Keep safe, Chelle! But it could be worse. Parts of MN are supposed to get 12-18" of snow!

No rain here yet- just clouds and wind.

Karen

>> 3 liter water jugs.

Nice!

Wow!!! So much water! I stacked all my jugs on metro shelves and made a partial tent from old shower curtains. We are getting minor flooding and tons more rain expected. Then tomorrow and sat night freezing temps. I think I will wheel my sprouted jugs into the garage for those two nights.

Note to self, NEVER do hundreds of jugs again! It is just too much to manage.

We had your rain on Wednesday and Wednesday night. Tonight we have a freeze warning. Same for tomorrow night. Then maybe we will warm for a few days. I have made tents over some of my sprouted potted lilies and I've brought some of the transplanted sprouts inside just to be safe. I hope that by Saturday I can take everything back outside and out from under their coverings. Our last frost date is supposed to be about May 10 - so here's hoping the weather settles soon.

We had a freeze warning overnight and I covered my sprouts. It got down to 35°. Tonight 33. There's not much summer-like stuff in the 10 day forecast, either.

Karen

Does anyone have a general recommendation at what temp to cover sprouts overnight? Right now I just have them in the garage since it was 31 last night and will be tonight also. But for the short future, night temps will run around 38 degrees, and then for a while around 41 degrees. My gut tells me 40 and above should be safe. But I'm unsure about 38.

I'll leave my seedling jugs out for a 38 degree forecast.
Since most of mine have had their tops removed already, I brought most of them in last night. I'll bring those in again tonight, even though the ones left in the springhouse were fine this morning, as were the ones that were covered on the deck.

Thanks for the info Chelle

A closed milk jug does afford some degree of protection.

Also, frost development is a product of temperature, humidity, and wind. So frost might be heavy on one 34 degree night, but there might be no frost on another 34 degree night. it can be tough to call ahead of time.



Karen

Good info!

Umm...I'm really glad I brought some stuff in again last night. Water froze inside the springhouse overnight, so I'm expecting some damage in that quarter. Lupine seedlings look okay, but my new Andrew hosta doesn't look so great anymore.

Looks like it made it down to 27 degrees here last night.

Yes, Chelle we got down to 28 last night. I had my stuff in the garage but I didn't look in the jugs yet. I just pulled them out into the sun. I will check after a bit.

I hope your hosta recovers!

I thnink our low was 34. No apparent frost was visible. I had covered my wintersown sprouts and they look OK.

Karen

My main problem here is not freeze, but remembering to keep the seedlings watered in this heat. Mostly high 70's and low 80's.

Chelle - so the potting soil with vermiculite on top worked well for you? I want to do a second set of sowing this week, and will try that. I have some vermiculite left over, but not much so I can stretch out what I have by using your method.

Rick - the delphinium seeds I got from you sprouted and are doing nicely. I need to transplant them into pots and then out into the ground in a couple of weeks.

soilsandup said:
Chelle - so the potting soil with vermiculite on top worked well for you?

Very well, yes. A little over half of what I wintersowed is up already. It's a great start. Right now a lot of them are in that delicate stage of having to work a bit to get their roots down into the potting mix, but I'm sure that with careful watering they'll be fine.

The seeds I'm starting now just get planted in whatever's on hand, although I'll still cover the tiniest seeds with vermiculite.

Your weather sounds lovely. We finally had a nice day here, too.

Dianne,

Great! Did you do any moist-cool stratification or freezing? I didn't when I got the seeds from Botanical Interests and still got good germination.

I hope YOUR slugs don't like the babies as much as MY slugs did! For several years they mowed my seedlings down to ground level and made young plants look like a machine-gun target right before you throw it away as "all used up".

Like no-calorie Swiss Cheese: all holes, no cheese.

I'd love to know how your colors came out: these seeds were collected from just one plant.
I forget if I mentioned the original source of the seeds:

http://www.botanicalinterests....

Rick - funny that you mentioned slugs. I went out to check the milk jug this morning before going to work and there was this huge snail munching away on the delphinium seedlings. Even had one in his "mouth" when I pulled him off. I hate to have to kill all the snails around my garden, but I really have no where else to relocate them close by......so I end up having to kill them. Sometimes I put them in my green waste container so they can munch away for awhile -which is what I did with the one this morning.. Maybe that is not a good solution either.

He only got about 1/5 of the seedlings so I am still good

Nope - no stratification or anything. Just sowed them in a milk jug around March 10th, and they were up when I came back from vacation on March 31st.

If I am successful in taking care of them to the flowering stage, I'll give you an update.

Diane,

We occasionally have slugs but I don't remember the last time I saw a snail. Must be the cold weather. I made a crusade of a nightly slug hunt several years ago. After just a couple of weeks I had significantly fewer slugs, and the following year I had a few, but not enough to cause damage. They never have come back in large numbers, so I must have scared them all off!

I have snails coming out of everywhere - even though I go on yearly early spring snail hunts on a regular basis and throughout the rest of the year too.

I don't know what it is about slugs and Delphinium seedlings! I think they are like catnip for slugs.

Fortunately, they never bother my adult Delph. Hardly even one hole.

Until it got around knee-high, they made it look like a practice target for machine gunners. I had 3-4 Delphs get to be ankle-high, but slugs ate all but one of them to death. I've learned that "hardening off" Delphinium seedlings in a bad slug year is the same as scattering chum to piranhas.

And, from the amount of seed my big one drops, there must have been dozens or hundreds of self-sown seedlings that slugs ate before they got to be 2 inches tall.