Category: Seeds

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01/29/2024 prairie larkspur leaves up

A single leaf is circled with a white marker. There is a black metal sign with messy porcelain marker writing saying “prairie larkspur”. Lots of the sandy loam soil is visible and other small winter annuals and some dry tan buffalograss are around nearby.
I checked both prairie larkspurs in the front side year and each one has a leaf! I have circled this one with white lines. I was actually worried about this one because I accidentally broke off the dried stem pretty low, but it seems the root was fine. I had two plants in the back yard too but I haven’t looked for them yet.
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Scarlet pea process

Scarification of some kind is needed for quick germination of Indigofera miniata. I decided to nick each seed manually.
01/08/2024. The seeds swelled up ready to go within 24 hours! if you look very carefully you can see a few little roots emerging on a few seeds.
01/11/2024. More roots come out after a few days of light!
01/15/2024. These cotelydons (seed leaves) are opening in the container that had a clear lid! Two seed cases had fuzzy gray mold so I picked that off with tweezers the day before.
01/15/2024. This baby is emerging from the six-pack cells. It’s sort of yellow even though we have the grow lights right on them. For the open cells (no cover), I’ve been watering them by flooding the tray so the water soaks up.

I still have more of this species nicked. I think what I’ll do with the rest is plant them directly; they seem to imbibe water very fast which means they’ll probably sprout in spring rains. I forgot to inoculate them with any of the inoculum I bought from prairie moon nursery but I believe you can add it later if you disturb the roots a bit. If this species even needs it. Mysteries.

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12/23/2023 basketflower

Surprise! Seedlings!
The label
Has an adult leaf
Younger one
Several including one nibbled on
Basketflower seedlings have emerged! It’s an annual, so I assume they start now and then goes through summer. Hopefully they can survive frosts. Presumably they can though since seeds fall all fall in the wild too.

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11/18/2023 green section

The heavy duty plastic garden cart with three full planters in it. Long afternoon shadows on driveway.
We used our trusty garden cart to bring the green section plants from the backyard as well as the verbenas.
The lovegrass had long roots where they hit the side of the pot and went down. The exposed roots aren’t buried again yet.
The sand lovegrass had a beautiful root system!
Two young milkweeds with a lot of soil gone from the rest of pot being planted. My gloved hand is adjacent to the roots to highlight the swollen taproot part.
The green milkweeds had very long root systems. These just sprouted this spring. I think I got 3-6 from this pot into the ground. Not all put up leaves again with the fall rain so it’s hard to be sure.
Big pale rocks frame the newly planted corner in green section of rainbow garden.
Everyone tucked in snugly. I moved the spikemoss from here to the rock garden as the spotted euphorbia keeps almost covering it here.
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11/18/2023 prairie verbena yay!

The deeply incised leaves of prairie verbena (plus some hitchhiking oxalis) against dark soil. I’m pointing at it with a gray and textured glove.
I think the seed from home being fresh helped, as one came up very quickly this summer. All of these happened after we bought two plants at the native plant festival haha.
I’m pointed my gloved finger at a little verbena seedling nested among bigger green leaves with many veins.
This verbena seed took almost a year I think to come up, and now two little seedlings are up too. So the many of them just want to take their own time. Its leaves are different. More like I expected for Verbena halei but I had it labeled where I thought it was prairie. We shall find out!
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11/05/2023 late but clearing for garlic

A series of seven raised beds edged by corrugated stainless steel and connected by three beige plastic trellises. A pile of holly branches in front, and some beds still having tomato cages covered in frost killed cowpea vines. One bed has hoops and plastic over it.
I got probably a total of three beds cleared (two halves and two wholes) for putting our garlic back in. I also moved some yaupon branches into the city compost bins (saving some to try making tea). I put a lot of cowpea seeds behind the yaupon holly in hopes that they’ll take over there next year. The rest of vine waste I set over south of the fourth bed to try to smother the invasive sedges and bermudagrass that keeps creeping in since we haven’t put ground covers there yet. We haven’t got the garlic in yet. But closer. Next year not letting cowpeas bury the raised beds.