Gardening indoors

A winter garden usually means something a little fancier than my shop light setup that sits in the back part of the garage.  Hellebores, evergreens and snowdrops could fill a corner of an outdoor winter garden, a nice glass conservatory planted with camellias and clivias would be a perfect spot for a January morning cup of coffee,  even a couple southern windows with a flowering lemon tree and a couple amaryllis is nice….. but this is all I’ve got.  It’s better than nothing.

The cyclamens love the cooler temperatures of the garage.  I keep some of my babies here, the ones that I didn’t get around to planting out or ones that I wanted to “keep close” for another year.   Right now the cyclamen coum are blooming.  Here’s one grown from  Green Ice Nursery seed.  The mother plant was collected in Russia, and I think it’s cool that my little plants are only one generation removed from the Russian wilderness.

Last year’s Cyclamen coum seedlings

Seedlings for the next generation of Cyclamen hederifolium are also coming along in the winter garden.  They were sown last winter, didn’t get enough of the cold they wanted, sat all summer and then finally sprouted in the fall.  I could have left them outside but they take up barely any space and I can check up on their progress any time I want.

Various hardy cyclamen seedlings