Anticipation of Spring Planting

A box just arrived from Breck's with bulbs and tubers to be planted.  I don't understand why they ship these so early, surely they know the zone that I am in and that no planting can take place here for another month!  So I will put the box in the basement where it is fairly cool and hope for the best. I may even plant these in pots to await the day when they can be planted outdoors.

In the box, there are: 1 Shirley Temple peony

                                  50 Discovery Dutch iris

                                  1 Lady's Mantle

                                  1 Red Carpet Border Dahlia

                                  1 Reblooming Dicentra

                                  1 American Dawn Dahlia

                                  7 Deluxe Dahlia Mix

                                  1 Winter Plum Hellebore

                                  1 Great White Hellebore

                                  1 Bertinii Everblooming Begonia

                                  1 Hanging Begonia

                                  5 Giant Columbine

And two more boxes of plants will be arriving in the next few weeks. The weather better warm up soon!

A few weeks ago, I planted some seeds in the hope of getting a head start on summer annuals. In the tray on the left are impatiens and snapdragons. And in the one on the right are pansies and nicotiana. They seem to be doing quite well, even though they are just sitting in front of a window and don't have grow lights to help them along.

In this tray, is black-eye susan vine. I love this annual, ever since I saw it gaily climbing up the balcony of a friend's apartment in Halifax. It was covered with bright little flower faces, like mini black eye susans.

The ones on the left here are the leggy ones that probably won't amount to much. Sunflowers and cosmos, although I think the cosmos might survive. I started cosmos from seed a couple of years ago and ended up with the tallest cosmos I have ever seen. They reached four feet and bloomed in late August. Given the climate in Halifax, these continued flowering well into late September.

In the pot on the right are nasturtiums. I love the bright happy faces of nasturtiums tumbling out of pots with a mess of healthy foliage. A local store here has a huge pot of nasturtiums out front every summer and they are a riot of lovely flowers.

I also bought the makings for a petunia tower. I watched a video on how to make a tower for flowering plants and I will try this in a few weeks, once the petunias are for sale. Click on the video below to see how to do this.