Mom wanted to go to Home depot today to get what she described as "cheap flats of plants to fill in" (not that such things still exist, as I could have told her, at this point, the plants at Home Depot cost pretty much the same per unit as at any of the nurseries (which also tend to have wider selections and healthier plants.)
Didn't see a lot of catch my eye (natch) but I did manage to scrounge up a few things. one Petunia with some interesting white spots at the folds in the corolla, some marigolds with a nice orange edged red look, some more marigolds I HOPE are yellow (ONE is, the one that was in flower, but as the other five are all still in bud, and EVERY other marigold they had was orange, red, or some combination of the two, I don't have deep hopes of the rest being yellow), two Zulu daisies, and a canna lily with an interesting red and yellow streak (I hope it's as fecund as the ones in the planters in Manhattan, then I'll have plenty of seed to make more of them...….or load my blunderbuss! (there is a reason the wild form of Canna lily is called "Indian shot"; loaded into an appropriate firearm, those seeds really CAN function as buckshot. Pirates used to use them when lead was in short supply.
I am probably going to stop by there again on Friday. Not to buy more plants.... to raid the parking lot! As we were turning out, I saw a small patch of unusually large field pansies (generally considered a weed, but I actually think they are pretty and would LIKE to have them growing on my property. So I'll probably swing back and grab a few plants while I can (I'd prefer to wait a bit and simply collect seed, but, once the flowers are gone, I'll have no way of seeing where they are and would prefer not to have to wander around a pretty big parking lot going from little dirt island to little dirt island all day.) Maybe if I can get these to mix with my other source (the burlap around the tree bases at Rosedale nursery) I can get some hybrid vigor going.
I have by now eaten a few of the mangosteens. They told the truth, they are a lot better fresh than frozen and re-thawed. The pits are in a wet paper towel at the moment waiting for planting (I can set up the peat pellets in a jiffy, but it turns out that, when fresh, it is a LOT harder to get the fruit remnants off of the seeds, they stick much further. And if I try and plant them with the fruit remnants still on them, I'm just ASKING for mold to kill all of them.)
As for the other sowed things, the Borneo Jungle cukes and sunflowers have already reached top off the box size. Look like I've got 15-16 cukes and 8 sunflowers to work with. I WAS going to give them some time in the cold frame, but, as they have already passed the stage where the critters will want to much on them (which is why I started them indoors in the first place) it probably makes more sense just to put them directly into the ground.
The Russian Netted Cukes are sprouted, but not yet at the "pop the top" transfer phase.
My dove tree seeds all rotted, which really pisses me off as not only were they fairly fresh, but I got them from Rarepalmtrees in Germany, which is supposed to be a major, professional company on the level of B&T world seeds (and cost a bloody fortune to get anything from). They already screwed me over on the last order (if they couldn't get the phyto, they should have contacted me, told me what they needed to get it, and then given me the option of canceling the order, not send it without the phyto knowing customs would seize and destroy it. And they DEFINITELY had no right to pocket the 25 euros I paid them FOR the phyto if no phyto was ever requested or issued.) If, on top of that, the seed they are sending is actually often already dead, maybe it isn't worth trying for that small seed lot import permit to start using them again.
