Gertrude's Flower Garden Weekly Diary

1/12/01 - I have transplanted the first flat of Wings begonias. Actually, I should have waited longer before beginning to transplant these seedlings, because they are still too small to handle without great difficulty. At best, begonias are the most difficult seedlings to transplant; part of the problem is due to their tiny size. The other major difficulty is that begonia seeds are like the finest dust, so that, no matter how careful I am, I get them planted too thickly, which only complicated transplanting. I am going to try next year to mix the seeds with fine sand and plant the mixture--I read of this as a possible solution for handling extremely fine seeds. Fortunately, begonias are survivors, so that no matter how you handle or mishandle them they seem able to grow into the beautiful flowering plants that line my driveway (see the "Weekly Diary" for 10/22/99 [index23.html]).
I now have eight flats of transplanted seedlings growing under lights. These include mixed colors of impatiens, yellow and white Star zinnias, and the begonias mentioned above. I am going to let the begonia seedlings grow for a few weeks before trying to transplant more of them. Browallia seedlings haven't all germinated as yet, but when they have I will transplant them into a flat in clumps, because I have found that they won't tolerate being pulled apart and planted separately. When the time comes to plant them outside in pots or borders, the clumps can be separated further--I did this last year with good results. The snapdragons are up, but they are very tiny and will have to do some growing before I can think of transplanting them. So far the Liatris seeds have not germinated--I had very poor germination with these seeds last year and the one or two plants that did come up didn't survive the summer. The next lot of seeds to be planted will include nicotiana and Perwinkle vinca.
This week's picture takes us back into my den. We are now looking at the opposite side of the room from last week's picture of the bay window. The Christmas decorations are the pine cone wreath made many years ago by my elder daughter and Gertrude's little artificial Christmas trees hung in the corners. The shelves on this side of the room and enclosed with glass doors; the bookshelves on the opposite side of the room are open. This week I will venture into the world of digital cameras. I am going to try to find one that will enable me to take a garden picture and transfer it immediately to my computer, where it will be stored and then attached to the "Weekly Diary" just as the present 35 millimeter photographs-on-a-disk are. This will enable me to match the the date of the picture to the date of the "Diary," instead of being weeks or months behind. Let's see how I do.

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