So I took it inside and set it on the kitchen counter and left the room for a few seconds and came back to find one of my cats munching on it. Then I stuck it in a cat free back room. Unfortunately for the plant there’s not much sun in there and it got a bit dead, but only mostly. I trimmed off the dried up leaves (gave them to the cats) and the little green buds came back and it’s growing again but much, much smaller than before. I put it outside again and haven’t seen the stray cat yet. Apparently cats have some kind of catnip radar.
Philodendrons are usually very easy to root, even my brown thumb seems to be able to get them started (keeping them alive once planted is the harder part for me). Make sure you have several little root nubs on the part you’re trying to sprout, cover with water (I use a bud vase) and keep refilling it when the water gets low, wait until you have some nice long roots and then put it in a pot.
My problem is watering. It gets very hot here and I never remember to water every day or even every other day or sometimes even once a week. I am looking into various devices and things that will help keep the plants watered in between my memory lapses. Any tips? How about those little crystal thingies that absorb water and you can mix them in the soil? Has anyone used them?
It has been below zero and snowing here this week. All my little plants coming up, the leaves on the trees, the lilac buds, all frozen. Some will recover, some won’t. Sigh. Sometimes I hate spring in Western Canada.
I have spinach, radicchio, arugula and red oakleaf lettuce just starting to deliver a fine salad crop (they grow well during a cool spring). I just planted my favorite tomato hybrid, “Celebrity”, which produces brilliantly well around here. I’ve planted several basil seeds, both green and violet, in cell packs, but they’re doing rather poorly. I think it’s the cold, wet, prolonged spring the bay area has been having this year.
Hint for you vegetable gardeners: a delicious and upcoming salad green is the French “mache”, which is starting to become fashionable in bistros. The thing is, this is the easiest green I’ve ever grown. It grows well during a cool season like spring and fall, and I’ve found that bugs seem to ignore it. I think I’ll grow a buttload of it this fall and market it to the local fancy bistro.
I looked up “catnip” on Google Images the other day and it’s mostly filled with pictures of cats rolling around the floor high as a kite.
Well I went to Lowes and bought a peppermint plant in honor of my deceased horse who loved peppermints, and it is doing smashingly in its yellow pot on the back deck.
I also came home with two “Early Girl” tomato plants, which I am growing in containers as an experiment. One of them is doing ok, the other looks a bit sad. We’ll see. My $2 investment is generating a lot of suspense!
And finally, today a planted some “cat grass”. AFAIK it’s nearly foolproof, but I’m excited to see the seeds sprout.
Whee, this is fun!
Yes, cats have their catnip radar handy at all times. Your plant may be shredded already. I heard a suggestion long ago someplace (maybe here!) that you can plant it out if you put a wire cage over it, well anchored with more wire or small stakes. The leaves grow through the gaps but the cats can’t reach the main part of the plant.
Zyada and I set out some bedding plants (marigolds and petunias mostly), and put in some crocosmia bulbs and some ferns back in the shade. The daffodils are done for the year, and we have patches of Texas buttercups all over the yard.
After the new plant was so quickly attacked I decided that I would start planting the tastier plants in little cages. I may use some decorative old bird cages for the indoor herbs. They don’t have to be catnip for the cats to eat them.