Re: HYB: outdoor seeds sprouting:(
iris@hort.net
  • Subject: Re: HYB: outdoor seeds sprouting:(
  • From: L* M* <l*@lock-net.com>
  • Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2012 08:53:16 -0500
Thanks, Griff. Good to know that will work. Your climate doesn't normally have the severity of ups and downs that mine does, but it's otherwise pretty similar to mine. Watering - something I tend not to think of in winter, because it used to rain! But I can see that's probably crucial to keeping the babies relatively warm.
Hah, Mary Lou - if the sunporch had room for furniture, I'd do it! It's about 6 ft x 20. The window wall is filled with shelves for seed pots and lights. Which barely leaves room for me to waddle back and forth with watering can, stumbling over Amaryllis etc drying for the winter, other seedling supplies, plus a tiny bit of room for winter transplanting, which I wound up doing in the kitchen last winter.
Fortunately, I think I counted less than 200 pots to juggle, but I like to transplant to 8 inch pots so I can push them big enough to line out in Mar. That's a <lot> of space!
Mary Lou, the temperature has been <perfect> chilling/germination range for about the last 2 months - most days into the 50s and 60s, most nights upper 20s & low 30s. No need for a warm spell in there. But the current warmth is going to really get those that have been germinating above ground. 70s today and yesterday and warm temps forecast for the next week or more - nothing below freezing. Nice spring rain tonight.
I think what I am going to do is check all the pots carefully for the next few weeks, be prepared to bring in the pots that have several sprouts coming up and/or any that had sibs that seemed especially promising and not many of them, bury the rest in leaves. There are a few crosses that sprouted like crazy last year, had lots of seeds, so I will only be interested in the strongest few of those anyway.
Griff, do you think pine straw is the only thing that is safe? I usually use a thin layer of scrunched up leaves from whatever is in the yard - buckeye, elm, ash, box elder, hackberry. They crumble and rot by spring. I'd have to use oak, hickory and maple to get a thick leaf layer. Maybe I'll just use a layer of the usual, cover with a double or triple reemay layer. Double layer of Reemay kept petunias alive over last winter when temps briefly got into the teens.
To keep out skunks and other varmints, I have seed pots in nursery trays, covered with an upside down mesh type nursery tray. That has worked so far. Only had a problem with slugs one year when I made the mistake of putting out nice juicy seedlings from the sunporch for a few warm days in the middle of winter. What do you do with the epsom salts? sprinkle them on the slugs or on the irises? 

Thanks for helping me think.

Linda Mann zone 7b east TN USA

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