Weekly Gardening Thread (Soil Structure Part 1) Vol. 9, March 2, 2012

Friday, March 2, 2012 | JustaDumbBlonde

[JustaDumbBlonde]

That’s funny too. :)

[rightly_dividing]

Next year I am planning on building a new seedling incubator, version 2.0. That will allow us to sprout 4 Jiffy trays of veggies and 4 trays of flowers in Jan. My wife wants to line a walkway with Impatiens much like the bed of vincas that you pictured, but I don't know if we can sprout enough of them.

Your home, flower beds and gardens are so beautiful that I could not begin to make suggestions to improve on what you have already done.

[afraidfortherepublic]

The problem with living in Wisconsin is that much of what you do has to be re-done each spring. That is good and bad. The good side is that you get to change plants and colors each year. The bad side is that it is a lot of work and expense.

Talk to tubebender about sprouting lots of impatiens. He and Mrs. Bender truly incubate and produce a prodigeous amount of impatiens for their house and their church.

On those vincas, my daughter wrote:

That's it! I first starting buying it at Secor Farms at a small family owned pumkin and annual farm (the last farm in Mahwah) around the corner from my house in Mahwah. They were the only thing that thrived in the pots on the steps of my sunny front porch.

It took me a couple of years to find someone here that sells it. Mr. Sokowloski has 7 or 8 greenhouses on his property on Grooms Road. He and his son run the nusery and he lives in the house at the front. He helps me out each spring because I start looking for it earlier than he puts it out for sale, but if I wait too long I don't have my pick of colors. So we have to go by the tags ..which aren't always accurate. Tammy plants them in South Carolina because it is very drought tolerant.

The only year they didn't last into October was this past summer when we had the remnants of a hurricane and the wind just about ripped them out of the pots and tore off quite a few branches. They were still alive, but didn't look very pretty

I have to laugh about this because this is NOT my daughter who is famed as a gardener. But, her yard always looks nice, and I see that she does put a lot of thought into it. The "Tammy" she refers to is my DIL in SC. So, here we are using the same plant in two disparate climates -- NY and SC. I've always been leery of those New Guinea Impatiens because I never thought they'd survive on my front porch.

[tubebender]

Isn’t New Guinea a few miles south of the north pole? I asked Lady Bender to help you and her response was >I ain’t ever birthed no flowers in Wisconsin Mr Bender<

[afraidfortherepublic]

It’s Mrs. Rightly_Dividing who needs help. They want to grow lots and lots of impatiens from scratch in the Houston area.Quite a different climate from Humboldt.

I have never had good luck with any kind of impatiens. I have neighbors who can bring a few seedlings home from the garden center and they have carpets of color for the rest of the season. I can buy flats of impatiens, plant them 6 in. apart, and they’ll still be 6 in. apart in September. Just nothing.

[rightly_dividing]

Impatiens are popular in Mobile and do quite well as long as they are not in the hot sun. We tried them on our west facing porch, but they would not take the afternoon sun. The vincas, on the other hand, did well, so we planted a lot of vincas.

[tubebender]

Lady Bender has great success with these 10 hole grow bags here and over at the church. I think I have posted photos them in full bloom...

[fanfan]

Same here!