Hardy perennials

[igenlode]

The seedling date palms (germinated from date stones that sprouted) that got accidentally forgotten in their pots at the bottom of the garden over the winter turn out to have survived the frost and snow perfectly well.
According to the Web, date palms are actually hardy down to -8C -- possibly because they live in deserts which get extremely cold at night?

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The alyssum on my windowsill overwintered happily and is now coming into bloom again; I got rid of the large old plants, so these are mostly the ones that hadn't reached any great size by last autumn. Oddly enough, I had one or two blossoms on the Virginia stocks through the winter (there are currently two, but obviously not the same two as a few months ago). I split some of the dried seed pods and scattered the seed back over the tray, so I'm hoping that the seedlings which are coming up now are second-generation stocks. They may of course be random weeds!

The tobacco-plants made it through the winter, to my surprise, and are now starting to grow again. The tallest one has flower buds. Unsurprisingly, the basil died. The tips of the fennel that touched the glass also died, but the sections further away from the window survived and are now sprouting fresh fern-leaves. The spiky-leaved thing and the presumed yarrow both died this winter without ever coming into identifiable flower (assuming they were actually flowering plants in the first place), and the nightshade died after setting its berries -- presumably in the end I shall have nothing but a tray of perennial alyssum again and shall have to restart.

Comments

[sallymn]

They all sound lovely :)

[watervole]

Well done the alyssum. I generally regard it as an annual. Likewise tobacco plants.

Basil is very tender - I share your lack of surprise. I do love the flavour though.

[igenlode]

I assume the tobacco plants will die once they've managed to flower -- alyssum seems to enjoy itself enormously on my windowsill for some reason, although it just looks like a patch of weeds with white domed heads growing out of it!

[butterflydreaming]

I'm such a city girl. It never occurred to me that date seeds mighy sprout if planted. (I think I tend to forget seeds are... seeds.) I work at a place, now, that is decorated with only edible plants. If we could get some date sprouts to grow, they would fit right in.

[igenlode]

Lots of things sprout quite spontaneously and undesirably in the larder at this time of year, and can be planted as an alternative to throwing them away: carrot tops, potatoes, onions and garlic, for example. For every clove of garlic that you plant, you get back a whole head in the autumn when the foliage dies down (if you're lucky -- they'll be smaller than the commercially-grown ones, though).

Tomato and squash seeds sprout on the compost heap if given half a chance, and flourish mightily, though they never seem to fruit. You can plant the seeds from chillis and grow them very successfully on the windowsill -- it doesn't matter if the individual fruits are small as you only need one per dish anyway.

You can also germinate lemon seeds and grow them on for a few years, though the chances of getting a lemon tree out of it at the end are tiny...

[butterflydreaming]

For a while I was saving my fruit seeds and my pepper seeds. Last year I tried planting them. But it turned out to be a such a hot summer for us that they were anhilated. Part if that is that I really have minimal growing skills! Maybe if I had covered them; peppers, after all, must like hot weather somewhat.

I'm both proud and worried (for them) of the rosemary cuttings I was able to get growing roots.

[igenlode]

A couple of years ago I planted out some apple pips that started to germinate while inside the apple -- it wasn't terribly successful. I can't remember if those seedling saplings ever did get planted out into clear ground, or if they all died of mildew in the end :-(