Fall Grow For Spring Flowers Zone 9 Options

[Foyle]

The windy season is upon my friend as well. The meteorologist also spoofed when he said we would have high's in the 70's for the next 10 days or so.It's been up in the 80's already. I believe Oblomovka has the answer, at least for this fall's planting. My friend noticed the 4 plants he has in small containers grown strictly outdoors, which are 60 days younger than the raised bed are ready to bloom as well(he's assuming being rootbound is what expedited bolting). I suppose the theory is the same as corn or what have you, they have more strength in numbers to a certain extent since the plants prop and shield each other in strong winds. For the time being, has your neighbor considered adjustable wire cages, as is used for tomatoes? These, or just sections of fencing could be gently wrapped around the plants(very non-invasive)I suppose it would be superior to staking.

Sorry to hear about the warm winds : ( - best of luck and hopes for some more cool weather action - the el nino year is making that somewhat iffy.

Great insight on the planting in pots solution - if the neighbor ever lucks into a bunch of decent flower pots he might consider that as an alternative.

He thought about the wire cage tomato plant option - maybe next season - and it would beat the present solution which is propping plants up with well placed bricks or rocks and stringing leaning plants to stronger plants which aren't leaning.

Of course, the best solution would be to just grow these flowers in a more conducive growth zone or about 1500 feet higher up - LOL!

-Foyle

[poppybgood]

My friend is thinking of hitting discount stores after the spring planting craze is past in search of discounted clay or plastic containers. He noticed some clay pots last year outside of the general of dollar stores for $.50 each. These were a great buy considering the exact same pots were $1.27 each at the always low prices place. According to my friend's experience with this fall and winter's windowsill plants, plus the 4 outdoor potted plants, all have bloomed or are beginning to bloom far sooner than those which have been in the ground much longer. He's in zone 8b, where winter temps are generally lower than in zone 9. He says he could just imagine what could be done in containers during winter in zone 9 by utilizing indoor lighting, then moving outdoors once bolting has commenced.

[oblomovka]

I've completely forgot about quantities of plants that you are talking about. Stringing the plants to few broken hockey sticks is may be the simplest way. To do such thing with my plants I'd have to be an owner of ice hockey team and spend three weeks in garden. The ideas I wrote (different spacing etc.)could work for larger garden although not in this season. Last season I had some overwintering plants from September they came into full bloom in the beginning of June about a month earlier than the plants sown in spring. They were also a bit taller with more pods. This year none overwintering plant survived extremely cold winter.
All seem much easier here, one just throw the seeds around and waits, maybe add some nutrition if he wants something more than just flowers.

[Foyle]

Another plant has identified itself as being Danish Flag as suspected - bushy sucker like the first one - still one other plant and possibly two as bushy or close to - no flowers from them yet but hopefully we'll see soon!

Pretty pretty!!!

Here's the flower from D-Flag plant #2 - Enjoy!


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-Foyle

This post has been edited by Foyle: Apr 15 2010, 06:59 PM

[poppybgood]

Great pics!! Kudos to the neighbor. My friend will have to order a pack of Flags for next year.

[Foyle]

Any good tips on harvesting the D-Flag seed in my neighbor's garden?

Right now he's of a mind to wait until the seed pods go brown, snip them with their stem, letting them dry out in a paper bag, and then opening the pods to remove their seed - something about letting the seed dry or "cure" on paper.

Any do's or don'ts to keep in mind? He's never tried it before - just going on what he thinks he might have read at some point.

-Foyle

[poppybgood]

My friend doesn't have any advice to offer Foyle, but he's wondering the same thing. My friend was able to allow a few individuals several years ago to dry on the stalk due to a freakishly dry summer in his area. As we both know, however, we can't count on this being the case for this year. Apologies for being of no help, but he's curious as well as to what level of maturation the seed pods have to be before harvesting in order to yield good viable seeds.

[Foyle]

After doing some reading it seems the way to go about it is to either let the seed pods dry on the plant - removing once the garden is cleared or snipped from the plant as the seed pod starts to change from green to brown.

Then, allow the seed pod to dry until hard and one can hear the seeds rattling around inside and either removing the seeds from the seed pod through the vents - providing there are open vents - or drilling through the top and pouring them out.

Once out, the seeds are layed out on paper and allowed to dry for a couple days, then stored normally (somewhere dark, cool, and dry).

