Planting Flowers

W e are still waiting waiting waiting. Our homeowners insurance (HOI) is requiring that we have a contract in hand for the electrical service upgrade that our home needs before they will issue a policy. We will get a close date after the HOI policy is issued. The home buying process in New York has been a lesson in patience.

Despite the fact that our lives are in a holding pattern, M. and I did our first landscaping project. Spring has sprung in WNY, and she and I were anxious to plant flowers. We needed a project that we could start here in our rental, and take over to the new house. Summer is short here, and I was pretty sure that if we started our plants outside in June, they would not have enough time to grow and flower before the cold weather returned. We decided to go with flower seeds in newspaper cups.

1. Cut newspaper strips the full width of your newspaper and about 6″ high. Roll each strip around a wine bottle (or similar) leaving about 2″ of excess paper on the bottom.

2. Tuck the excess paper tightly into the depression on the bottom of the wine bottle. This will create the bottom of your newspaper cup.

3. Carefully slip the newspaper cup off of the bottle, and place it in container with high sides, and fill it with good potting soil. We used the plastic packaging from pre-washed, bulk greens as the holder for our newspaper cups. The container you use needs to hold water, so make sure you choose a container without holes. Also, the unfilled cups are rather fragile. It is best to make and fill one cup at a time rather than try to keep 6-8 newspaper cups from unraveling while you fill them with dirt. The dirt will make your cups sturdier. Tucking them close together will also increase their strength.

4. Plant your seeds according to the seed packet directions. M. and I chose two varieties of nasturtium, calendula and zinnia. Until the seeds sprout, it is nice to water the them with a spray bottle instead of a cup. This keeps the seeds from floating back up to the surface of your cups when they are watered too fast (little hands!). If you don’t have a spray bottle, it is fine. Just water slowly so the dirt can absorb the water as you are pouring.

5. Label if you like. We labeled our plants with their names, the date we planted,  and the time it takes for them to flower because we had never grown these before. I wanted to be able to figure out which seedling was which when it came time to plant them in the ground. The entire newspaper cup will get planted in the ground at the new house. These plants are also different heights. I wanted to know what I was working with so M. and I did not end up planting tall flowers in front of low, bushy flowers. If you have a lot of experience, labeling is not necessary.

6. The seeds should sprout in just a few days if the soil is kept very moist.

We are looking forward to planting these at our new house. I will update when they are in the ground. It is likely that not all of them will make it, but we had a great time with this project anyway. The total cost (minus the initial cost of the wine and salad), was around $6 for the seeds. We have enough leftover seeds to repeat this project about 4-5 more times.