They are beautiful! We won’t be seeing any flowers where I am for a good long while, and mine are never a patch on rq’s -- she has garden magic.
Mak, acolyte to Faroresays
@Caine
Indeed! They’re just… so tiny and delicate and velvety, and that soft blue with the little yellow centers against all that yellow-green uuugh. I didn’t expect this flower out of all the others to evoke this reaction, but there it is.
Around here, there’s flowers year ’round (though they tend to shuffle around a bit with the seasons), but the familiar ones that I really like don’t grow down here, and I miss them a lot. Sometimes I’ll sneak a few from up north, though. *coughdandelions* Right now I’m trying to figure out how to get daffodils to bloom.
jazzletsays
You could try giving the daffodils an artificial winter by putting them in the fridge for a couple of months …
I love dandelions! Every year, at winter’s end, I wait until the first dandelion pops up. Makes my day. Daffodils…aren’t they from bulbs? Hmm, reading the wiki, you might have to wait a while before they flower.
I don’t know, I’m hopeless with flowers. I’m just lucky the person who owned the house before planted a bunch of stuff. :D
Mak, acolyte to Faroresays
@jazzlet
Yup, that’s the game plan so far. I put some in a pot and threw them in the crisper last year, but they ended up sprouting on me in about February and I had to take them out. Got some nice foliage, but no blooms that year. Though they were forced bulbs from the year prior, so I can’t tell if they didn’t chill long enough, or if they were still regenerating from being forced. Probably a little of both. I’m gonna try it without the dirt this time and see if they sleep properly.
@Caine
Dandelions are such underappreciated little babies, itty golden sundrops, I love them so. And if you wait ’til after the first frost, their leaves have no bitterness in them and are good to eat! The leaves grown before their first flowers are tasty, too, but take a bit more timing. (Sometimes you can get a second chance when the first flowers have gone to seed and sprouted new ones. I always test for bitterness before picking from a plant. After that it becomes more of a crapshoot since there’s mature plants everywhere.)
The winters here are too dry, and combined with the sand we have for soil, they simply do not survive, except in sod yards that are watered regularly--I think the first ones I ever saw in this neighborhood appeared next to the drive-thru of our McDonalds. I stole some seeds and grew them in pots, and they do pretty well that way, as long as I remember to water them. Bit of a plus, as it keeps them from escaping and naturalizing… though one did accidentally escape into the neighbor’s yard, where they water their yards every night, and I had to sneak over while they weren’t home and dig it up. XD
Daffodils are indeed from bulbs. Typically you plant them in the fall and the cold of the winter helps them bloom in the spring, but the weather here almost never gets below 50-60, which isn’t nearly cold enough. Hence @jazzlet’s tip about the fridge. At least there’s a small supply of forced bulbs in the stores around spring if these fail, but I always feel sorry for them, haha. And it’s much cheaper nicer to be able to plant your own.
jazzletsays
That’s how I’d expect forced bulbs to behave, when I’ve had them they take a year to recover in the garden before flowering the next year. I think you should have better luck this time, hope so!
rqsays
Forget-me-nots are one of my favourite flowers since forever ago. I lucked out on the background sunshine with these ones, we were coming off the tail-end of a long, odd winter (we don’t usually get snow in May, but there it is), but there they all were, these and plenty others, coming up despite everything.
AaaaAAA! They’re so beautiful I want to cry.
They are beautiful! We won’t be seeing any flowers where I am for a good long while, and mine are never a patch on rq’s -- she has garden magic.
@Caine
Indeed! They’re just… so tiny and delicate and velvety, and that soft blue with the little yellow centers against all that yellow-green uuugh. I didn’t expect this flower out of all the others to evoke this reaction, but there it is.
Around here, there’s flowers year ’round (though they tend to shuffle around a bit with the seasons), but the familiar ones that I really like don’t grow down here, and I miss them a lot. Sometimes I’ll sneak a few from up north, though. *coughdandelions* Right now I’m trying to figure out how to get daffodils to bloom.
You could try giving the daffodils an artificial winter by putting them in the fridge for a couple of months …
I love dandelions! Every year, at winter’s end, I wait until the first dandelion pops up. Makes my day. Daffodils…aren’t they from bulbs? Hmm, reading the wiki, you might have to wait a while before they flower.
I don’t know, I’m hopeless with flowers. I’m just lucky the person who owned the house before planted a bunch of stuff. :D
@jazzlet
Yup, that’s the game plan so far. I put some in a pot and threw them in the crisper last year, but they ended up sprouting on me in about February and I had to take them out. Got some nice foliage, but no blooms that year. Though they were forced bulbs from the year prior, so I can’t tell if they didn’t chill long enough, or if they were still regenerating from being forced. Probably a little of both. I’m gonna try it without the dirt this time and see if they sleep properly.
@Caine
Dandelions are such underappreciated little babies, itty golden sundrops, I love them so. And if you wait ’til after the first frost, their leaves have no bitterness in them and are good to eat! The leaves grown before their first flowers are tasty, too, but take a bit more timing. (Sometimes you can get a second chance when the first flowers have gone to seed and sprouted new ones. I always test for bitterness before picking from a plant. After that it becomes more of a crapshoot since there’s mature plants everywhere.)
The winters here are too dry, and combined with the sand we have for soil, they simply do not survive, except in sod yards that are watered regularly--I think the first ones I ever saw in this neighborhood appeared next to the drive-thru of our McDonalds. I stole some seeds and grew them in pots, and they do pretty well that way, as long as I remember to water them. Bit of a plus, as it keeps them from escaping and naturalizing… though one did accidentally escape into the neighbor’s yard, where they water their yards every night, and I had to sneak over while they weren’t home and dig it up. XD
Daffodils are indeed from bulbs. Typically you plant them in the fall and the cold of the winter helps them bloom in the spring, but the weather here almost never gets below 50-60, which isn’t nearly cold enough. Hence @jazzlet’s tip about the fridge. At least there’s a small supply of forced bulbs in the stores around spring if these fail, but I always feel sorry for them, haha. And it’s much
cheapernicer to be able to plant your own.That’s how I’d expect forced bulbs to behave, when I’ve had them they take a year to recover in the garden before flowering the next year. I think you should have better luck this time, hope so!
Forget-me-nots are one of my favourite flowers since forever ago. I lucked out on the background sunshine with these ones, we were coming off the tail-end of a long, odd winter (we don’t usually get snow in May, but there it is), but there they all were, these and plenty others, coming up despite everything.