Cannas from Bowling Balls

Did you know that cannas grow from miniature bowling balls? Blue bowling balls?

Okay, not really, but that's what canna seeds always remind me of this time of year. Many of the seed varieties come coated in a fungicide. They make the fungicide blue so you know its there (and don't lick your fingers afterwards). The seeds are also laser-drilled with a couple of tiny holes to break through the seed coat.

They come up pretty quickly and the seedlings are adorable!

What I'm Sowing This Week

Here's a list of what I sowed this week (and the last couple of weeks, since I didn't think to do this earlier). The names jump around between common name and Latin name, depending on how the companies submit them to us. 

Sown Week 6 (this week) :

 Gerbera Jaguar Lemon Dark Center

 Gerbera Strawberry Twist

 Hypoestes Splash Select Mix

 Alcea rosea Spring Celebrities Crimson

 Coreopsis Sun Kiss

 Strawberry Delizz

Sown Week 5:

 Trifolium rubens f. album

 Heliopsis helianthoides var. scabra

 Heliopsis helianthoides var. scabra

 Solidago canadensis

 Solidago virgaurea ssp. Minuta

 Geranium Pinto Premium Deep Red

 Geranium Pinto Premium Salmon

 Geranium Pinto Premium Violet

 Geranium Pinto Premium White to Rose

Sown in January:

 Calamintha nepeta Marvelette Blue

 Cosmos atrosanguineus Maroon Crimson

 Echinacea Cheyenne Spirit

 Echinacea OP

 Echinacea PowWow Wild Berry

 Echinaceae Feeling Pink

 Echinaceae Feeling White

 Helenium autumnale Western Mixture

 Lupin Mini Gallery Blue

 Strawberry Toscana

The Lupinus was sown just a couple weeks ago and you can already recognize the unique starburst-shaped leaf.

Early Season Seed-Starting

We're already starting to sow seeds here at the MSU Horticulture Gardens. Perennials take an especially long time to grow from seed, so I usually start them early in the year. This tray was sown on January 18th.

On the far end of this tray are about 6 varieties of Echinaceae including an unreleased variety for our trial gardens. The tall guys in the middle of the tray are Cosmos atrosanguineus, or chocolate cosmos. This is the first seed-propagated chocolate cosmos ever developed, also an experimental variety. In front of the chocolate cosmos is Calamintha, with Lewisia in the extreme foreground.

Curly Locks Cactus

Epiphyllum guatamalense var. monstrose...that's a quite a mouthful of Latin nomenclature! The common name, Curly Locks, is a little easier to handle, and describes the ringlet-like, curly leaves. The Latin name is pretty informative though and tells us that this is an epiphyte from Guatemala with monstrously deformed leaves. I was recently reading about this plant in Bizarre Botanicals and learned that the leaves of this variety curl due to a genetic anomaly. Also, interestingly, this plant can produce fruit and viable seeds without being pollinated!

A colleague gave me some stem cuttings back in September 2015. They rooted very easily and started to grow new side shoots after 2 or 3 months.

The cuttings I received also had a couple of ripe fruit that resembled miniature dragon fruits (I didn't think to take a photo). I decided to see if the seeds would germinate, so I squished them out of the sticky pulp, wiped the goopy seeds onto some potting soil, and put them under the misters in our propagation greenhouse. Within a week or two, the seeds started to germinate.

The seedlings seemed to stay in the cotyledon stage FOREVER, but eventually I started to see tiny stems poking through.

Almost 4 months later, they're starting to show their curly growth habit.

And I'm extremely excited to see that they've started to grow tiny side shoots at the base of the main stem. I recently moved these from the propagation house (lower light, higher humidity), into one of our production greenhouses (higher light, lower humidity). Here's hoping the higher light levels will jump-start their growth. I would really like to get these bulked up enough to offer them at our plant sale in May.

The Last of My Seed Orders Has Arrived!

We spend January furiously ordering plants and seeds for the upcoming year. I just received the last of my seed orders the other day, this packet of Solanum atropurpureum. I hunted high and low to find this seed and eventually found a Canadian company, Urban Harvest, that carried it. They were nice enough to give me a reduced shipping rate since I ordered a single packet.

This variety will be grown for our "Weird and Wonderful" garden, a themed garden I am curating this year. It will be showcased along side approximately 40 other oddball varieties (I'll elaborate in other posts). This quirky plant, also known as Malevolence, forms a small shrub with dark purple stems covered in long spines. It forms small, eggplant-like, poisonous fruit. I'm really looking forward to growing this for the first time, although the common name alone gives me a sense of foreboding!