Make It Snappy!

Day 219: For many years, I struggled with starting my own bedding plants. I hung a fluorescent plant light above the washer and dryer (the only cat-proof space in the house big enough for seed flats), but every time I wanted to do laundry, I had to take it down and shift the trays in order to fill the top-loader washer. The windowsills were occupied by single-row flats; the south exposures too hot, the west exposures too shady, requiring an almost daily rotation from one room to another. From March to May (some of my favourites took 12 weeks to germinate), my living space became a greenhouse, but the rewards were not always as splendid as I had pictured them in my mind. When it finally came time to set out the seedlings, I was ready to be shut of responsibility to my botanical charges and would pop them into the ground with something less than parental sentiments as if they were teenagers I was glad to get out of the house. Accordingly, some failed and some flourished in the manner of all offspring regardless of species.

A few years ago during a cool, wet February, I put the pros and cons in the balance and decided that the expense of commercially-grown bedding plants was justified against the inconvenience and limited success of home horticulture. With the notable exception of Gazanias (not often seen in nurseries), I now buy starts. My job as greenhouse-keeper has not been eliminated entirely; availability does not always agree with the climate at this elevation, e.g., Spoonflowers and tomatoes must be bought when I find them, and repotted in larger containers to be held for setting out in the latter half of May. But unlike previous years when little bloomed until late summer, nowadays the status of my garden goes from bleak to colourful in a snap...(dragon).