Chitting Runner Beans for our Bean Tower!

About a month ago I built the kids this teepee structure from various tree limbs/cut young trees that we had piling up behind the back yard. Inspired by pictures on Pintrest, I'm going to try and grow beans up the poles so that it will become a little hideaway for them to play in while I'm gardening (and maybe they will even get curious enough to pick a fresh bean pod and eat it!) I have fond memories of my mother's vegetable garden, sitting on the edge of raised beds, plucking fresh veggies and eating them right off the vine. I credit that experience for why I love vegetables so much. My mother is amused by my fond memories- she swears all she remembers is me whining about how hot/sunny/cold/icky it was to be outside and how much I wanted to be back inside!

Of course, every bean seed in my stash is a bush-type not suited for reaching to these kinds of heights, so I'll be trying something new this year- scarlet runner beans.  To get a jump start, I "chitted" them by soaking them overnight until they swelled and then putting them in a damp paper towel in a plastic bag for two days until I saw little white roots:

You have to handle them very carefully, because that root can break off easily and then the chances of it turning into a plant are slim. I piled up compost around the base of the teepee structure and placed one bean per pole. Unlike what the picture implies, I did plant them with the root going down into the spoil, I promise!

Because this is going to be the kids' corner of the garden, I also added some kid-friendly flowers: sunflowers! I had a bunch of old packets, so I don't even know if any of these will germinate, but I mixed them together and sprinkled them around the outside of the teepee. Then I covered the beans and sunflower seeds with about an inch of compost and watered it all in. Now the worst part- waiting :)

A peek at how the rest of my garden is doing- along the outside of the chainlink fence that keeps my labrador out of my garden are a row of snap peas, guarded by a row of yellow onions, and finally in the bottom there is some spinach. If I get enough for one family meal I will be happy!

Germination Experiment #2- Lavender

Update on the Canna Lilies: Apparently just because it isn't below freezing outside doesn't mean that they can handle chilly temps when they are that young. Every last one of my South Pacific canna lily seedlings got root rot, even though I never left them outside at any temperatures below 40F. My "yellow" cannas are still alive, though haven't grown much in the past month. I'm thinking that I just started them too soon. That's what I get for trusting weather advice from a groundhog, huh? I can't remember the last time we had such a chilly spring! But it looks like things are slowly warming up and at least the freezing temps should be behind us, so I've begun the painstaking process of hardening off some of my seedlings. Wish I could wait till it was a bit warmer, but they've outgrown their current containers and I just don't have the indoor space to transplant them into larger containers. Fingers crossed that they fare better than the canna seedlings!

And now for germination experiment #2 of 2013- growing lavender from seed. I've done it before, but that was in college when I had use of the horticulture department's greenhouse with intermittent mist system, and even then I had at best marginal success. Lavender had been one of those plants that always makes me want to tear my hair out- it isn't supposed to be *that* hard to grow, but somehow I've managed to kill so many lavender plants that I've lost count. I've balanced soil pH, built raised beds for better drainage, talked to the owner of a lavender farm and followed her advice to the letter, but still no success.

So why am I still trying? Maybe I have an Edison complex and I'm determined to make the light bulb work, I'm not sure, but I love lavender so much that I cannot give up the dream of having it bloom in my own garden. So I'm growing them from seed because it is less financial investment. Some of these seeds are very old, received in trades from other gardeners on the internet years ago, and others are commercial seed bought this year. We'll see what happens.

First of all, they take a while to germinate. Possibly as long as a month, which in my book is a long time to keep a pot at the perfect temperature, moisture level, and mold-free conditions that are optimal for germination. I had some room in my Park Seed Bio-Dome and planted 12 seeds, of which one germinated very quickly, and at now 2 months later I have yet to see signs of the other 11 so I'm gonna assume they aren't going to happen. Still, one seedling is better than none!

Next was the little pot below- I wanted to try stratifying lavender, which I have read can increase germination rates, so I planted these seeds in a 3" peat pot, which I then put in a plastic baggie and dropped in my bottom fridge drawer. Less than a week later I was getting something out of that drawer when I noticed sprouts! I pulled it out and put it on a sunny window sill, and it seems to be doing well.

