My Garden Prep Continues On - I can’t wait until I can get everything really going

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 First published in Gardening, Birding, and Outdoor Adventures on 05/11/23

Nine small pots filled with potting soil and one seedling each on the horizontal supports on the inside of a greenhouse. One pot has an orange clothespin clipped to it.
My Cosmos Gazebos potted up (photo by author)

Went out to my greenhouse today to pot up some flowers. My Cosmos Gazebos have come up nicely. I was able to pot up 9 seedlings and I have about 4 more that need to get larger before I can get them potted up.

I also have some Cosmos Versailles sown, but they haven’t made a showing yet.

I am having an interesting time with my seed pots. The compost I’d made myself didn’t cook hot enough, so I have a number of weeds coming up along with the seeds I planted.

Several four and six cell starter pots with plant tags filled with potting soil and a number of small weeds growing in wach.
photo by author

I have to wait a while to figure out what is what so I can pull out the weeds. I have a couple I’ve identified and have been pulling out of the pots. I just have to be careful not to pull out the seedlings I planned on having. Next year I will save my homegrown compost for my containers and buy seed starter compost that should be weed-seed-free.

I do use a plant ID app, but when everything is small it IDs everything as watermelons or cucumbers. Ah well, I am finally learning how to be patient when it comes to gardening. Things grow at their own rate.

I did pick up a big bag of compost for containers and in the ground that is put out by Miracle Grow. I normally don’t buy anything like that, but Costco had a great deal on it, so when we picked up several bags for a friend, I grabbed one for myself. I’ve been using it for the seeds I’ve been sowing recently.

Two round seed pots with potting soil on a shelf by the window with clothespins clipped to each one. The orange clothespin has the words Ruby Parfait written on it and the pink clothespin has Flamingo feather written on it.
Ruby Parfait and Flamingo Feather Celosias (photo by author)

Good thing too, as I’d completely forgotten I had two varieties of Celosia I needed to get started. The one with the pink clothespin is Flamingo Feather Celosia and the other is Ruby Parfait Celosia. I got the seeds from Snake River Seed Cooperative in southern Idaho. They are my go-to seed suppliers, esp for Idaho native plants.

Snake River Seed Cooperative
Our seeds are sourced from over 50 family farmers around the Intermountain West. Adapting seeds to our region…snakeriverseeds.com

Tho, last year I started some celosias and ended up with this:

Not what I was expecting (photo by author)

Instead of this:

The Celosia I was expecting (photo by author)

I think some amaranth seeds got mixed in as this wasn’t what I expected it to grow into. To be fair, both are from the same family, I just wasn’t expecting that particular variety. I REALLY wasn’t expecting it in the flower box that I have earmarked for much smaller plants.

Possibly Amaranth Towering Beauty? Still not sure (photo by author)

I did harvest the seeds for this and I will get those started soon. Not sure where I will plant them, but these would look good in my main flower bed and in some pots around the yard.

Speaking of flower beds, I finally was able to identify some seedlings that came up in one corner of my big flower bed. Sunflowers:

Raised flower bed made from white concrete bricks and long flower boxes with rises in the center and scattered about, with one corner with small sunflower seedlings. The flower boxes are planted with Grape Hyacinth flowwers.
photo by author

My plant ID app kept saying these were watermelons, but there are enough leaves now for a proper ID. I suspected they were sunflowers, I had a couple of different varieties in that corner and the birds were very happy, so I suspect there were a lot of dropped seeds.

I spent a few minutes yesterday before the rain rolled in and thinned them out some. I will thin more out later. I may look at potting up some and see about giving them away.

I also have quite a few coming up in the small raised bed I have decided will be for sunflowers:

Square raised flower bed made from long white concrete bricks stacked up that are falling away from the soil that has weeds and sunflower seedlings growing it is and a tall metal garden trellis across the corner on the upper left of the bed.
My rather sad-looking raised bed (photo by author)

Tomorrow is supposed to be a nice day, so I will be rebuilding this bed and doing some serious weeding and thinning. I also need to transplant the iris that I missed last year. I will most likely put the iris, along with the ones in one of my tire planters into pots for the year. I have enough in my big beds. I need to make sure I have room for the tulips and daffs I will be getting from a friend.

I would love to expand this bed, but I don’t have any more bricks, so if I do I will have to forage for something else I can use. But that is a plan for the future.

So all in all, not bad so far. Just have to remember to pace myself and keep learning more patience. It will get there in the end. I am hoping by next year my flower beds will be more or less self-sustaining and I only have to start new plants for other spaces as I make them and share them with friends.

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