May 2, 2011

11 days until Paris!
68 days until the wedding!
I planted these seeds on my porch "garden" about 3 weeks ago.  This happens every year, when I start to see plants growing outside I get the urge to plant seeds of my own and grow them into vegetables or flowers.  The past few years I've been terrible about taking care of them but this year I have a new motivation to get these seedlings to grow...this little seedling will one day very soon be my wedding flowers!

I started the seeds in rubbermaid containers that I had cut holes in the bottom of, with seed starting soil.  Watered them well then placed plastic bags over the containers and left them on the porch for a week.  After I removed the plastic coverings the dahlia seedlings looked great!  The zinnia seedlings didn't look so great, only one germinated.  The poppy seeds didn't germinate at all!  I'm still waiting on my anemone tubers to sprout, I pulled some out today and one is growing roots but nothing is coming out of the top yet, three of the others were nasty, they were gooey and fell apart when I tried to check on them!

I've been watering these little guys every morning and evening because the soil is so shallow that the water evaporates over the course of the day so I let them soak up water overnight.


Because my last few attempts at gardening have been so unsuccessful I searched high and low for a book or blog to help me figure out what my problems were and how to fix them and grow beautiful flowers without spending a fortune.  I got all the planting info from Garden Anywhere, which is an awesome book if you want to start gardening and have limited space and limited funds.  I started my porch garden for about $30 because I bought pots before reading this book, but now that I've seen all the adorable projects in this book using free or very cheap supplies I know better for next year's garden.  Its also full of tips to help you get started and they work!  I've never been able to keep seedlings alive for this long (3 weeks!) I've been a bit of a brown thumb the past couple of years.

Hopefully they will grow into big dahlia bushes and produce lots of white and red flowers for my wedding, if not they'll look beautiful on my porch.  I need to find a seedling sitter and a toad sitter for the week we're in Paris.