I'm itching to start some seeds. Yesterday I ran across an internet article that suggested mid-February as a good time to start tomatoes. I could probably start broccoli and cabbage now, but my "incubator" is full of trauma patients:
My sweet sister-in-law gave me these plants (a cyclamen and a gerbera daisy) for my birthday, back in the summer. They were both in bloom at the time. I set them on the back porch where I could see them, expecting that they would eventually poop out and need better growing conditions to bloom again, but they continued to thrive and kept blooming their heads off. I brought them inside around Thanksgiving and put them under the grow light, 12 hours each day. They both bloomed again, but then they started looking puny. The grow light may have been too close, and I might have let them get too dry between waterings, once or twice.
I would like to keep these guys alive, but don't really know what to do with them. The cyclamen needs to go dormant, but I know myself; if I take that pot to the utility room, where it's dark most of the time, I will forget about it. The daisy will need more light than I can give it on a windowsill, but it's gotta vacate the incubator so I can plant vegetable seeds.
Or should I try to sprout the vegetables in the cold frame, which is still sitting empty in the middle of the back yard? My sister might know.
I case you're wondering, the dead stick in the murky vase between the cyclamen and the gerbera is a rosebush cutting I tried (unsuccessfully) to root. Parts of the stem stayed green for a long time and I kept hoping . . . alas, it now looks dead all the way up. That plastic bag in the front contains a bowl full of dirt that has seen violet seeds, gerbera daisy seeds, hardy hibiscus seeds, none of which ever sprouted. What did sprout was some sort of funky green moss and about a million gnats. I keep smashing gnats through the plastic bag (I dare not open it!), but they keep coming.
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