February Gardening - Floral and Vegetable

 Here's a mid-February post about the gardening activities we've been enjoying this month.  We started a few seeds towards the end of January - those that say on the package to start indoors 6-8 weeks before the last expected frost. All have now been transplanted into 2" pots. Those included some Butterfly Weed (the taller ones in the picture below), some Salvias, ornamental peppers, early jalapenos, and Big Bertha bell peppers.  The last four are all out in the greenhouse now.  There was not enough room under the lights for everything so some of each variety spent some time in a southern window.  Those that were kept under the lights did noticeably better!

The taller plants to the front of this picture are marigolds that were planted about 7-8 days ago.  They came up in three days and are reaching too much for the light now.  I'm going to lower the lights before today is done!

Not in the picture are four flats of six packs of another variety of marigolds, two varieties of zinnias, and some pickling cucumbers!

Starting seedlings in the house with supplemental heat (a pad) and light.

Some seedlings just moved from the house where they were started to the greenhouse

Some of the plants over-wintered in the greenhouse

The bougainvillea - enjoying the greenhouse

An experiment - some peppers (only four) into a cold frame in mid-Feb

  A couple years ago I used a small frame structure covered with plastic to start seeds.  I've made it into a temporary cold frame now and have put a few peppers in it to see how they'll do.  I've got extras so this will be a good experiment.

First plants into the garden (purchased plants)

 Yesterday I was at the co-op/feed store in Quitman and bought six four packs of some of the cold weather plants - lettuce, spinach, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and cauliflower.  They are now in a raised bed that I prepared several weeks ago.

Rose of Sharon

daylillies

I've also started in the greenhouse some Rose of Sharon trees from cuttings, some ferns, sweet potato vines, a few succulents, a tray of daylillies, and a few other plants.

  
Here's a detail from one of the pictures above and it's still hard to see the subject but between the little heater and the reddish pots is Shadow!  She loves it in the greenhouse and would stay there all day every day if I would let her - except when she got hungry enough to go hunting!