Have you gotten all your seed catalogs ? I think all mine have come in the mail. I’ve been pouring over some of them at work and got my seed orders done last week. Did them online, which is not my favorite way to do them but you get results fast. 3 of my 4 orders have come already. Ordered on Tuesday and received one company’s shipment by Monday.
I grow a lot of annuals for one of my gardens at work at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens. That garden will have a Centennial Garden theme this year, so I was looking for varieties that were old, preferably from 1907 or before to showcase varieties that people would be using back then. One catalog with lots of heirloom varieities is Select Seeds. They’re online at www.selectseeds.com. It has lots of old fashoned favorites plus unusual flowers.
One variety that I ordered is Cosmos ‘Double Click’. It’s a double petaled cosmos in pink,crimson and white. Some of the flowers look very full. I think visitors will like it. I also ordered Heliotrope ‘Marine’. it has dark purple flowers with a “baby powder’ scent. Though it says it can be 2 ft tall, it’s not been much over 1 ft in my garden in the past. Probably not the right conditions for it.
One flower that’s not well known is the annual phlox. Only a foot or so tall with sprays of tubular flowers that are almost like the tall garden phlox that we’re more familiar with. A light pink variety with a dark pink eye is called ‘Brilliant’. Another one is an heirloom from before 1889 with pale yellow flowers called ‘Isabellina’. They will bloom mid-summer into September.
I’m trying Sweet Peas for the first time. From what I’ve read they won’t like our hot humid Michigan summer, but since they’re started in early,early spring I should get blooms in late spring and early summer. The seeds can be planted before the frost is out of the ground! They will need some support. One varieity is 6 ft tall. The seeds have to be nicked or soaked for 12 hours. Sweet Peas don’t like acid soil which means my gardens at work are okay but I wouldn’t be able to grow them at home in Petersburg. I’m looking forward to some fragrant beauties.
I ordered over 40 different varieities just from the Select Seeds company. In another blog I’ll tell you how I start all these seeds. It’s going to be a busy spring!
Bye for now, Judy