Blueberry Kisses

Back in January, when we spent some time dreaming over seed catalogs, one of the new blooms that caught our eye was Vinca 'First Kiss Blueberry'. Park Seed offered this deep purple-blue version of one of our favorite annuals, and we decided it was worth a try.

Our results haven't been too bad, and the color itself matches the advertised picture pretty well, although the bloom fades a bit after a few days. We started 10 seeds around the middle of February, and 5 of them sprouted well (it took nearly 30 days) and grew into healthy plants. They started to bloom about two weeks ago, and we're hoping the plants will become bushier and covered with more blooms, as vincas usually do once they get well established.

We're keeping them in a planter on the porch for now while they get stronger and more vigorous, though we may eventually plant them outside. Vincas are wonderfully hardy once they get going - once their root systems get established, they weather heat and drought without blinking an eye. They also tend to re-seed pretty readily, so we're hoping to gather some seed from these vincas and grow more of this wonderful color to spread around My Florida Backyard in the future.

In the Queen's Garden

We've been growing more plants from seeds this year in My Florida Backyard, and while our backs were turned, the Queen Red Lime Zinnia began to bloom for the first time!

We started this butterfly-friendly flower from a new seed offered by Burpee this year, and we're pleased to see it's just as lovely as advertised!

Zinnias are one of the easiest flowers to start from seed, and the varieties available these days seem just about endless. We're so glad to have this new variety blooming in My Florida Backyard!

Blanket on the Ground

We've been busy the last week or so... out-of-town guests, busy work schedules, and seemingly dozens of other things conspired to keep us from spending nearly as much time in My Florida Backyard as we would have liked. Fortunately, My Florida Backyard is perfectly capable of surviving and even thriving on benign neglect, and new blooms are popping up everywhere - not the least of which is the Blanket Flower.

Indian Blanket (Gaillardia pulchella) is a wonderful native Florida wildflower. It asks for nothing but soil (sand will do), sun, and the occasional bit of rain, and rewards you with loads of cheery blooms for months on end. Then, it spreads its seeds, ensuring its return for years to come. In fact, all of our Gaillardia come from a single packet of seed we purchased for a couple of bucks a few years ago.

Gaillardia is great for pollinators and a natural in a wildflower garden. You'll often find it along roadsides and in wildflower meadows, and anywhere native flowers are emphasized. It does well in containers and is even salt-tolerant, so it's really perfect just about anywhere in this great state of ours.

Now that we've had a chance to slow down and admire what My Florida Backyard has been up to recently, we look forward to catching up a little more. Look for more posts in the days ahead on what our garden's been doing while we've been looking the other way!

Seeds Grow to Plants

Last fall, we bought a few packets of inexpensive seeds and, rather than starting them carefully in little containers and babying them along, we decided to sort of "Hail Mary" it - fling the seeds into the garden and let the sun and rain do their jobs.

We're starting to see a few results now, starting with this first brave little cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus) bloom that's so cheery in the butterfly garden right now. We're hoping to see lots of of little guys popping up to join it soon.

Nearby, we planted a row of Linaria Enchantment, which we bought from Park Seed. They sort of remind us of snapdragons, though they're smaller, and the color and detail of the blooms is amazing.

These have been blooming continuously for the last month or so, after being sown late last fall. Linaria is also known as Toadflax, which is generally a cool season flower. These withstood frost very well last month, although they're in a pretty sheltered location near the house so that may have helped. We fully expect these to die back in the hotter summer months, but hope that they'll re-seed and return next fall and winter.

Successes like these give us the encouragement we need to keep trying new seeds. Right now, we have a couple of seedling trays of zinnia, marigold, and several others getting ready for the summer season, and a few packets of coreopsis to broad-sow when the summer rains begin.

"Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders." - Henry David Thoreau

I'll Buy That Dream

I have fond memories as a kid of getting the Sears Christmas Wish Book every year in late fall - it had page after page of the toys and games that would soon find their way onto our lists for Santa. My brother and I would pore over the catalog, separately and apart, revisiting our favorite choices over and over until the pages were worn. The dream of what we might get was almost better than the delight of Christmas morning.

