Seed and Dahlia Starting

We've seen more snow in March this year than any other month this winter. The weather keeps waffling between this...

And this...

I'm over it. It's time for spring. 

I started my seeds in the greenhouse. Mostly flowers - lots of flowers - in early March. This past weekend I also started 8 tomatoes. I am only growing the tomatoes that everyone eats this year - 2 cherry tomatoes (sweet millions), 2 roma paste, 1 Tappy heritage, 1 early girl, 2 bushsteak hybrid). These were the best and most eaten tomatoes of last year and the most versatile for sauce. While I love the fancier heirlooms, I can't eat raw tomatoes anymore and they were a pain for sauce, so this year we are keeping things simple. I have the tomatoes and some snapdragons inside under the grow light, everything else is outside or headed out there after sprouting on the radiator. 

This year I'm having fun with flower seeds! Two kinds of snapdragons (rocket hybrid and tall deluxe) for the raised bed garden, some low ones for pots and the front yard (twinny apple blossom and seeds I collected from white-purple, yellow-pink and orange-pink varieties). Pink lemonade and Apricotta cosmos, blushing black eyed susan vine, sunflowers. Butterfly weed for the far back garden. Dahlias from seed I collected last fall. This year I'm experimenting with growing coleus from seed too - it's self-seeded so beautifully in my pots the past couple of summers, I feel like it's worth trying out. My homegrown marigolds last year were the only ones that didn't have blight, so I'm growing more of those as well. In combination with the flowers I've overwintered - I have a really great start this year to the garden beds and pots. I also started a few herbs from seed that did very well last year - sage, dill, chamomile. 

I've started potting up dahlia bulbs, one crate at a time. There are quite a few (even with the mass die-off), so I'm only about halfway at this point. I need the weather to warm up soon so we can take the heater out of here and have more room to stand. Space is at a premium in here this time of year. 

My next big to-do after pre-starting the dahlias is to order mulch, finish spring yard cleanup and begin spreading mulch around. April is going to be an even crazier month, so the earlier I can started the better (which scares me because March has been ridiculous and it's the calm before the storm). Hopefully the weather cooperates and we are finally done with the snow.