Encouraged by this success, I expanded this operation by stratifying 4 different types of lavender seed in zip-top bags filled with moist vermiculite. I left them in the fridge for ~5 weeks, during which none of them sprouted. Then I took them out of the cold and in my rush to head out of town for Easter weekend didn't have time to pot them up, so I tossed them in a kitchen cabinet and nearly forgot about them. A week later I remembered them and pulled them out to find that they were sprouting in the bag!

 

Potting up seedlings that tiny is tricky business because they are very fragile. It would have been much better to pot up the seeds when they first came out of the fridge. Plus in that dark cabinet they got a big "leggy", but I did my best transferring them to 3" peat pots. I pilled in the rest of the vermiculite around the seedlings just in case there were un-germinated seeds still hiding in there.

 

After misting the surface generously I put plastic baggie tents over them and moved them to a sunny window. Hopefully they will do well! I will try to update their progress in a couple of weeks.



Canna Lilies from Seed

This year's garden experiment (well, one of many experiments) is growing Canna lilies from seeds. I didn't expect much success, so now that things are looking really good I wish that I had taken more pictures of the earlier steps in the process. It was incredibly easy and I have been told that it may flower the first year from seed, so fingers crossed!

First, I obtained seeds from 2 sources. From Park Seed, "Canna South Pacific Scarlet" which won a 2013 All-America Selections Flower Award and is very pretty :) Picture from Park Seed's website: 

The packet came with 6 seeds that had been pre-scarified (a small hole had been drilled through the outer shell to help water enter). I poured boiling water over them and let them soak for a few days, changing the water when it got cloudy. Then on Valentine's Day I planted them 3 seeds to a 3" peat pot with my homemade seed starting mixture (1 part perlite/ 1 part vermiculite/ 2 parts peat moss, which is acidic, so I added a little baking soda to the wet mixture until my pH meter read neutral. Little know fact- my day job is teaching chemistry at the local college!). Seedlings popped up within a few days and grew very quickly. I had 5/6 germinate, which is pretty good. I didn't want to deal with their roots becoming too intertwined so I separated them into individual 5" peat pots today, less than 4 weeks after sowing the seeds:

After watering them in I left them in a tub on my porch- these babies have been inside until now, but I don't have room inside for those larger pots so they are going to have to harden off earlier than planned. My porch is a pretty nice place for this- it is south-facing so it gets lots of sun during the day to warm up the concrete, which acts as a heat sink that radiates the heat during the night, keeping it a bit warmer than the garden.  Plus a large Carolina Jessamine vine gives it enough speckled shade that the seedlings won't get scorched their first few weeks out (I hope!). We are close to our average frost date of March 15, but my home has been known to get light frosts into the first week or so of April (which I know is nothing to complain about, compared to Northern gardens!) so I will have to keep a close eye on them and cover them up if it looks like frost. I hope they do well- I am looking forward to those big red flowers attracting hummingbirds to my garden this summer!

The second set of seeds came from ebay, at the advantage of it being 1/5 the cost of Park Seed but the disadvantage that I have no idea what the cultivar is. The listing simply said "Canna indica- Yellow" but the picture looked exactly like Canna x generalis 'Cleopatra' which is on my wish list. Here's hoping they turn out nice! These didn't come pre-scarified, so I did that myself by rubbing them against a nail file until I saw a bit of the white undercoat. Soaked them in water for maybe 2-3 days until most of they swelled with water, and planted them in 3" peat pots. Again I had 5 out of 6 seeds germinate, so maybe that's a trend?

Here they are only 2 weeks after planting the seeds. I kept the pots in a gallon ziploc bag for the first week so that they didn't dry out during germination.  I love that peat pots are biodegradable but hate the way they are so hygroscopic that they suck moisture right out of the potting mix. Those are lemon balm seedlings next to them in the picture, btw. Canna lilies are hardy in my zone (7b), but zones 7a or higher would probably want to lift the bulbs during the winter. I have had some clumps growing in my back yard for 5 years now without any winter protection and they haven't seemed to suffer from the neglect yet!

 Here's hoping my canna lilies keep growing fast! So, what do you think?  A pretty easy way to add tropical flowers to your garden, and much cheaper than buying bulbs or potted plants. Can't wait until spring is officially here! It was in the mid-60's F today but I know that with our Carolina springs, that won't last. Anyone else have luck growing canna lilies from seed?