As an adult gardener, I find the same delight each winter as the spring seed catalogs begin pouring in. Page after page of blooms and vegetables and fruits, new pleasures and old favorites, bright colors and promised fragrances... I keep them by my chair on dark winter evenings and pore through them page by page. I dog-ear the pages, compare options between catalogs, and dream dream dream about bringing all that color and life from the pages of the catalogs into My Florida Backyard. The catalogs are free, but the pleasure they provide is priceless when winter nights seem long.

I don't always have a lot of luck starting plants from seeds, but every year I allow myself a budget and, after much careful research, give some seeds a try. As a Florida gardener, I know that many of the blooms offered in the catalogs might not grow here, so I spend time on sites like Dave's Garden finding out if others in similar areas have raised this plant successfully. I check the FLEPPC's list of Invasive Species to be sure I don't accidentally introduce something into the ecosystem that could do more harm than good. I decide if there's really a place for each plant in My Florida Backyard, and determine the potential wildlife value - when you have a fraction of an acre, every square foot counts.

Then I make my lists. I visit each catalog's website, and fill my shopping cart with every seed that made it through the research phase. Then, I start making the hard decisions; if I bought every seed that caught my eye, I'd spend hundreds of dollars and couldn't possibly accommodate all the plants. So I winnow the lists down, slowly, over days, until my mind is made up. And then... I click "Buy" and wait for my little packets of dreams to arrive in the mail.

Here are just five of the seeds that are catching my eye this year, and the catalog offering them (pictures come from those catalogs websites). We here in My Florida Backyard would love to hear about your own experiences with any of these, especially from those living in zone 9a or 9b.

Gaillardia, Punch Bowl Hybrid (Burpee)

We have tons of luck each spring with perennial Gaillardia pulchella, also known as Indian Blanket or Blanketflower. We threw down a packet of seeds a few years ago, and they come back over and over and over again. This makes us hopeful that this lovely pink variety might also thrive. These seeds are a little pricey at $4.95 for a packet of 100, but if they thrive year after year like the gaillardia we have now, they'd be cheap at twice the price.

Marigold, Snowball Hybrid (Burpee)

We're not really crazy about marigolds in general, but something about this white variety is really striking, and marigolds are pretty easy to start from seed. Marigolds tend to hold up pretty well to even Florida's brutal heat, so we could definitely see these finding a home in our low-maintenance front yard. On the other hand, these are another fairly expensive (for seed) option - $5.50 for 50 seeds, and marigolds are definitely an annual, so this wouldn't be something we'd get benefit from in the future.

Vinca, First Kiss Blueberry (Park Seed)

Vinca (also called periwinkle) grows easily from seed. We love the white and pink shades, and this new purple hue is really wonderful. Vinca withstands heat and while it may die back in a frost, it often comes back from the roots in My Florida Backyard. At $2.25 for a packet of 50, this is a great investment, as we'd expect to find these in the garden for years to come.

Salvia farinacea, Fairy Queen (Park Seed)

Salvia is incredibly popular in our butterfly garden, and perennial S. farinacea is one of our favorites. It survives crushing heat and a frost or two, coming back year after year, and the blooms are a constant draw for butterflies. This variety is a bi-color mix of blue and white, and at $2.25 per packet, seems a good value.


 

Monarda Bergamo (Park Seed)

When we were in Ohio last summer, we saw a patch of monarda (bee balm) absolutely covered with Hummingbird Clearwing Moths, and it made us want some for our own yard. However, most monarda varieties struggle with Florida's steamy summers, being very susceptible to mildew. (The exception is our native Monarda punctata.)  "Bergamo" claims to be mildew-resistant, and a packet of 50 seeds is only $1.95, so it seems worth a try.


There are plenty of other seeds that are on our radar for 2011, so we'll see what happens when we finally place those seed orders. What seed catalogs do you love? Tell us, so we can get them and find out what we're missing!