04/20/2026
Earlier I posted a happy story about a pack of seeds, but there's also a sad one. Or perhaps a cautionary tale. Don't buy these Valley Greene seeds like I did when I saw them at Mardens. I shouldn't a bought it when I found it, because about 4 seeds sprouted out of four packages of 150 seeds each. But they only cost 4 packs for $1.00. Turns out, that was many times what they were worth. Strange because marigold is among the easier plants to grow and start from seeds. I normally don't buy hardware store and big box store seeds, it's usually Johnny's, or Fedco. Pine tree if you only want a small amount of something special. But I look at the racks, to say, I got that one, or say, why would anyone want to plant that! A perennial that takes 6 weeks to sprout and you wouldn't get any flowers out of it for two years. If it worked at all, in this non-temperate zone. Today is rainy cold and miserable, but not unexpected. Greenhouses have to be kept at 60 degrees plus, even if it's snowing. 20,000 cubic feet of warm air separated from winter by two sheets of plastic. Piece of cake. Fortunately, we've invested in professional stuff, tonight a greenhouse heater will use the equivalent of 5 or 6 bbq size tankfulls of propane. And I have two of those. Plus several smaller heaters for the smaller buildings, that haven't started to be heated yet. But will be in a couple days so hope it warms up! I suppose I could stop trying to heat sprouting seeds and raise tiny one inch plants to seedling stage, and just have a truck show up May first with a bunch of proven winners and put those on the shelf. That's what all the other places do. But at what cost? Since it was rainy, I went to Broadway garden today driving back from Mardens where I saw the seeds that don't grow (lol) so I stopped to snoop around. They want $7.59 for one petunia in a "proven winners" labeled pot. As usual, there is also the small "retail ready" six-pack of many varieties for $4.99 and that has not changed since last year, despite or considering the inflation. I could get those, but I don't like them, they don't have enough growing medium and will get too dried out or worse, over watered, too easily. I'll spend the 49 cents more it takes to grow a healthy, durable product and still compete. Of course, you need to have the volume to get away with that. So if you like what you see here, tell someone. As long as they don't want Mexican Zinnias. Just kidding. I already got a bunch of those going pretty well. It's not easy starting Mexican hot desert seedlings in Maine winter. But someone's got to do it. And those are Johnny's and even seeds several years old, still all sprout. So I don't know what happened with those Mardens seeds. I guess there's a reason why they're there, and sometimes those reasons matter.
