Update on my grow pole garden

I stacked all my sweet williams just out side the door of my new house addition. The old set of house steps makes a handy place to put them.

Added some more stacks today using the old small platforms. This is the view out the window of the new addition.

What will you put in all those pots Jay?

I have alyssum scattered around on some of the poles for a little early color.......mostly white bought at the nursery......but I have alyssum of all colors germinated and will be ready to transplant in a few days. Actually, I am going to just poke alyssum in hither and yon, even in the sites with some other flower growing there. Also gonna poke it around the edges of some nursery containers with something bigger in the middle of the container. In 5 years time, I have accumulated a lot of nursery containers and if I get too many plants for the poles, they will go in the nursery containers. I cram lots of plants into a 4 or 5 gallon nursery pot and surprisingly enough, they usually grow good there. Can you tell I don't know what I'm doing?? But if something works, I have learned something, and its all fun anyway.

I have a little over one hundred osteospermums germinated and growing. One four pot pole has 5 osteo seed planted per site. Most of them have germinated and thats 80 plants if they all germinate and get transplanted to other poles. That will fill up five 4 pot poles right there plus approximately 30 other osteo's that germinated earlier and are "poled" and growing. So right there is enough plants for 7 poles.

Today I planted pretty heavy in Dwarf double mixed scabiosa and Persian Jewels Love-in-a-Mist. Deer dont bother those so I will probably put lots of them in the flower beds out in the front yard and the rest scattered and splattered on the poles. Those two type flowers and batchelor buttons and zinnias and certain marigolds can be succession planted about every 3 to 4 weeks all summer long for continous bloom. Not only that but if they are kept dead-headed, they will just keep on blooming right up untill frost.

I planted nemesia, nemophilia, and convovulus way too soon and our erratic spring weather wiped out most of them but I do have some on the poles and growing. You win some and you lose some. :-) I have quit fooling around with propagating under lights and trying to get so far ahead of the season after I found out that plants direct seeded after frosts usually catch up to the ones I planted under lights. I think the plants are much stronger when they pop up and have to go eye ball to eye ball with Father Sun and Mother Nature. Plus, these grow poles are just great for seed starting. Us folks in the southern states have a long enough growing season without working so hard to get ahead of mother nature.

So I figger I will have enough flowers to play with on the poles and some overflow for nursery containers. Now that we have had some good days of sunshine, things are a-popping around here. Are you past the frost danger in your area?

Gotta send a picture. I planted ten little fressia bulbs in a four pot pole about the last of Feburary. You can see one of them blooming here on the left and lots of buds ready to bloom. I had 6 extra sites on that pole so you can see a convovulus chugging along in that bottom pot. Up above the blooming fressia is another fressia and I have poked a little phlox plant in with it just to make sure I get my money's worth out of the water and fertilizer I feed that pole. Not that Im cheap or nothing like that.