Updates
The peas went outside a few days ago. As I expected the critters have already eaten about 20-30 of them, but since there are around 80 in the pot (and it really doesn't have room for more than 8-10 adult pea plants anyway) that is no big deal
Also planted the "vintels" in their outside pot ("vintels" are my nickname for a kind of seed I was pulling out of some Indian lentils over the winter in fairly large amounts. I call them that because, at this point (even after doing a test pot indoors) I can't tell if they are a kind of lentil or a kind of vetch (there are a lot of actual unimpeachable vetches mixed into the same bags, so it could be either. So "vintel" ("letch" after all, already means something ) since those were planted dry, they have, of course, not yet come up, we'll need a lot of rain for that.
I also dragged the garlic, rakkyo and mystery allium pots out of the garage where they had been overwintering. The garlic looks sort of mixed. What is there looks extremely healthy and green, but I could have sworn there were a lot more plants in that pot when I brought it down (and there are no gnawed fragments or divots in the soil, so if it was visited by rodents over the winter, they would have had to be rodents intelligent enough to tamp the soil back down flat after they were done digging. I also cannot help but notice that most of the healthy looking plants are coming from the fresh purchased cloves I added. my own much smaller rounds seem to be rather ailing and have set down few, if any roots. Look like they might have been so small they burned themselves out and ran out of juice over the winter. On the other hand they may not all be domestic plants. There ARE some
A. azuraneum plants in that pot too and I sowed it with a cocktail of wild allium seeds as well. Maybe the little plants are some of those (Guess ill find out come flowering time).
The Rakkyo looks as it always does at this point in the year, sort of droopy and hairy. Now that I know the life cycle, maybe I'll get luck and a few of them will flower.
The Mystery is a mystery, of course (I bought it off a vegetable stand in Chinatown, so it is clearly edible, but that's all I know at this point).
Finally there is the matter of the pansies. The first batch I bought did not do so well, they really suffered while waiting inside. Of the 22 plants, only 7 lived long enough to be planted and of those only 1 was one of the ones I bought the groupings for. So today, I went hunting again and managed to pick up 5 more plants (one since one four pack) those went in immediately so they should be good. Below are pictures of two (the one I bought the fourpack for, and the single
Note that the second one is NOT ruffled (as is common); the petals have ACTUAL scalloping along the edges. Never seen that before.
