Saturday, May 24, 2014

Garden Update: Hardening off



Today, I put my seedlings out to harden off, finally.  It was so cold last weekend, and I was so busy, I didn't bother.   Here's where I think I stand with the seed starting:


  • 12 Starlight Echinacea plants - I already have a ton of echinacea in my garden; it self seeds to wild abandon! I am hoping to get some different color out of these Renee's Garden seeds, but they may look like the pink ones I already have.  
  • 0 Matt's Wild Cherry tomatoes - I got these from Johnny's Seeds.  Epic fail
  • 6 Jasper - these did the best out of all my tomato starts....from Johnny's.   They are cherry tomatoes that are supposed to be fairly blight resistant.  I had horrible late blight last summer
  • 5 Mountain Magic - also did all right, these are full size tomato from seeds from Johnny's
  • 8 TBD tomatoes - I lost track of what these are - I think they might be more Jasper.
  • 10 Lavender Vincenza - these were from Fedco.  They did much better than...
  • 6 Lavender Munstead - from Johnny's.   
  • 26 Mexican Sunflowers - from Johnny's, I almost killed them when we went to Nashville last month and I forgot to water them before I left. I got these from Fedco.
  • 14 Exotic Love Vine...i.e. Spanish Flag...or Firecracker Vine  - I grew these years ago and they did great.   I'm going to have to build a trellis or something for all my climbers I have.  These were from Renee's Garden.
  • a couple mallow plants - Old seeds I had kicking around
  • some moonflower starts in the egg carton and take out food containers - I will put these down by the mailbox with my morning glories


Looking at my seed bill  from Johnny's, which doesn't show the additional $7 in shipping I paid, you can see that they weren't cheap.  My total was $25, and it looks like I got 43 plants total out of the deal, so I guess I paid 58 cents per plant, not counting the seed starter and the potting soil.   I have too many tomato plants for what I will actually need, which is 8. It's definitely not cheaper for me to start my own plants from seeds; I do it so I can get more varieties.

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