I guess the crinums are hooked on heat and humidity.They are no care plants where they are happy and store lots of water in their huge bulbs, but then need a good wetting.

I was overly optimistic last February and tried to make a dent in my overfilled seed box. I put a bunch of stuff in damp paper towels, placed inside plastic bags (ala Deno method) and put them in a new box :) in the fridge.

Ok so I never did get around to checking them during the spring... or summer or fall.. and finally opened the box yesterday. There were plenty of things which sprouted and died inside the baggies, plenty which did nothing, but believe it or not there was one perfectly sprouted rose seedling and a little hellebore seedling which looks like it might make it. Who would think that after nearly a year of neglect in the fridge anything could survive? I'm lucky if I can get salad greens to stay fresh for more than a few days.

Just for the record these were in the garage fridge, more of a beer and leftover pizza fridge, and not the kitchen refrigerator. I've been banned from the house fridge and it has far fewer science experiments going on in there.

I have a soft spot for some of the beautiful, blowsy, hybrid tulips and buy a few for my pots every year. My DH gets fed up with me commandeering the salad drawer in the fridge for 8 weeks each autumn. Duh, what else would it be used for in the autumn?

However my favourite tulips are Tulipa cluisiana and all of it's varieties which come back without any fuss every spring. They are easily the best "plant and forget" ones for me.

Daisy

have you grown t.batalini, Daisy. Apart from my beloved t.sprengeri, these are definitely my favourites and well adapted for pot culture. I have a lot of the tiny hageri, humilis and whitallii species which grow amongst the dianthus but the batalini has the most lovely foliage as well as beautiful blooms. I will find my tulip addiction a hard one to give up on.

Love the lady tulips as well...in fact, apart from the hideous parrots and those weird fringed ones, I have yet to see a tulip I could not love.

I keep seeing this title, but I have hundreds (it's a completely blank slate house). So I'll narrow it down and share my sadness :( I received 10 Geum 'Blazing Sunset' seeds, and all ten germinated. My cat knocked down the planter. I went ahead and transplanted them into their new homes. Wish they'd make it! Boring as they may seem to some, I'm dying to see them. I've not grown Geum yet, not in two decades. I'd love to hear about your companion plantings sometime. Carry on!

Aaargh - another victim of rampaging feline affliction.The prognosis is grim, no cure for chronic beasting.

Still, geums are resilient - not one of those niminy-piminy types which wilts if you give them a hard stare so don't give up on them. Well worth it too - quite a long bloom period if you deadhead and that hit of red is really enlivening - jewel-like with lush foliage to offset the scarlet petals - I certainly look forward to the chiloense geums after the daintier charms of the earlier g.avens/g,rivale types. I have not grown (but would love to) the native g.trifolium (sp?), aka prairie smoke. Note to self - seed search!

Camps,I grew T. batalini in Surrey. I agree it is a lovely tulip, I haven't tried it here yet. I did grow T. humilis, but it dwindled and disappeared after a few years. I should grow T. saxitalis, as it grows wild here, so it should do well.

rob33, I am also a geum lover. They may be common, but then so am I.

I am not able to grow a lot of herbaceous plants as most of them prefer a more temperate climate, so I am very fond of those that are happy here. The chiloense geums certainly are. I am looking forward to seeing them this year, as this will be their third year and I missed them completely last year, as I was laid up from April to September with a broken leg, plus complications.

I can't wait for spring.

Daisy

Would have thought g.coccineum 'borisii' (or is it geum x borisii )might do well, also Daisy. I have/had a clump in my gravel garden but I also lost a season last year (but only to a lucrative unturndownable work contract) and cannot see their evergreen leaves so may have succumbed to a wet winter and draggled foliage.

Those Tulipa cluisiana are lovely with or without the blue blooming plants in the background.

Tulipa saxatilis still going and increasing here after 8 years and not dwindling away. I can't think of another plant that would complement its naturally garish combo of colors and, luckily, not much else blooms in its vicinity when it does, so I enjoy that clump as a sort of "eye-catching", stand-alone event every year. Conventional tulips are non-starters here.

Dianthus monspessulanus is my only seed project this year, from seed saved from two plants (had white flowers, hoping they come true) purchased last year. The bloom period was practically all summer, the scent mesmerizing, and the long wands of blooms charming.

