Wildernest - Featured in the (February 29th, 2012) Mineola Monitor Spring Lawn & Garden Section!

"Master Gardener Wields Light Touch on Natural Masterpiece" - What's not to like about that headline!  This lady knows a lot of adjectives!  After reading the article I had to go walk the trail again to see what she saw!  I'm really happy with the write up - it touches on most all of our favorite outdoor things about our home. Five nice color pictures too.  (If you double click the pictures you can read it.)

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! 

A break from vacation posts for one about pansies in the greenhouse

One of our Master Gardener projects is working with the special needs students in the greenhouse we built for them last year. They grow begonias in the spring and pansies in the fall. This week when I was picking up the pansy plugs I asked the grower if he would be open to selling a flat to me for my own use. I told him about my new little greenhouse and that I'd like to try some there. So he sold me a flat.

Now pansy plugs are very small (thimble size), see the top photo and a flat has 288 plants. So, after working with the kids planting theirs, I came home and started planting mine. I had to use the little four inch pots that I've been accumulating and they all had to be washed in a bleach solution before using them. I had about 300 pots. So now the table side of the greenhouse is filled with 288 pansies and they're going to require daily care for the next six weeks or so. It's going to be an interesting experiment. When something goes wrong in a larger project like this the loss is a bigger loss - so I'll be watching all of the variables to be sure they are all correct. Mine greenhouse has a bit too much shade this time of year so that could be a problem.

It's looking and feeling like Spring

. . . except for those darn winds! We've got a bunch of viola's in the flower garden that have been with us all winter - the yellow flowers in the picture - and they are happy now with the coldest weather behind us. Our favorite early spring shrub is the other yellow in the picture. It's a Lime Mound Spirea and later it will be a lime color but first it's yellow. I'm moving a few other things out of the greenhouse and into their assigned spaces. And we saw our first hummingbird yesterday. A male Ruby Throat stopped at the feeder for a few minutes. Non-gardening tasks are still centered on the chapel. It now has sheetrock and I'll finish the taping tomorrow. I spent several hours working in the greenhouse this morning and have decided that I'm too tired to do any more work this Sunday! One more thing - how do you like the new blog template?