Impatience

If there is one thing that has marked my acquisition of the plants that will go into the greenhouse this season, it is impatience. I was trying to start seeds in September! It was for herbs that could be used year-round — rosemary, thyme, peppermint and parsley — but still. I started ordering seeds and plants in December. I just didn't think the local garden centers would have what I wanted to plant at the appropriate time of year, early April, in other words NOW.

Seed starting has been a lot of time and effort, and not everything has worked. I have gotten some results in the garage under grow lights, but coleus and basil have been exceptions. I have tried multiple times with them and get the seeds to sprout, but they never thrive. Now I'm trying to start seeds on a heat mat in the greenhouse, coleus and basil included. I'm hoping natural sunlight gets them past the sprout stage.

I have acquired a lot of succulents this winter and have killed very few (of note, six Sempervivums), but even with them I wonder when some of them are going to start, you know, growing. The four Semps that survived the freeze are turning a little bit greener, but they haven't gotten any bigger.

Not all of the garden centers in the Billings area are open yet, but I took a trip today anyway to find what I could find. I started at Gainan's just to see where they were on the Supertunia front. I wasn't going to buy any because I'm getting my Proven Winners Direct shipment tomorrow. Gainan's is one reason I don't place confidence in the local retailers. I didn't see Supertunia individual pots or in baskets, but they did have baskets with calibrachoas which I believe were Proven Winners. There were two price points for the baskets, $90 and $140. They were the same size, so I guess the difference was the plant selection. When I saw that I became more secure in my plan to order Supertunias from Michigan and make my own baskets.

As I have said before, it drives me nuts that Gainan's and others have nice-looking succulents and don't bother to have ID tags on most of them. But I did spot a four-stemmed succulent in a 3" pot that I was fairly sure was either a Graptopetalum paraguayense 'Ghost' or something closely related. My order from Succulents Depot includes several sedums that I want to put in hanging pots, and I think a long-stemmed, branching 'Ghost' would be a good addition to the pots. I thought it reasonably priced at $6 even if the ID was just a semi-educated guess. The cashier, apparently not believing that anyone could get out of Gainan's for only $6, tried to charge me $12. I convinced her of the error of her ways and got it for the correct price. It is shown in this snapshot with a small variety bowl from Home Depot.

The Home Depot bowl was back to its regular price of $8, versus the $6 I got on sale a couple weeks ago. I got this one mainly for the Crassula on the left in the image, which I believe is Gollum. There's also a dark Echeveria (probably) and several thick-leaved somethings, but the impulse purchase was based on the Gollum. It resembles the Crassula Ogre Ears I got in the previous Home Depot bowl, but there are enough differences that I'm confident in the ID. I'll pot up the Gollum and distribute the others to different bowls.

Walmart and Lowe's also had some similar variety bowls, but Walmart's were rather sad-looking and Lowe's were $14. There was an interesting-looking dark sedum at Lowe's, but it had bits of white fuzz on it. I don't know if I have ever seen a mealybug, but maybe I did at Lowe's today. I have enough aphids; I don't need a new pest.

Also at Home Depot, I got this Sempervivum calcareum. It seems to be a fairly standard burgundy-tipped species, but the reason I got it is there are seven offsets forming. There are varieties within this species, but the plant pot did not identify include any additional information. When I potted it up and put it on the shelf next to the winter survivors, that's when I really noticed that the others have not grown this spring.

My final garden center stop was Nana's Bloomers near Laurel, MT. We've been driving past it on our way to Billings for years and never went in. During my recent plant acquisition activities, it was closed for the season. It opened a few days ago, and my reaction to finally going inside was "Whoa!" One of the first things I saw was tables and tables of coleus. As I said, I've been having trouble starting them from seed, and my Supertunia order includes a $12 coleus just so I would have ONE. Nana was selling them for $7. In a different building they had four-packs of smaller coleus. There weren't quite as many varieties and I'm not sure of the price.

In the same greenhouse as the bigger coleus, they had a very small section devoted to succulents. Alas, most of them were not tagged, but they had some very nice plants that were easy to identify as Echeveria 'Topsy Turvy,' $7 for a 4-inch pot. 'Topsy Turvy' was the centerpiece of the the Succulents Depot order which will ship any day now (I hope). I ordered two for $4.15 each, but they are smaller than what I saw today. (One of Nana's pots had two medium-sized plants instead of one big one.) Maybe that is a wash. But then there were the succulents that did have ID tags, the Sempervivum Chick Charms, $7 each. I paid about $12 each for two individual pots at Mountain Crest. I saved a bit by getting the trio ('Cosmic Candy, Gold Nugget, Appletini) for $14, but Nana's had about eight 'Cosmic Candy' pots that were 10 times better than what I potted up this week after splitting up the trio. They had several 'Gold Nugget' pots that were a bit better than what I ended up with after the split. To add to my collection, I decided to get a 'Powdered Pastry' because I have grown partial to Semps that have webbing and/or lots of cilia. And, like the calcareum, it has a lot of offsets.

If I had known Nana had 'Topsy Turvy' and these Semps, if I had been more patient, my online ordering history would be different. But anyway. What really hit me during my visit to Nana's was the other buildings. I just planted seed-starter 6-cells with alyssum, coleus, marigold, marjoram, tomatoes, stevia, basil and broccoli. I could have gotten all of these (except maybe the stevia) today at Nana's. Their coleus look great; my previous attempts have topped out at a 1/4 inch. As a plant propagator, I'm having an existential crisis. We are barely into this season, and already I'm sure there will be a lot fewer seed starting attempts in the garage next winter and a lot more money spent at Nana's next April.

Nana's had some Proven Winners varieties, but no Supertunias that I could find. They did have the competing Wave petunias. It's just trivia at this point pending receipt of my order tomorrow, but it would be nice to know for next year. I'll visit at least once more in a few weeks even if I don't really need anything. I'm thinking my propagating next winter will include Supertunia cuttings, the usual Cuban Oregano, aloe, and rosemary, and not much else. I'll need the room for my exploding succulent collection, most of which will not overwinter in the greenhouse.