Winter Gardening

Most of this season is pressing your nose against the window and staring out into the bleak winter weather.  Fortunately, that's not always true.

I had transplanted a young marigold indoors in early October just before frost.  That bloomed reliably until about two weeks ago when it finally gave up.  I planted some celosia seeds in a tray pack and those are happily growing on my windowsill now, enhanced by a 6 watt LED bulb an inch away.  It should be ready for transplant into the windowsill pot around the second week of January.

I ordered my gardens for 2015 from Park Seed and Swallowtail Garden Seeds.  Swallowtail is a new company for me, they have Figaro dahlia seeds by color instead of as a mix.  Since the taller dahlia performed so well in the gardens in 2014, I had wanted to expand their usage next year.

For the most part, the plants are the same as last year.  However, the color design calls for decreasing the orange and increasing the red to compensate.  To accomplish that, half a flat of Figaro red dahlia and an extra flat of Magellan scarlet zinnia are called for.

The Profusion zinnia also perform very well, so I've increased their usage in the garden.  I favor the Fire, a very reddish orange, but the yellow were well-received as well.  The orange is very nice, but as I'm cutting back use of orange in the garden next year I'll be using fewer of those.

Purple hues are new for me in 2014, and to work with the Blue Boy dahlia (actually a deep purple), I added Figaro purple dahlia as well.  The colors vary considerably among the plants, but all are more than close enough to accent the Blue Boy.