DogsNDaylilies said:Is that a good wow or a bad wow?

It's an OMG wow! And, it looks like you've got a lot of land so I'm jealous.

DND, I winter sow in 16 ounce Styrofoam cups, 20 for $1. I use cheap dollar store crates to hold them all together. If it weren't for winter sowing, I would be buying all my plants! I cannot get a seed to sprout, grow and live long enough to make it to the garden if started indoors.

Give it a try, you'll love it!

The bottle jugs might be a little harder to entice potential owners with, though.

If anyone says anything about the jugs in your yard, just look em straight in the eye and say "what, you never heard of yard art before?"

Lol! I suppose 'a lot' is a relative term...I don't think I have nearly the space I need or want. especially not for my daylily hybridizing. Our ground here is so compacted that if it's not in a garden bed, it pretty much won't grow. And many of my garden beds are getting overrun by grass, which is far more frustrating to contend with than 'weeds'. I'm hoping to live on a different plot of land in the next few years, someplace with lots of space to grow.

Land , Like many , I wish I owned some ..

This however , is from the last seed swap , winter sown , marked with a # 16 , when I find the package again I will know what it is , it does look familiar though
The tiny ones are likely wild aster or goldenrod , the one next to the straw marker is the planted Still looks good after last nights 24 degrees ,

Evergreen bunching onion from DnD


Went from 72 degrees to last night 24 degrees in 12 hrs one of three surviving pom pom poppy sprouts , way to young for that the sprouts were


one group photo of Drama Queen Poppy , 30 or 40 of them are sprouted out there ..

Poor frozen babies!

Leslie Every so often Me Too , Goofy weather At least a few are good to grow ,

This is tagged as a Milkweed it was there outside also ,

We moved a year ago, and if a house had a yard full of containers, I would've made an offer on the spot. As it is, we moved into a blank slate: a worthless bed in front full of vinca vine; a small area in the back with a canna bulb, a dozen peonies, and lily of the valley; and a tiny rosebush start that I moved out of the dogs' play area. Now to get the soil in a condition to grow stuff and fill it with goodies.

ooh, peonies...now that's something that someone recently recommended to me and I think I might try to plant one from seed this year. I'm debating if I just want to try it out here at this house first, or if I should hang onto the seeds for our next house. (Some days the 'moving' thing seems like it's never going to happen, so I want to just get on with planting everything!)

DogsNDaylilies said:ooh, peonies...now that's something that someone recently recommended to me and I think I might try to plant one from seed this year. I'm debating if I just want to try it out here at this house first, or if I should hang onto the seeds for our next house. (Some days the 'moving' thing seems like it's never going to happen, so I want to just get on with planting everything!)

I understand that peonies from seed can be a very long process. I was lucky enough to win a place in the NARR last year and ended up with two beautiful peony roots! I'm keeping my fingers crossed because it's still very cold out here and the planted roots are still under their "mulch...."

Anyway, for anyone considering peonies, I wanted to recommend the NARR!

And I also started some seeds indoors recently. I tried those compressed disks that expand when you put water on them. Some seem to be doing well, yet two of them sprouted and then the tender little sprouts just fell over at the "ground" level, then dehydrated and died. If they were outside I'd say it was cutworm, but they're inside. Does anyone have an idea about what may have gone wrong? Could it be from overwatering?

I should mention that the seeds are gypsum. Baby's breath.

TIA!

Joanna it could be damping off or fungus gnats. To prevent damping off you need to increase air circulation I think. For fungus gnats you need yellow sticky tape (to kill the adults) and knock-out gnats to kill the larvae that kill the plants by burrowing into the roots and munching on them.

DnD,

I say buy a peony bare root. Even Walmart has them, Home Depot....From seed, it'd be something like 5 yrs to first bloom....I'm not a patient person! :(

Okieheart,
I sounds like you have your work cut out for you, but I did just that the last 3 years with my back yard..dug up all the grass and made gardens everywhere, along all "boundary" areas, against the house, etc. It's definitely a labor of love, BUT alot of fun at the same time. Just THINK Of the possibilities :D

bxncbx said:Joanna it could be damping off or fungus gnats. To prevent damping off you need to increase air circulation I think. For fungus gnats you need yellow sticky tape (to kill the adults) and knock-out gnats to kill the larvae that kill the plants by burrowing into the roots and munching on them.

Thanks Elena, but wouldn't I see the gnats if they were there? Or is it the larve that eat the seedlings?

Joanna you would see the adults flying around but unless you had a heavy infestation they might not be that noticeable. And yes, the larvae live in the soil (very hard to see because they are practically transparent) and invade the root system of seedlings. The smaller, slow-growing seedlings are usually killed. Large seedlings like tomatoes and peppers that grow quickly aren't bothered by them.

bxncbx said:Joanna you would see the adults flying around but unless you had a heavy infestation they might not be that noticeable. And yes, the larvae live in the soil (very hard to see because they are practically transparent) and invade the root system of seedlings. The smaller, slow-growing seedlings are usually killed. Large seedlings like tomatoes and peppers that grow quickly aren't bothered by them.

Thank you, good to know. So I guess I'm stuck with the larvae until they turn into adults and start flying around, right?

Is it possible the discs had eggs in them when I bought them? If not, I can't imagine where they came from.

Your seed-starting discs could have had eggs in it. I would have thought the discs would have been sterilized though. You can buy Bt specifically to combat the larvae. It goes by the names Gnatrol and Knock-out Gnat. I bought some years ago and unless you have a greenhouses you basically get a lifetime supply. You just mix a tiny amount with a gallon of water and use it to water your plants with. I had an infestation earlier this year and the number of gnats has decreased significantly.

