seed starting – Peacock Orchard

Part 1 can be found here.

The gardening never stops! Here is a bit more of what I’ve been up to and how I have been germinating my seeds.

Last year I received some random seeds from China. A “commercial sample” is what the customs form said. The odd thing is that I have no idea what company sent me the sample. The package does not say anywhere. So odd. There were 3 packets: Saffron, Lavender and Spearmint. I decided to plant them and see if they were still good and if they would germinate at all. They have all germinated and this is how I did it.

The seeds came in these nifty little foil baggies.

Now, I don’t know much about Saffron but I highly doubted that those were saffron seeds. What little I know of Saffron growing is bulbular. I could find nothing online about seeds. So I did a quick Google search and discovered that those are Safflower seeds, also known as “Bastard Saffron” as it is used the same way. Now Safflower has an amazing taproot. I certainly want to capitalize on that out in the orchard. Thus I planted a few safflower seeds and held the rest to be sown directly into my fruit tree guilds.

I just happened to have 3 plastic containers that had held ravioli for our dinner. So I cleaned them out and filled them with dirt. As a germination tray they work great!

I watered and bagged the “Saffron” and left it on the bathroom counter to germinate. You can see that I already have 2 other seed types set out for germination. In the background there is an egg carton with Black Crim Tomatoes and one with Jalapenos. The tomatoes have germinated already. The Jalapenos haven’t yet. As soon as I have a moment I will be cutting the individual cells of the egg carton apart to plant the tomatoes into cups to grow out.

The Safflower seeds germinated just fine. The Lavender did pretty well but the spearmint only has a few germinated seeds thus far. They are all sitting in a window now, growing away.

Last year I cut up a whole bunch of English Ivy to propagate. I wrapped each piece in newspaper and stuffed them in a plastic tray. I’s been sitting in our kitchen window since fall and I had honestly thought they had all died. I would forget to water them and such. Ivy appears to enjoy neglect as I have quite a few that appear ready for transplant. The plan for these babies is to plant 3 to a fence panel to grow up over the fence and hopefully make it a lot prettier than it is now. Plus a bit of wind block I hope!

I had a hard time getting any good pictures of this but I tried. I am having some sort of infestation in the house. I imagine this is a result of ordering plants from all over the globe. They are these little white dots all over a lot of my plants. I use tape and get them off. What could it be though? I finally just sprayed everything with an organic insecticide. I am a bit baffled on how an insecticide can be organic but…whatever.

Behold my propagation/seed starting winter garden. I have a lot going on. We only have 2 windows that get enough sunlight to grow plants. This is but 1 of them. What I have here is 2 Russian Pomegranates (black pots), lots of mint, Niagara grape cuttings being rooted, mulberry cuttings being rooted, Pineberry seeds that are hopefully growing, cold hardy kiwi that I most likely killed, tomato, Russian Almond (can’t see) and onion bulbs I was hoping to have go to seed before spring.

Now, allow me to break this process down.

Ebay, oh Ebay. I bought a ton of stuff off of Ebay. Most of them came in excellent shape as well.

This is a mulberry I purchased off of Ebay. I bought 3 different kinds of Mulberry. I potted this one up and stuck it in the window. It now looks like this:

It has taken off!

So have the Russian Almond bushes I have waiting in their cereal box planters

The grape cuttings are beginning to leaf out as well:

As are some of the unrooted Mulberry cuttings I’d purchased:

As you can see I have them in a sort of mini greenhouse. It is working just fine!

I haven’t taken any other pictures of my pomegranates. They have not done anything noteworthy since I got them.

I bought all of these things in mass, at once. So naturally they all arrived in the mail at the same time. This meant I had a busy evening ahead of me. Thankfully I have some very happy helpers.

Daughter is busily throwing dirt about, and occasionally getting it into a cup, while son is scarifying the hazelnut seeds for me.

Here they are. Pre-scarifying and then planted in their mini greenhouse, ready to go outside for stratification. They are outdoors now, placed in a new mini greenhouse as I broke the last one. I didn’t see any change in them. I’m hoping at least a few of them germinate. Who knows. I have a few grape seeds in there as well. I realize grape is said to be terrible to get from seed but I’m trying anyway as seen here:

I also bought some bamboo. It arrived very well packaged. And is doing quite well situated in our other available window. The great pyr tolerates many things, odd plants stuck in his food dish are just part of the package.

Here are a few pics of the mint I’m propagating. We have a lot of bare land so I have no problem sporadically planting mint about and seeing what happens.

Now for some of my odder projects. I get throw away produce from a local grocery store for my poultry. Whenever I’m sorting through and find something good I always try to see if I can save it. These carrots are part of that. They are organic carrots and I’m hoping to allow them to go to seed. They are doing marvelously. I started them in wet paper towels and when I saw enough roots I planted them into cups. I think I’ll just leave them in the cups now. I did the same with some onions. The onions are less pleased with my treatment though. I don’t know that I’ll get anything from them.