Sowing seeds for late winter and early spring

 Spring is almost upon us. This is the perfect time to sow a specific type of plant seed that enjoys a period of cold vernilization. The ones I'll be sowing are:

Poppies (of course)

Larkspur

Bachelor Buttons

Chamomile

Lupine

Snapdragons

Also sown was some Hulless Oats, Spring Barley and Orchard Grass to fill in any gaps in the overwintering Winter Wheat. Be sure to check back each week for updates on how all the plants are progressing.

Leggy Plants: How to stop seedlings from stretching

 

Anyone who has started seeds inside can tell what I did wrong in the first picture: I placed the seedlings in a sunny windowsill far too late. You can see in the second picture that I learned my lesson and put the seedlings in a sunny spot much earlier. This leads me to my best tip for preventing leggy plants: Have a perfect place for your seedlings to grow before you start them. Sounds like common sense right? Well, sometimes we get ahead of ourselves. I'm a gardener with a moderate amount of experience but even still I got excited about starting seeds and did that first. It is the middle of winter where I live so who could blame me for wanting to do a little indoor gardening? The point is that I didn't plan properly. When I saw my first seedlings, I had to scramble to create a good place for the plants to get some sun. Once you have set up a good location in a sunny area, you can start your seeds there and then you won't even need to move them once they germinate.

Planting Potatoes and Website Update

     Hi everyone. I have a gardening update and a couple of important announcements for you today. We finally got the no dig potatoes out. We placed at least five varieties on ground that had been covered with cardboard. We then gave them some compost and covered it all with straw and cut grass.
     The first big bit of news is we had a successful trial launch of our little seed business. Thank you to everyone who purchased our seeds. We are now temporarily sold out but will have plenty more seed in about a month.
     That leads me to the second bit of news.While we are waiting for the seed in the fields to mature, we are going to do a website redesign. The main change is going to be individual product pages that will feature prominently toward the top of the home page. Several other tweaks will be made to the features and appearance of pernies.com. We'll see you next time!