Another way to get them in the Spring is by hardening off your plants. If you set them outside for a few hours and then bring them back in the house you'll probably bring in some gnats also. For older plants you can add sand or chick grit to the top surface of the soil. If the gnats can't reach the soil they can't lay eggs! I'm going to try that this year.

bxncbx said:Your seed-starting discs could have had eggs in it. I would have thought the discs would have been sterilized though. You can buy Bt specifically to combat the larvae. It goes by the names Gnatrol and Knock-out Gnat. I bought some years ago and unless you have a greenhouses you basically get a lifetime supply. You just mix a tiny amount with a gallon of water and use it to water your plants with. I had an infestation earlier this year and the number of gnats has decreased significantly.

Another way to get them in the Spring is by hardening off your plants. If you set them outside for a few hours and then bring them back in the house you'll probably bring in some gnats also. For older plants you can add sand or chick grit to the top surface of the soil. If the gnats can't reach the soil they can't lay eggs! I'm going to try that this year.

Thanks so much Elena. I just sprinkled cinnamon over the surface--I know it can help in a number of ways and until I can get one of the products you mentioned, I'm hoping it'll have an affect.

I purchased the discs at a box store--it's the second time I've purchased something like that from a discount location and it's the second time I'm regretting it. Oh well, live and learn! Thank you again.

We've been out of power for the past few days, so I'm just checking in and catching up a bit! (Wouldn't you know, the power goes out just after I get my grow lights set up and ready to put seeds under!...I finished that today. A little late on a few of the seeds, but oh well.)

I'll try to go in order here...

@joannakat : I don't know much about peonies, but I'd heard they can take a few years, too, which is part of why it's a hard call on whether or not I want to plant any. I'm not likely to reap the rewards of my effort if I plant them here, but if the finding-a-place-to-move process takes longer than anticipated (which it already is), I might be glad that I planted them. Hard to say. Oh! ...and you brought up the NARR....most of your seeds came from the people following this thread. Everyone who donated seeds belonged to the DND's All Seeds Swap #1 or #2, and most have continued on to participate in #3 (along with some awesome newcomers). I am definitely bias on this, but I think joining the seed swap is a better way to get seeds--peony or otherwise! In fact, the gypsum seeds you got were probably either from myself or from Elena ( @bxncbx ). As for your indoor seeds that fell over, they probably did suffer from damping off, which is caused by different types of fungi such as Pythium or phtophtora. (I've been studying up on this somewhat recently.) The fungi can be carried by fungus gnats, although I don't think the fungus gnats themselves can cause the damping off. @bxncbx has been growing seedlings longer than I have, so I don't pretend to know more about it than she does, but I do think that fungus gnats are simply the carrier, not the cause of your issue. (I just sprayed all of my houseplants with a hydrogen peroxide/water mixture to try to control the problem so that my seedlings are at less risk and my house is--hopefully--soon devoid of gnats. I actually overwatered my seedling tray (accidentally forgot to drain the tray after watering the peat disks yesterday, so they soaked up all of the water and were wet wet wet today), so I have a fan on them for the night tonight and I'm hoping that works since the seeds were only put in today and haven't sprouted yet. Good luck with your seedlings, I hope some of what I said helps!

@bxncbx - One of the resources I read suggested several methods of getting rid of gnats in varying life stages. One of those recommendations is to put a piece of potato in a pot and all of the larvae will be attracted to it (at which point you throw it out). Have you ever tried this, by chance? I'm curious if it works.

@vma4922 - That's a good suggestion, I might just do that. Even if we sell our house as early as next year, it will still be beautiful, I'll likely have a chance to enjoy it, and it may add to the 'curb appeal' of the house. (Is there a phrase for 'curb appeal', but for the backyard? ) I know some people say not to buy lilies (and some other plants) from Wal-Mart because they are more likely to have diseases...any idea if that's true with peonies, too? Have you had success with peonies from them? I'm only a patient person sometimes, so it would be nice to have blooming peonies a lot sooner than 2-5 years. Also, I know you were talking to Okieheart, but kudos to you for digging up all of that grass and going at it to make garden beds. That's what I intend to do with our next house. I'm going to be re-researching the best ways to keep grass away because I am so sick of trying to yank out large, matted clumps of grass from my garden beds. (I think that's the first time I've ever used that emoji...you can tell how mad the grass has made me!)

@joannakat - I've read that gnats love peat, but I'm not sure they would be in the dry, compressed peat pellets...gnats seek out wet/moist soil for a reason. That said, houseplants and bagged soil are notorious for having gnats. In fact, I think my gnat problem really started with a bag of potting soil I purchased for my houseplants last year. Ugh. I thought freezing the bag outside would help, but it either didn't completely freeze or that didn't work. As for your soil larvae, maybe try the potato method that I mentioned? There are other remedies, too. I've been primarily been getting my information from here: https://www.smallfootprintfami... For what it's worth, I tried sand a year or two ago and it did seem to help, but keep in mind that as you water, the sand goes into the soil and you'll have to keep reapplying the sand to the top. I might do the sand method again in addition to my other methods, but I haven't researched which, if any, of my houseplants might not like a sandy potting mixture.

I should have said that the sand goes into the soil over time, it isn't immediate after you water. After 4-8 waterings, you'll probably notice some 'erosion' of the sand from the top of the soil and certainly after 6 months to a year you will need to add more sand.