Hi everyone:
If you're like me, you are totally frustrated with the weather here. I got halfway through hardening off my tomatoes and peppers when we got a freeze and I had to stop. I have just finished the second round (yesterday) and here we have another cold front with temps. down to 3 degrees tonight. The forecast does not call for frost, but just in case, I brought my toms. and peppers in about midnight. I'll put them out early tomorrow and hope for the best. Although the weather is crazy my WS seeds have done quite well. Had no success again with Red Hot Poker or Astrantia (purchased seed from T&M), but almost everything else did fine. My petunias were quite sparse in comparison to other years, and my parsley gave me only a few plants, so I bought a couple pots from Walmart and they are planted out. A first for me this year is pre-starting gladioli indoors. I did it in a shallow pan of water and they took off!! Our first freeze came when they were ready so I had to hold on to them until yesterday. Some of them were over 18 inches tall already. Will see how this translates into earlier blooms. One other new thing for me this year is liatris. Loblaws had these little bags of dried up looking corms, so for the few dollars I took the plunge. I put them out near the end of April in paper pots since I read they don't like to be transplanted. Yesterday after a couple days of rain they are pushing through the soil. I have tried them from seed with no luck, and I had a few white ones many years ago. I tried to move them...now I know why I lost them. My garden has been quite pretty for the past days. Thanks to winter sowing I have lots of flowering ground covers and shrubs, which makes for a nice spring. Will post a pic. when I can. So how is everyone else coping?