Monday, April 12, 2021

How do you define (seedy) success?

I know people—three local friends spring to mind immediately—who've had dozens of Echium wildpretii seedlings spring up in the wake of their bloomed-out plants. In fact this plant of mine (below), which bloomed last spring, came from one of those people. His plant bloomed, he had more seedlings than he wanted, and I was happy to adopt and rehome a few.

Once that tower of blooms formed seeds I carefully cut it down and separated the seeds from the painfully spiky chaff (hmmm, does that word apply when you're not talking about grain?), anyway, hopefully you know what I mean. I then sprinkled seeds around the garden in spots I thought they'd be happy and grow. I gave seeds to a couple neighbors who were captivated by the bloom. Finally I planted seeds in one of my seed trays. Surely I too could be successful making echium babies? Well, how exactly do you define success? Cause look! I've got a little itty-bitty echium baby!

One. Baby.

Sixteen squares. One baby. I don't think this qualifies as success.

Weather Diary, April 11: Hi 60, Low 32/ Precip 0 

All material © 2009-2021 by Loree Bohl for danger garden. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.

14 comments:

  1. Yah baby! Definitely success. Maybe not a huge success (yet) but success non the less. I think its fun and exciting.

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    1. It is fun, for sure. I guess with one baby to obsess over I won't miss any of the excitement of watching it develop.

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  2. Yes, success. Now you get let it go to seed and see if that is the better option.

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    1. Hmm, not sure I understand as I did let the other one go to seed, that's how I got the seeds. Do you mean leave it in place until all the seeds have fallen?

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  3. Anytime you get successful germination, no matter how small, it definitely qualifies as a success. Others may still germinate they are just on their own time schedule. You might get more in the garden too.

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    1. I am keeping my fingers crossed that you are right and others will appear.

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  4. One *is* success! It looks like a healthy seedling, too.

    I have several volunteers in inconvenient places but they're too big to move so I'll let them go. I love seeing these in flowers.

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    1. They do seem quite good at showing up in inconvenient places. I have one that's fixing to bloom now that's leaning out over my little lawn. I wonder if it will seed around there?

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  5. Be patient, Loree. You may be surprised by more seedlings in time. I was thrilled when I saw a single tiny Majorcan peony seedling among the 8 pots I'd sown with three seeds each last summer - I'd almost tossed the contents of those pots into my compost bin several times. Now all but one pot has produced at least one seedling.

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    1. Patience? What is this thing you speak of? (I will try!)

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  6. In my experience Loree, Echium Wildpretii, need tough love. When I first attempted to germinate these indoors several years ago and I had very good germination and then everyone of them died quickly from damping off. My air circulation was in adequate. So these days I collect seed, but let a fair amount of it fall to the ground for the winter rain and whatever, spread it around the area. Then in the fall at some point thes start germinating. The trick then is to not weed them out thinking that they’re all dandelions or something. I do collect a lot of the seed and store it in grocery bags in the basement, uncleaned, (it’s fairly bulky) with all of the chaff. I do clean some for my own use. I dump the unclean seed on a tarp laying on the sidewalk then fold the tarp over the top and stomp, scuff my feet, do what I can to brutalize it. This frees a lot of the seed from the chaff, but then you still need to remove the chaff and I’ll get down on my hands and knees and blow tut away from the seed and then pick them out. In the spring if I don’t have any volunteers where I want them I will sometimes spread some of the seed I’ve held over, but do this early in the spring, by March. That’s also when I go out and dig volunteers from where I don’t want them. This is best done before the rosettes are much over 2 inches in diameter. The seedlings root quickly sending a taproot down and this is hard to get out of without damaging it. Small is better and then just pot them up. I’ll leave these potted up seedlings outside under the roof, but really they’re fine anywhere as long as we don’t get a hard freeze. Success is thus guaranteed.

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    1. Oh I've been tough! These never came indoors, they've been through it all outside. And there were plenty of seeds sprinkled into the gravel for winter to work on, but so far nothing...

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  7. I had one that bloomed about six years ago and I left the spent bloom out where it was for months. The next year - no seedlings. Have kids now so I’m not as motivated to have those darn hairs sticking into little hands. Still,
    what a cool plant! Went to Cistus last week kind of hoping for a Star of Madeira but no luck. Still make a great hall including a Crinum moorei. Love that place! -Jim North Tabor

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    1. Funny I wrote about my visit to Cistus last week on today's blog post! It's a fabulous place to visit for sure.

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