Some green to beat the winter blues

Nothing like some 10-below weather to make a person get spring fever. As such, I recently assembled the greenhouse in my conservatory and started some perennials.

I bought some really cheap seeds from the aptly named website, cheapseeds.com. They came fast and there's more than I'll use in my lifetime. I've been thinking about planting way more than I need and selling some seedlings, but that sounds like work. So I'll probably plant way more than I need and give them away to anyone who wants some.

This week I started purple coneflowers, blanket flowers (aka gaillardia) and foxglove.

I also ordered some black-eyed Susan seeds without realizing they are seeds you need to cold propagate. I always screw that up and don't have the patience or memory for it. I've tried it a couple times with other seeds, put them in a freezer bag of soil, throw them in the crisper of my refrigerator in the garage and forget about them until about July when I open the drawer and find a mushy mess. According to what I've read, the BES seeds need propagated for five months before planting! So if anyone would like 26,000 BES seeds, hit me up.

In that order, I received 23,000 foxglove seeds, 2,000 blanketflower seeds and 1,200 coneflower seeds for $17 and free shipping. Pretty good deal.

I really like purple coneflowers and want more of them. One of my favorite plants gets about 2 1/2 feet tall and is awesome. I'd like to move it, because a nearby bush is putting the squeeze on it, but don't want to mess it up. We'll see.

The blanketflowers (which I've always called gaillardia until now) I've had for a few years basically resemble small sunflower heads, which makes sense since they are a genus of the sunflower family. But, unlike sunflowers, they only get about 2 feet high with 3-inch blossoms.

Foxglove are new to me, but they looked good on the website. However, it seems they get pretty tall which is often a limiting factor in my area as Mr. Wind likes to howl through our little canyon and wreak havoc.. We shall see.

I also planted some basil a couple weeks ago, but I tend to grow that year round anyway. Wifey is a pesto-making machine, so I always try to keep a couple plants going for her. Happy wife, happy life.