Garden Diary: Seed Report - April 27, 2017

This has not been a good year for growing peppers from seed, and it seems I'm not the only one complaining. Our of all the seeds I planted, so far, I have:

• 2 Grand Bell Mix plants from 12 seeds
• 1 Cubanelle from 10 seeds
• 1 NOID plant that came up from some store-bought red bells I threw out as compost (which now has fruit on it)
• Nothing so far from the Sweet Banana, Giant Szegedi or Hungarian Wax seeds
• I'm still babying the two fish pepper seedlings I got from planting 20 seeds.

I can't figure it out, but I guess I'll have to make do with what I have if they never do come up. I may start some cayenne seeds from my dried fruits from last year just to see what happens.

On A Happier Note

Hibiscus Acetosella By Mokkie CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia

I have some Hibiscus acetosella and H. coccineus (Texas star) seeds sprouting, both of which I have wanted for years. The Celosia seeds are doing well. I also have about 2 dozen volunteer vincas in the garden that I need to dibble and put into pots for transplanting to other parts of the garden. Finally got some yellow dwarf marigolds to sprout, but nothing yet from the double purple, white inoxia or le fleur lilac datura seeds.

I tossed out a bunch of zinnia and cosmos seeds in the outside south garden, and am seeing a few of the zinnias sprouting, but no cosmos yet. Also nothing from the scarlet wisteria, nasturtium, double blue butterfly pea or cypress vine, but they may just need warmer weather.

The blue bedder salvia seeds only had about 5 sprout, so I'm going to start a few more of those. I think they got washed out of the pot by the rain, or maybe just got buried too deep, so I'll sprinkle a few into a 6-pack and see what happens. The tropical red salvia is putting out seeds like crazy, which I'm scattering around what will be the butterfly garden. While it blooms a lot, it doesn't really have the full, bright red spikes I'm used to from this plant. I'm hoping as the plants get older, they'll bloom better.

At the community garden, I planted okra about a week ago, but no sprouts there either, which isn't much of a worry. They do need very warm soil to sprout, and don't do well from transplants, so I'll be patient with them. I also planted purple sweet potato slips, which seem to have died, so I planted some marigold babies to mark the row, and I'm saving it for the peppers when they get large enough to plant. I know from experience, though, that those sweet potatoes may just come back up from the roots and put out a crop, so I'm not giving up on them.

While I'm disappointed in the peppers, I've had seeds from that family come up in dry soil from last year's plantings, so I'm not going to worry too much about them. I have enough for now. As long as I can get one of the fish peppers to grow and thrive, I'll be happy. 

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Happy Gardening!