The Great Greenhouse Project, Part 2

We Start a Few More Seeds and the Mystery is Solved!

It came time to start the second round of seed varieties – this time, quite a few tomato and eggplant varieties. I was on more familiar ground now. I had often started these same plants at home! Once again, I got a few other volunteers to come help and we got another bunch of seeds potted up. Spring was warming up a bit, and we nearly always have sun here, so I committed to checking in daily.

These seedlings were quite a bit larger than the osteospermum when they first came up, but they didn’t seem to be coming up in the numbers I expected them to. And sure enough, they didn’t get much larger, and after awhile, it seemed they’d disappeared. I was panicking a bit….reading up on damping off disease, something I knew was supposed to be a problem in greenhouse culture. But I wasn’t seeing the pinching at the bottom of the seedlings. I wasn’t seeing…well anything! But I diligently stopped by each day to water and and encourage the little seeds.

I had extras of the tomato and eggplant seeds, so I asked a few volunteers to help me replant. We dumped the old six pot soil into bins and then redistributed the soil before planting the new seeds (we were very careful to only use “old” soil from the same varieties to plant the new seeds…just in case!).

 

The Great Greenhouse Project, Part 1

We Meet the Greenhouse and Start a Few Seeds

Around this time last year, I volunteered to start 2011 All America Selections seeds for the Colorado Springs Horticultural Art Society (HAS). HAS maintains a public demonstration garden in Monument Valley Park and has participated in the All America Selections program for years. We lost our gardener of many years and were in the process of hiring another, so someone else needed to step up and take care of the seed starting.

I was excited when I learned I was going to be able to use the historic greenhouse that General Palmer had moved to Monument Valley Park over one hundred years ago. It was adjacent to his office where he oversaw the construction of the park, which he would give to the city in 1907. A half-sunken model, the tables and walkways are below ground with the glass cover starting at ground level. There’s a bougainvillea growing (and blooming!) inside that was established in the greenhouse ground in the 1930′s! The greenhouse is now part of a small complex of greenhouses that belongs to Colorado Springs Parks and Recreation Department. Because of deep budget cuts, the greenhouse complex had lain fallow for the previous year (possibly longer).