Winter continues!! Today we have finally squeaked above the freezing point for the first time in a long time and the sun shone. I wanted to stay outside and prune the Grapes or the Crab Apple but the snow was too deep to get to them. My large Loblaw’s container that lights up and changes colour is staying white because the solar collector is somewhere, way under the snow. The main chore this week is to empty my seed storage box and sort out what I have. Many types of seeds will stay viable for years. Tomato seeds that are ten years old seem to germinate as well as fresh ones, a bit of nature that fascinates and mystifies me. Parsnip seed that is two years old is essentially useless. Explain that difference if you can? To keep my germination success rate, as high as possible, it is my habit to toss out any seed, with a few rare exceptions, that is two years old. All of my seed packets get date stamped when I receive them and this week I will toss any that have a 2012 stamp on them. When that is done I will finish my orders of new seeds for this year. The Begonias have germinated very well but the Onions are really the first items in the long list of seeds that will come to the germination table over the next few weeks. Onion seeds have quite a long viability so I may sow some old ones if I haven’t got around to ordering the new ones soon enough.




In the solarium where the part time houseplants are wintering, things are changing. The bright yellow Cymbium Orchids have been putting on a marvelous display for several weeks have now, suddenly decided, that their time was up. As they rapidly turn a rich brown colour they are being replaced by the long stalks of the white Cymbidiums. They will probably stay in bloom until they find their way outside in May. A curious disaster is happening in one corner. A large pot of Oncidium Orchids that has bloomed, late winter, for a couple of years has started to put out two long bloom spikes. I noticed this week that both of those spikes have become soft and rotted near their base and the whole stalk has fallen over and withered. I’m at a loss as to the cause of this disaster as I don’t think that I have done anything different this year than in others. They are close to the sliding glass door and maybe they have had a blast of some of that very cold air that blew through that door some days this winter. More research is required. Why is most of my research, to find out why a disaster has happened, rather than earlier to try and prevent disasters?