Liatris Archives : Page 2 of 2 : Cast Iron Garden

May 2, 2021May 2, 2021

How can things grow this much in a week?? Sprouting trays edition

The Chef took very good care of the garden while I was on vacation and we got very, very, very, very lucky to get rain and no hail in our part of town. I’m poking at my potted plants right now. I’ll do another post later with the ground plants and raised beds and permanent planters.

*Echineacea pallida* left out all winter sprouted well (seeds from prairie moon nursery) a while back. I put some of the seedlings in the ground when I left and I’ll plant these last ones soon.

The Chimayó peppers from Judy grew almost all these adult leaves. When I left each had one small adult leaf.

Hungarian heart tomatoes to replace the one that got killed by the late frost. The seedlings emerged in the plant window so I put them outside yesterday when I got back.

I repotted this eggplant right before I left. It has grown a lot. The other one I repotted hasn’t grown as much.

Finally the culinary sage is starting to sprout! The only one that was up before now has an adult leaf.

These passionvines are the ones where I just smooshed the fruit into a pot and left them out all winter.

*Liatris mucronata* has a hilarious long leaf. I had another one in a bigger pot but it seems to be dying.

This yucca now has three leaves! I also planted one in the ground when I left, because it was in the relatively shallow sprouting tray, and it is still alive in the ground.

Planted the other tray of green milkweed (*Asclepias virida*) before I left and will plant these ones soon.

Volunteer redbud dug from front raised beds. Eventually I’ll put it in the ground here in backyard. I don’t think it grew any taller, so hopefully it’s working on roots.

I now have at least three baby columbines in the sprouting tray and one out in the yard. The package said direct seeding in fall was best, even over stratifying manually, so that’s what I did even for the trays. These babies look a lot like clover, especially when smaller, so I’ve had to be careful.

March 13, 2021March 13, 2021

Native seed stratification success

Several seeds I pulled out of the fridge recently are sprouting in their humid containers so we planted them today!

The yucca has a really long root! Mom, is this Arkansas yucca? It’s the one from your house.

The green milkweed (*Asclepias viridis*) had tons of seeds sprouting and a very brushy or fluffy root for each seedling. We put them root down, I just wanted to show the fluffy root here. Dad got these seeds for me!

February 7, 2021February 7, 2021

The big freeze: an outdoor stratification event?

Supposed to be really cold (with highs not above freezing) later this week, so I figured I should get my lately acquired native and wildflower seeds in the ground. These included desert globemallow, blue flax, Liatris mucronata, and mystery Aster sp. (the latter two from Mom, thanks Mom!!). The first three I also put some seeds in the fridge for manual stratification and the first two I saved a bit to try planting in the fall if the spring planting doesn’t take.

I also had a few indoor seedings to catch up on. Judy kindly sent me some Chimayo chile pepper seeds, my Jimmy Nardello peppers never sprouted, my ground cherries only had two sprouts, and the poor Tommy Toe tomatoes died of cat and damping off.