Friday, October 24, 2014

Gerbera Dasies Taking their Sweet Time


Nursery grown Gerbera


This a healthy and rich looking Gebera daisy that I bought from Green Circle Growers and transplanted into my Deegan magic soil. The leaves are lush and the petals are wide and plentiful. Geberas are about $4.00 a piece so it adds up.

It is a tradition of mine to buy three or four and plant them in the same large flower pot and place them on the front porch for my wife Nancy to enjoy. She loves the gerbera daisies because they have rich green foilage and bright and beautiful pastel blooms. While I purchased a few for potting up this year  I  thought I would like try growing my own. I learned  on line quickly that the seeds are hard to find. after extensive searching I finally found a source and bought 100 seeds.

Home Grown Gerbera Blooms

The seeds took forever to germinate and grew painfully slow. To the point that I had to put them into the basement under grow lights as the danger of frost came early this year. Iam  showing a few pictures of the Gerberas that I grew. They tend to have slim petals and not as full a bloom. They almost look more like traditional daisies than Gerberas. I have the seed company name somewhere and I am thinking of writing them a letter and pehaps including pictures.

This bloom to the left looks thicker than it is because this is a close up. 
 

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Waking up my Geraniums

It is that time of the year when my dormant geraniums are coaxed out of their sleep to begin sprouting leaves and blooms. Actually, it has been over 45 days since I planted some of the geranium plants that I placed in a plastic garbage bag last Fall. Right before the frost hit last October I dried out at least two dozen strong specimens before putting them in my storeroom to go to sleep for a few months.
What you see on this page are a few plants that sprang back to life after being dormant for at least three months. The  geranium below is a variegated variety that is a beautiful pink color. The other plant you are looking at has rich dark green leaves and I believe this is my hot pink variety.

I started some ivy geranium cuttings in January but I believe my watering was not consistent  and the severe cold caused too much temperature variation. Only one of them germinated.

Last year I grew over 20 Ivy geraniums from cuttings. I hope you experiment with  your own cuttings. Let me know if you have any questions about the amazing results you can have by propagating geraniums from cuttings.