Seed starting: it's alive!

Rescued daffodils and hyacinth

The gas lines in our street are being replaced and my bulbs along the front fence have suffered a little damage, so a few blooms had to come inside.

Seed starting is an anxious business, I probably don't have the temperament for it. The poppy seeds, which had sat in my fridge for years and I planted a few only because I had room, sprouted within a week. I had to trim a few out with scissors. Now some of the blue columbine has leaves and the red (out of the picture) is just starting to sprout. No sign of the lavender yet, it is supposed to be hard to grow from seed.

Sprouting!

The top picture is the set of starts that was pre-chilled in the fridge for three weeks. The bottom set had the seeds in the fridge, but not in the dirt. They seem to be 4-5 days behind, so there was some benefit to the fridge time - but maybe not enough to make up for all the space it takes.

I have more seeds arriving this week, some interesting varieties of catmint, calamint and veronica to go in the rose garden. I'll try starting some indoors and direct sow seeds too. Seeds are cheap so if they don't work well, I'll just buy plants later. The hard part is resisting buying a lot of plants now!

Amaryllis and spider plants

Although I don't normally start seeds indoors, I do have a collection of house plants. These are baby amaryllis plants that came off of a bulb that I've had in the kitchen for many years. Also, my spider plants are busy multiplying.