The Geum are doing fine! Whew. My favorite plant seeds came yesterday, so I will be germinating (among many others!), Achillea ptarmica, 'The Pearl' this week. If you don't know about it, it's a really lovely as a cut flower and is so carefree. It is not the typical "flat head" yarrow. I use it instead of baby's breath, and to divide the plant, I slice it with a shovel and plop the new clump in a hole--it's so robust, it keeps right on growing!

Hooray - (although not strictly a herbaceous perennial) - styrax japonicus, aka Japanese snowbells. Two words guaranteed to cause anxiety for seed sowers - 'double dormancy'...but a summer sowing gave them the necessary warm, then cold stratification. Campanula lactiflora are also up this week - a teeny tiny seed for an enormous ramping plant. Still waiting on a few tree seedlings, notably Atlas Cedar, symplocus paniculatus (sapphire berry) and toona sinensis. Primulas germinating like cress including some auriculas I needed to add some extra oomph to my current collection, which all appear to be on the blue and lilac end of the spectrum.

On the seed front it's all volunteers this year. Snow cover on damp soil means there's a bumper crop this year. The usual suspects, rudbeckias, echinacea, hesperis, lunaria-I'm working on increasing the variegated foliage with white flowers- poppies-opium, spanish and cambrica-eryngiums, salvias of all sorts, linum flavum-on the verge of being a weed-cheiranthus, a native california larkspur which is in fact too enthusiastic, but what a wonderful cloud of blue for weeks and weeks, hellebores. Well, as you can see, quite a lot. Less common, for me, delphiniums, peonies. Quite a few lupins but I believe they revert to garden of eden so we shall see.

All of the little bulbs increase wildly in my garden which is fine with me. There are a few unsightly weeks in May when the foliage is drying and the perennials haven't yet covered them, but Feb. colour is certainly worth it. Surprisingly, endymion hispanica, which people curse as a weed, is as mild as milk for me, I'd actually appreciate a little more aggression.

Nice haul, catkin! I actually went through the trouble of pricking out seedlings from my wintersown containers this year so I have an insane number of flats. Oh what fun! What are you most excited about germinating?

Why is it so hard for us to throw away any seedling when we have masses of them. Is it because gardeners are hoarders in their heart. I like to say that it is because we are naturally thrifty and unwasteful, and we hate throwing away the potential of any beauty. But, sheesh, that is a whole yardful of whatever. I have a whole bunch of wild yellow cleome that I collected in a canyon in Utah and I am experimenting with it in all sorts of corners but I doubt I will need 200 yellow cleomes or 100 snake broom weed from New Mexico. Those are still TINY and slow growing. I did transfer the sprouted New mexican milkweed successfully.

It actually boggles my mind, so after pricking out what I want I just scoot the containers down to the end of our driveway with a free sign on them, by the end of the day they're all gone, out of sight, out of mind and a big sigh of relieve from me :).

Annette

Oooh yes, this is my tactic too, Annette - although I leave mine at the entrance to the allotments. I also find that as soon as seedlings are actually put in the ground, it is a case of 'out of sight, out of mind' (so mine are microscopic when they get planted)..

Reading the start of this thread, I am horrified to remember that my childhood friend's parents used to take us to gather primroses in the woods - roots and all. I'll probably be blackballed now.

Ah - different times though. As it happens though, the first lot of primroses I grew are already self-seeding. These little plants will, if given the chance, spread to colonise anywhere there is damp soil...they are precocious and willing. I think the spring primrose expedition was a part of quite a few childhoods but, like bluebells, these modest harbingers of spring have an innate survival mechanism - once in place, they rarely lose ground - I have been watching my cemetery colony thrive for 30 years now, despite no end of trampling, neglect and picking by smalls.,

It is funny wantonamara ...but its true that I cannot bear to throw out a perfectly good seedling that I have watched with anticipation. Plants, on the other hand, I have been known to eradicate with chilling coldness if its not up to snuff. XD Perhaps that is another survival mechanism across most species, tiny and adorable at the start of life.

Campanula, I don't know much about primroses but before last season the word brought to mind those almost unnatural grocery store specimens. When placing my seed order for wintersowing, I started looking at the different primulas and was instantly charmed! I didn't order any this time around but I may next year. I'm not sure how they'd do here.

Primroses mean those Pink Oenothera speciosa down here and they can take over a garden every spring. I dig them up , all the time.

I'm more excited about the ones that haven't germinated!

catkin you have had wonderful germination rates from the looks of it! Growing from seed has to be one of the most rewarding and satisfying experiences there is. So fun and kudos to you!!!

