“The heart is like a garden: it can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?”
~Jack Kornfield
As I begin to finalize plans for the veg garden, it is also time to plan for annual flowers in the garden. I start half the flower seeds indoors that need a head start. But the other half are directly sown in veg garden beds, containers and the small cutting bed I started a few years ago.
Of the seeds started indoors, I hope to plant pansies, violas, pre-sprouted sweet peas and snapdragons (above) soon in early containers and beds. I am delayed yet again with our wintry cold weather that is lingering right through this week. By the end of May, I will be planting these seedlings I have started: marigold, coleus, alyssum, amaranthus, torenia and pre-sprouted sunflowers in the garden.
The seeds directly sown into the veg garden, once frost is past, include morning glories….I grow up trellises in the pumpkin bed…..and nasturtiums, calendula and borage in other veg beds.
I adore nigella and try to make room among the strawberries for these beauties.
And then there are the flowers I grow specifically for vases in my small cutting garden. It has been neglected a bit in the last year, but I have put a plan together for flowers I want to grow for summer vases, like these California poppies.
I am trying to pre-sprout tall sunflowers in biodegradable pots to put at the back of the cutting bed.
Dahlias, cleome and zinnias would come next.
Followed by cosmos….
And dwarf glads (above) and Pepperbox poppies. I hope to attend to these seeds and bulbs a bit more this year, by adding compost to the soil and covering the seeds with a row cover for the first several weeks to keep the bed warm, and the critters away.
Do you grow flowers from seed in your garden? Do you have a cutting garden? What are your favorite annuals?
A Sweet Early Spring Vase
With a few early blossoms cooperating, I decided to throw caution to the wind and cut some….especially since the freezing rain was coming. I placed them on my grandmother’s sewing machine. This picture of my mom and her sisters sits on their mother’s sewing machine that they used to use.
The voles have moved many of my crocus so now they now pop up as onesies. So I decided to cut some for the vase….they plowed down many of the others growing.
You can see white, purple and striped crocus, with one precious iris reticulata and some snow drops. I love how perfect this early spring vase is….shows how the garden is blooming right now. Scarce blossoms, but still joyful.
I am joining Cathy@Rambling in the Garden for her wonderful In A Vase on Monday meme. The pictures shared here were created with my iPod Touch camera and two free apps, Pixlr and Prisma.
I am posting poetry, almost weekly on Sundays, on my other blog, Living From Happiness. You can read my latest poem here.
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