That said, last year when my neighbor was experimenting with an indoor botanical endeavor, he opened up a still green seed pod about two weeks after it had flowered and dropped a few seeds down into the dirt and they sprouted quite handily - standard moist dirt under 12/12 lights - started sprouting in about a week's time.

One guesses the reason for drying before storage is to minimize potential moisture/mold/fungus drama.

What might happen this time around is the seed pods with stem would be snipped in a few weeks or when they start showing signs of going brown and hanging them somewhere dry to allow for drying and then remove the seeds, sifting through a screen to catch any chaff, and go from there with drying and storing.

He never bothered saving the McC seed since he has an almost full bottle of them in his kitchen spice rack - not to mention what can be found at the corner grocery - so harvesting seed is uncharted waters, basically.

-Foyle

[the blueridge_bandit]

wow, very nice.

i believe my buddy maybe started his too late after seeing this, but he didn't have the seeds until december. his are still very small and may need a good month before good flowers appear. hope he didn't fubar this season.

good job!

[Foyle]

Another welcome surprise!

As mentioned earlier, the initial seedings were culinary plus come ornamentals from seed purveyors which experienced a setback early on when the lid to the peat pellet tray was left on too long and a green mold began to grow. Some sprouts didn't make it while others did and re-seedings were begun soon after using the McGourm Culinary - but no track was purposefully kept as to which seeds were what.

Four Danish Flag plants have made their presence known and lo, and behold - a black poppy of sorts which I think the neighbor called "Black Cloud."

One plant (thus far - still three or four plants which haven't flowered yet(!). has multiples, stands about 5 feet from dirt to flower, and is not particularly bushy like the Danish Flags are.

Here's the show:


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Note: the 3rd shot is a combination of a really long lens and flash shooting from a good distance away, angled to tuck the flower's shadow on the building behind away, and with the real shallow depth of field, fogging everything in the foreground and background - including the clear plastic garden windscreen in the foreground, lower left of the flower.

-Foyle

[poppybgood]

Nice color to those and great pics once again. They would most certainly make a nice hybrid with McGourms.

[Foyle]

Nice color to those and great pics once again. They would most certainly make a nice hybrid with McGourms.

That's kind of the hope - there's definitely been bumble bees around and the seeds from the D Flags and this "Black Cloud" will likely be harvested - with some luck, maybe there will be some interesting results sometime down the line.

-Foyle

[the blueridge_bandit]

what a beautiful velvety color! hope my friend gets one of those.

[beaker]

Great pics Foyle! You have the "grow show" going on this year for sure ! I like the "Black Cloud" name for the dark poppy. I can think of a few that would fit pretty good also......."Death Star", "Death Poppy", "Black Beauty", "New moon Bloom", "Purple Haze",...........Alright, enough now. Anyway, your neighbor has a dandy green thumb! That's one bloom I'd like to preserve in lucite, if it could be done. I remember preserving 4-leaf clovers, flowers, and other natural stuff back in science class in jr. high a long, long, time ago.

[Foyle]

The preserving in lucite sounds like a neat idea - I think a mini-p as mayba a pendant - anything bigger would just be a paper weight, I guess.

The green thumbiness - that's kind and I'll pass it along. His gardening knowledge was pretty much limited to backyard tomatoes and roses and cutting the lawn and the stretch of building he wanted to do something with turned out to be a good spot for flowers.

Beyond that, it's really simple: decent dirt, compost, good drainage, care with the sprouts, regular watering, good sunlight, some organic ferts for vegging with some bloom enhancer thrown towards the last month of the veg, AND THAT'S IT!

This year, unlike the previous two seasonal garden grows, he mixed in I guess around 10-20 percent sand and perlite with the dirt before he laid it down on top of the compost and that seems to have been very helpful in terms of the plants as a whole being bigger, stronger, more resilient to wind, and all the plants have more flowers this season that last - thinking last year the max number of bolts was maybe four or five but this year the average seems to be around eight or nine and a couple plants reached a dozen(!). Seed pods seem generally larger this year, too - there's several about the size of a decent lemon, I'd say.

Also to be considered was the early planting and the as yet unknown reason why they took so long to start flowering this time around - it was a good, long time for the plants to develop what I can only imagine to be monster root systems.

Presently there's three plants left I think, which have yet to show a flower - all doing fine - stretched out - two of them bolting - just no idea what the flowers will be. There were several different ornamentals in this year's attempt including the D-Flags and the Black Cloud (another Black Cloud bolt is about to pop, as well) so we're oping for one, two, or even three flower surprises before all's said and done. More as it comes.

-Foyle