chalyse said:
... and ... how do you get a bloom in seven months? Can you walk us through the life cycle of that seedling from sprout to bloom (rate of growth, care and feeding, amount of sun, temps, etc)? - I'm still waiting on a bloom from seeds planted in 2011, and we have 9 months of growing season ... and even if I started stored seed from the previous year during early spring I would miss getting blooms on all the EE, E, and EM's at the very least (too young at that point in the growing season...).
I took what Fred (spunky1) told me he does and basically do it the same. We set pods up until I think it's June 1st or maybe July 1st ( Fred's oldness is rubbing off on me
) and then wait for them to ripen. They take anywhere from 30-60 days to ripen so we set a cutoff date for this to happen so the seeds will be planted no later than Aug 1st. You can plant them any way you like but we plant them in the 72 hole seed trays. This is my setup
Then after about 6 weeks the seedlings will be transplanted into the beds, they need to be planted no later than Sept 15th for first year blooms
need to be transplanted
here is some photos of the growth of them in 2011/2012
Nov 30, 2011 I got them transplanted late due to moving the garden
February 19, 2012
March 4 and March 17, 2012 It's starting to warm up so faster growth in just a couple of weeks
March 4 and March 17
April 3, 2012
This is this past season. I did them different by planting in pots instead of ground
Jan- Feb- March
Jan- Feb- March
So we take the seed and plant no later than Aug 1st. I usually just plant straight from the pod but if I need to wait I will stick them in the fridge. Transplant at 6 weeks no later than Sept 15th and then let them grow. We do the same thing to the seedlings as we do the named cultivars as far as alfalfa, slow release, etc., the only thing we do differenct is fertilize with water soluble fertilizer weekly instead of every two weeks. We will start seeing blooms on some in March and more in April with a lot more in May. So that puts the early ones at about 7 months old. They are not in full sun when they are in the seed trays so they won't have to be watered several times a day but they are put in the sun to harden off before transplanting then they will be in full sun after that. We usually have mild winters 30s and 40s for the lows with some freezes thrown in and the highs can be 70s and 80s sometimes with it usually in the 60s and 70s so pretty much year round growing. The most growth throughout the winter/early spring is in March when the nights start warming up.
I hope this answers some questions.