How many seeds do you sow?

Seeds, Seeds, Seeds...

So the 2016 summer season was a productive one for our gardens.

We produced 14,000+ seeds, which from hearing what others made was impressive. We had a season long drought, we had many days over 85+ even full weeks 90+.  Even more impressive, we don't have a single established clump in the whole garden.

90% of the plants bloomed for the first time this year.

So how did I do it?

Nothing special, I irrigated heavily,  And not so much my choice but rather what I had to do.. I pollinated from 6am to 8am five days out of the week (Damn real job)

That's It.

So did I plant all 14,000 seeds?  Heck No.

I planned for 2500, But had excess capacity to about 3700-3800. We used all of it.

So we here's my system for this years crop-  I am using a Landmark Plastics Watermatic Tray

I am using 4.5 x 4.5 x 4.88D Square pots, the trays hold 15 of these. We plant 5 seeds max per pot, giving us a capacity of 75 seeds per tray.  We planted 50 trays, 750 pots. Some pots got less then 5 seeds.

Using all the space we have!

So what do I do after they start growing?  Well depending on the weather, They will stay in the greenhouse till Early to Mid April. Then we will plant them and maintain them throughout summer.  We got spotty first year bloom this year, with a very bad spring with a record late freeze on April 26-27th. We don't rely on first year bloom yet. 

My next blog entry will go into greater detail on how we plan to try and be competitive with southern growers, and get first year blooms. 

This Picture is from May 29th. This year was a learning year.  We won't be planting that late this coming spring.