I just planted 150 Mexican buckeye out in my gorge. I am excited and I will be happy to see a 1 in 10 success rate. We are forecasted for a wet spring and we had 1/2" last night so I am going for it. I also planted 20 in pots that I will water and do the non Johnny Appleseed way.They say they are easy. A three week germination in warm soil. The soil might be too warm , I fear. I also got 5 Amsonia longiflora. Someone gave me more seed for that but I think I left them in my pants pocket and I better go check my dirty laundry.

Thats a lot of trees. I'm working on a trade deal with a local nursery man who's ordering wholesale 'available to professionals only' two 36 count flats of 'Prairie Blue' Little Bluestem to trade for a lot of agave pups and boxes of cactus cuttings. Less numbers than 150 but 72 plants all one kind is a new one for me. I'm wanting that long wide swath of all one kind of grass waving in the wind catching the late afternoon sun......I'm wanting it bad. Wish me luck, he's checking availability.

I've had everything I started in February planted in the ground for well over a month now, I sowed all of them indoors in a big sunny window and they are coming along real nice, some are blooming.

Wantanamara, I'm glad you got those trees planted now, if its not a decent plantable sized plant that needs to end up in the ground this season I know better than to try to mess with it much past this late date. I'd be worried about stuff just now germinating in pots. I've tried it in the past and the heat & need to water makes it too much of a chore and gamble--- I'm sure you can relate. The only plant I have left in a pot is a tiny desert holly that I planted on a whim one day when going through the seed stash and don't have a spot for a large shrub even if it does take years to get mature, I'll probably end up using it as wam-pum in a trade. A body always needs wam-pum just in case.....

I just last weekend finished the last of the changes I'd planned and a few last minute ones, the kind that always come to you when you are actually out there, that involved moving plants and transplanting since we finally got some rain and got it done before the heat sets in. Whew! I doubt I'll be watching pots or sowing any new plants until fall, unless its one of those years that some new unknown plant that needs very warm to germinate comes within my radar like when I sowed those sand sage year before last. Of course, they croaked. Too hot for babies.

I'm now anxious for those grasses, hope I get them in a week or so while the ground is still damp and rain is likely.

I should have put these out before but I just got them a couple of weeks ago and this is the first patch of time I have had. These are plants that work on their root system for over a year before they get much growth to speak of on their tops. I am holding back the Buckeye plants in pots till the fall to put them out.They are SO fragrant when they bloom. They make me feel like a female dog looking for a pile of you know what to roll in it. I want to roll in a their blooms with abandon, total abandon.

All the little babies that I did put out a couple of weeks ago have rocks drift woody things and pots to create sun shades for the first season. Rock garden looks a mess. I have so many germinating things but I don't know what is an intentional wildflower and what is a volunteer WEED. The weeds are HUGE this year.

Seems to me that planting 150 ought to let you end up with a good chance for success. It started out dry but seems we are in a wetter pattern now, hope it holds out a while longer.

I found this bluestem inspiration online but I want more than a row. I'm thinking 4 deep rather than a row of singletons. I've been online looking at massed grasses and this line of bluestem made me obsessed along with a few I've seen around the city. Up front, I've got lots of seedlings which is good because I hope for more Blue grama and bluestems up front. Its a process of elimination and natural selection (me being the selector). I'm putting the bluestem which I hope to get at the most western rear end of the silver garden, I'm increasing blue grama toward the front. The texture and color scheme is great together in summer through winter and native sages are planted within the area, once the grass turns red in fall and winter I think it will be very nice. I love having a plan like this, it gives me focus.

When it comes to inspiration, here's what I have decided is the mother of all grass gardens. The Denver Botanical Grass Garden. You gotta love those soft colors and that red color the bluestem has in fall and winter. I guess when you're like me and your favorite season is late summer turning to fall, you sort of plan for it more than spring, spring is just a kind of bonus with flowers but not the real deal.

I planted them in a 5 acre spot in clusters on the gorge. It is in the wild area that I have been clearing a couple of years back. The retention brush berms have done their job collecting dirt and leaf mater that has flowed down the slopes . I should be talking about this on the Natives form but my fingers got typing here. Sorry guys.They are perennial natives. LOL.

Beautiful grasses.

