Happenings

Well we have returned to cold weather after a week or so of -/+ 5C or so. Too warm for this time of year as many plants were left with root areas exposed. Thankfully I do not see any early bud break taking place. This would have caused a disaster in terms of new growth this spring. There still could be some winter kill because of the light snow cover.
This past week I began setting seed of Clematis in plastic baggies with dampened vermiculite. There are about 20 baggies now waiting for seeds to germinate. Some went into the refrigerator for their preliminary cold treatment.
There were also about 15 pots of lily seeds set to germinate. These are from seeds received from a Polish gardener, a local gardener, and our own collection. Could be many lilies if they germinate well.

Some pictures from recent days.
Cuttings  of Streptocarpella "Concord Blue"

 The birds have been busy eating black sunflowers.

Clematis seed heads.

Black and white visitor.

Blue is the color of this snow storm.

In all directions!

A path to nowhere - the drift at the end of the trees was to deep to blow and I ran out of gas besides.

Siberian Crabapple - great winter color.

A surprise visitor

Well one Clematis in the terrarium is blooming and another one is starting. The first is a Clematis crispa seedling and the second is a Clematis cirrhosa seedling. But today we found a lost critter who has now joined the terrarium family and will stay for the time being. We need to figure out how/what to feed this little guy as he sure won't get live mice in our house! Too cold to put him back outside as well. We are not sure how it came into the house but we found it in the porch on the way to the basement. A common Garter Snake.

New Year - let the planning begin

Just a little eye candy before we get into some other planning comments. This is a Clematis crispa seedling growing in a terrarium along with a Clematis cirrhosa seedling which will also bloom very soon. Very exciting for January to have some nice fresh blossoms. The crispa is blooming for the second time over Christmas. These are both from seed started in 2008. The C. crispa is from a seed packet of mixed small flowered Clematis from the British Clematis Society and the C. cirrhosa is from a Clematis friend in Japan. I have another 8 or 10
C. cirrhosa in a greenhouse for the winter as they are not hardy in our climate. The "Clematis on the Web" site is a great place to get information about Clematis and is probably the defining authority in most cases. I even have a picture on one of the variety pages. Clematis Sally Cadge did so well for us here and I made some photos available to the webmaster.
I have a number of lots of seed to start and will post the list when I get to germinating and planting.

I also got some cuttings of Streptocarpella "Concord Blue" started. Very easy in coir pellets or better yet in peat pellets. The coir (coconut husk) needs a very good soaking to hold water to start. As you can see they root easily as this is just a couple of weeks. I also tried some in water but so far they are unsuccessful. Time to pot up the rooted ones today.

The plant room needs cleaning up and then the planting begins.
First planting will include Edible Blue Honeysuckles of which there are 10-12 types.

Then there are a number of lily seeds to start as well as daylilies. This is always interesting as the daylilies require a good soak to break the seed coat.

And who knows what else may need to start soon!

We will have a wedding from our family this spring so it would be nice to get as many plants started as I can.