When Things Start to Sprout

“I was Snow White, but I drifted,” claimed Mae West.  The Celts called this time of year luis, or rowan month, after the ash tree.  Anglo-Saxons, ever more prosaic and practical, regarded February as Sprote-kalemonabe, or sprout cabbage month.  Late January through February are indeed great months to start sprouting things from seeds, bulbs and cuttings.  Best of all, it keeps us out of the snowdrifts and preparing for the coming season. 

First though, a few supplies.  Clean plastic pots, scrubbing them of every last trace of previous occupants.  Even new ones (and the four to six-inch sizes are best) must be sterilized.  Use a quarter-cup of bleach in two gallons of water.  Allow to soak for 15 minutes, remove and stack individually to air and dry overnight.  Professional growing medium is the only way to go.  ‘Hortimix’ and ‘Promix’ are the best known of the “soil-less” mixes.  Once tried, few gardeners will ever again rely on the ritual of soil blends.  Rotting powders and gels are a wonderful aid, especially for those plants known to be “shy” to root cuttings.  Use fancy labels if you must.  Popsicle sticks work just as well and, being cheaper, free up funds with which to purchase more seeds and bulbs, requiring more labels…  The same is true of dibbers for making holes in the growing medium and other such gadgets.  A pencil works just fine.  Finally, if you are obsessed with pots dropping their filling from holes at the base, a single sheet of facial tissue takes care of that problem. 

Stem cuttings from many of the plants saved from the garden last fall can be rooted now.  Five cuttings to a four-inch pot works just fine: one in each corner and the last in the centre.  Geranium, fuchsia, bougainvilleas, hibiscus, browallia, impatiens and fibrous-rooted begonia will all yield plants perfect for planting out in May if propagated by cuttings now.  Also, try older herb plants being kept inside for culinary purposes.  Many of the commonest perennial forms –if much over four years old- are past their prime.  Take new cuttings of them in the manner described above. 

Suppress the urge to seed anything and everything at this time.  Almost everything is best left until March and even April, whether flower, herb or vegetable.  There are, however, some magnificent impatiens and fibrous-rooted begonias available from seed.  These are well worth trying and will produce plants at a fraction of the cost of those available later in garden centres.  Geranium seed is also often touted.  Hype notwithstanding, these have all the appeal of a politician’s promises.  Impatiens ad begonia seed is very, very fine.  A mere ounce of begonia seed will produce a quarter-million plants, give or take a few dozen.  Such seed is much more easily sown if mixed first with a few pinches of white cage bird “gravel” (which is actually sand).  Usually it is sufficient only to press firmly into the surface of the growing medium and not to cover the seed.

Finally, there are many summer-flowering bulbs that will produce an earlier display if started now in six-inch pots.  One example is tuberous begonias, both the pendulous forms for hanging baskets and the upright forms for bedding.  The curved side goes downwards while the flattened, slightly sunken side should be uppermost, right at soil level.  Whatever you do, don’t splash water into this hollow, or the bulb (well actually, it’s a tuber) will rot.  Canna lilies come in large and compact forms in a bewildering selection of flower and foliage colours.  They too may be started now, as may dahlias of an even greater number of forms. 

Joseph Heller, author of Catch 22, died just before Christmas past at the age of 75.  “I hate sports”, he said.  “I also hate gardening and walking.  I don’t go to movies or the theatre or watch television.  What I do like is lying down.”  Dying at 75?  Why, gardeners are just getting going at that age.  Oh well, back to the snow and -further to Miss West’s drift- consider what you would get if you crossed a snowman with a vampire.  The answer, to the delight of children of all ages, is frostbite.

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