I'm worse. I should be over there too or at least on the O. Grass Forum. nah, I take it back, not the OG Forum. They talk mostly about commercial imports like the Miscanthus'es and Pennisetums (yawn) and a certain Native's Forum regular in Wisconsin is probably worn out with prairie plants because the prairie people butt in all the time and try to rule the roost up there and want to turn the state into prairie where it was originally trees.

Anyway----Back On T----warm season perennial native grasses are germinating volunteers (aka free plants) and thats just fine by me.

Pleeeze.....Forgive us Camps!!! BTW, I cannot believe you got a warning for, what was it, profanity? It must have been eloquent cursing if it was cursing at all..... Down here we do use the word 'fracking' out of context at times but then this is oil and gas country where they are turning us into Earthquake Central.

Gosh, those pictures are beautiful Tex. I think I could be quite content with a garden of only grasses... though cutting them down in the fall could be a real pain (literally). Your swath of blue stem sounds amazing!

Wantonamara, I had to laugh at your desire to roll around like a dog. I have laid down right in the middle of my herb garden when things were in full bloom and the sound of the bees buzzing and the fragrance was too much to resist.

greenhearted, I am truly besotted with grasses but at the risk of sounding like a grass salesman, the native grasses are very quick and easy to cut down, takes about 10 seconds to chop down a full grown bluestem and about 15 to 30 seconds to chop down a panicum grass or a weed whacker can do it in less time. They don't have sharp edges either. Its nothing like the yearly ordeal of miscanthus or pampas grass.

Never do it in fall. You enjoy them through fall and winter and do it in very early spring. The Denver Botanical grasses were photographed in January.

I am amazed how primal that urge is when I smell certain things. I see myself paws i the air twitching and barking .... Oh oh, I might be getting close to profanity in the minds of some. The smell of damianita after an ice storm does it to me too.

Not sure where my mind was (still dizzy from the recollection of being drunk on plant fragrance?) but I have never cut my grasses down in the fall. You can take down Panicum that quickly Tex? I must be a wimp; I only have 5 several year old specimens and I have to take breaks between to avoid hand cramps. Those buggers are stiff! Maybe I should take the weed whacker to them. I use hand pruners.

I know I read somewhere that scent has a direct pathway to the hippocampus (or something?)

Back to seeds ... we've had a ton of heavy rain and I direct seeded some sweet alyssum at the request of my hubby and I wonder if it has all been washed away.

I have little sprouts of castor bean coming up in my whisky barrel planter! (Standard disclaimer: it's very toxic)

By early spring the grass plants are so dried, they cut easily. For bluestem, grab the top, one clip close to the base with a good sharp pair of grass shears and its done, its just a dried bit of almost nothing at that point. The worst part of the panicum is the debris but I collect as I go. I do it in stages usually just to have an excuse to be outdoors in late winter before actual gardening starts up. This coincides with the time I am sowing seeds but both of these occupations are now three months in the past.

Speaking of smells, I keep thinking of Sweet Annie lately for some reason. I love the smell of it and have been thinking of planting one just to smell it. The medicinal smells are the ones I am most drawn to, the sweet floral ones not so much. The one I dislike the most is the overpowering smell of privet, its a hated plant anyway due to the fact that it grows everywhere around here because its an invasive alien and it blooms in June when its muggy which makes it even more sickeningly sweet. I love the smell of Damianitia, very clean medicinal.

Not so surprising Tex, you being an artist and all, that you would feel drawn to those solventy, astringent fragrances which reek of esters and other organics. Same here...although it resonates from my childhood, growing up as a painter and decorator's daughter - varnish, turpentine, shellac, linseed.

I think I am banned from Hot Topics (smirk) - can't post anyhow. The Houzz regime told me that I couldn't be hiding behind decoys **!!**...so am fighting temptation not to push a bit with progressively dodgier Brit colloquialisms.

Those fanny slaps do sting a bit. The gall. The nerve. The very idea. Its like you know you were bad but definitely not THAT bad. I've been entirely erased from existence after having been the proud recipient of several warnings as I know you know. Once I attached a photo of a couple of vicious attack birds ready to pounce a guy balanced on a cliff and a comment to you on the Antiques Roses forum about being good on the P. forum "or else" and it got promptly erased in 5 minutes from existence along with your entire thread--you can thank me for that one. I thought it was funny, I guess others disagreed. I once got a personal e-mail informing me to get with the program and that I was a negative factor lacking the right attitude from the Head of the WS'ing forum a few years back because I had the audacity to say that sowing seed in June wasn't 'wintersowing', milk jugs or not. Well, I'm incorrigible because I still stand by that remark.

