The Echo Garden

Sweet peas were the first seeds ever started over here at the Echo Garden. West Coast Seeds sells a huge assortment of them, and after a quick round of eeny-meeny-miny-moe, I settled on the "Mammoth Blend." The day I planted them (March 11), a master gardener, ignorant of my seed starts, informed me that if I was planning to transplant month old peas and sweet peas outside, now was the time to do it. Having hours old plants didn't jive with that advice. I took the lesson of my son's beloved Pete the Cat books to heart. Did Pete cry? Goodness no! And neither did I. This was life on the learning curve. Failure happens. I carried on, with hope that maybe it would all work out after all. The sweet pea seeds were planted one per cell in a soilless seed starting mix. Ten of twelve sprouted (83%), but I hoped in vain that a couple more would come up. Next time, I'll plant two per cell and remove the weaker sprout. Early watering was done via a squirt bottle....

Marigolds are one of my favourite annuals. They seemed pretty hard to kill in my garden last year, and bloomed from the time I planted them until the frost finally killed them in November. Deadheading, a little water, and a little food are all these little beauties need to thrive. The internet told me not to feed them at all. My mother suggested that I ought to feed them a little. Mom was right. Small marigolds handled periodic rain quite well. The smaller orange flowers above seemed to fare well in my coastal garden. On the other hand, the large, puffy, yellow flowers of the "Aztec Gold" variety held onto rain water, stayed damp, and went moldy very quickly. Since these marigolds have to live in a temperate rainforest (albeit with some decent sunny stretches in summer), I chose to skip the seeds of large, fully double flowers in favour of the more modest Brocade mix. Aztec Gold on sunny days, but Aztec Mold after rain. The seeds were planted in seed st...