Central Florida Garden Seedlings

Feb 19 2010
Whew! What a week! The weather here in our Central Florida Garden has continued to be COLD! We’ve had frost almost every morning this week. Scott has been diligently moving our seedlings from outside to inside to make sure they don’t get Frostbite! The weather prediction for this upcoming weekend gets us (finally!) into the low 70’s with a chance of much-needed rain on Monday. We have our fingers crossed! If you want to check our weather, here’s the link to our Davis weather station Hunters Acres Weather Station that is mounted in back by the plants. It will give real-time conditions, and if you are really curious, you can scout around and pull up historical records of our temperatures, rainfall, humidity, and other stuff we think is useful and cool. It even has an alarm system that alerts us when the temperatures go below our preset target.

We received the liners we ordered from Raker & Sons through Jonathan at Harris Seeds who is our Raker broker. This first order consisted of 50 New Guinea Impatiens, Sonic Lilac, a 128 tray of Camelot Mixed Foxgloves, and a 128 tray of Summer Carnival Hollyhocks. We soon realized we did not have enough seedling soil to pot up these liners, so Scott headed out and picked up a few bags at the local hardware store to get us going. We potted up all the New Guinea Impatiens and the Foxgloves. We still have to do the Hollyhocks. We ordered Hollyhock liners, even though over the last few years we had good results from seeding, because last year our seeded hollyhocks totally fizzled. They may have been hit by drift from the herbicide we use to spray weeds; we just don’t really know.

Then on Tuesday Scott went to Knox Nursery in Clermont and picked up 128 Violet Phoenix Penstemons, , 280 White Butterfly Pentas, and 128 Golden Yellow Coreopsis, 280 Deep Purple Perfume Nicotiana, and 140 Rose and 140 White Camelot Foxgloves. We order through their broker, Bill Moore & Co., Inc. Marlene is great to work with.

And if that wasn’t enough liners to keep us busy, another Raker order came with 50 each of Sonic Red, Amethyst, and Burgundy New Guinea Impatiens, and 128 Queeny Purple Hollyhocks. So, today, Scott is going to the mulch yard to get a pick up truck load of soil. He has a docent training class at the Sanford Zoo on Saturday, so Guess What I’ll Be Doing All Day Saturday! Now, there is no possible way I can do all those liners in one day by myself, but I’ll give it my best try. I think we have enough flowers for now, especially considering, as I said earlier, all the seeds I’ve got started. This will certainly be a fun-work-filled growing season in our Central Florida Garden.