Campanula, Did you get the seeds that I sent you?

Campanula, I thought of you while looking through this recent post of Growing With Plants

Oh lovely stuff, Greenhearted. Yep, the auriculas are out in full flush (I only grow alpines and borders though...no fancies, doubles or show types because mine are outside in all weathers...and also I don't really care for farina - looks too much like powdery mildew. It is an ongoing battle against vine-weevil though - every year I swear I have had enough but they are so lovely, easy to increase (offsets) and grow from seed.

I used to have Dark Rosaleen - that dark leaved red and white striped primula but I loved the leaves but hated the flowers.

The ordinary p.vulgaris are growing like gangbusters in the wood - already self-seeding so colonies will appear fairly rapidly.

Mmm Tex. expecting another warning after everyone was wishing each other happy Mayday, I piped up with

'Cause it's the first of May, the first of May

Outdoor f***ing begins today

(Unattributed English saying) We will see if it passes the Puritan Police.

Heehee, never heard that MayDay saying. There is something about this time of year, isn't there? ;-)

P. denticulata appeals to me .... probably because it is allium-esque

I should be double embarassed to say this. Decided not to do any seeds this year but did a couple of sixpacks of NASTURTIUMS-I hang my head. On the other hand I am overflowing with dahlia and penstemon cuttings, at least the penstmon are perennials.

Camp, right after I joined GW I got into with the soil prophet, which turned into a mass brawl with hundreds of comment erasures,

and everyone involved chastised for language, attitude, lack of community spirit and anything else the moderators could think of. It was worth it though.

I love primulas but they are just not a Nevada plant.

Dave, I didn't do sweet peas this year and found myself clutching a pot of seedlings, from our version of Walmart (Asda) no less. I resisted but did buy a couple of deutzia gracilis, tucked in amongst the boringly predictable fuschias and begonias.

And yet again - another year, another Joe Pye Weed fail...and this time, the fault was all mine. Rushing to finish watering, I managed to blast the pot of seedlings which naturally landed upside down, disintegrating in the midst of a pot of haworthia.

I am just going to buy a few plants although it stings, paying cash for anything with 'weed' in its name..

Nothing much happens this time of year, on the germination front, so it was with some glee that I noticed the first 3 unmistakable cotyledons of melanoselinum decipiens, aka black parsley - yet another of my favourite umbels - this one a monster monocarpic evergreen. Woot woot!

Just as well something good is happening as this week, I am dealing with an expired fridge and blown head gasket on the truck. And that's without venturing further than home - certainly not looking out into the 'real world'.

I am getting tubular gaillardia from Tx, Anomatheca lama, Delphinium carolinianum, Calylophus digitata popping in my little pots. I even planted some muhlenbergia to see if they would pop. I need to plant my poppies. This is a big time for wildflowers.I see the ipomopsis rubra and dysodia popping everywhere.

Ah yes, finally, FINALLY, I have muhlenbergia capillaris seedlings - hovering over them last month like an anxious parent but now feeling confident they can face the coming winter.

How exciting! Amazing what a wee sprout can do to disperse heavier woes.

Though most things around here are headed (or have arrived) into dormancy, I always have seeds on the brain at this time of year. Wintersowing! I just cataloged my collection of seeds for this year's batch. What fun.

Camp, If you want any more muhlenbergia seeds, i.e. of all the various types, Email me. This year is a much better year than last year in seeding regards. I am seeing LOTs of them everywhere. Pink turkscap seed too. I just spent an hour out milking little bluestem grasses to combat my invasive KR bluestem

A new government is germinating here.

Hope this comment is neutral enough not to provoke civil war.

.Oddly, spell check corrected "civil" to "brutal" twice. Maybe it reads minds?

It has been mild enough togarden this week. A welcome respite from watching the news for hours on end.

Yep, I am watching for the postman delivering my Hardy Plant Society quarterly with the seed list. 25 packets of seed, FREE. Because it is from member's gardens, the seeds will be guaranteed fresh and always interesting.

A combination of health and household disasters has knocked my own enthusiastic collecting on the head this year...so to my embarrassment, I have nothing to offer in return apart from my fervent gratitude.

Mara - I also have pavonia and callirhoe seedlings...thanks to you.