Flowers

Last year, I didn't really grow any flowers. I had a pot of geraniums that I had bought to keep mosquitos away, but other than that... flowers seemed like a waste of my time. That was a bit foolish of me! Particularly since I wasn't growing a large garden! I kept noticing that my strawberries would get flowers and the flowers would die, producing no fruit.

I looked up what could be causing it, learned about hand pollinating fixing the issue and started getting some strawberries... but I figure that having more flowers on the porch may make it a little easier on me ;) So, this year I'm growing several different varieties of flowers!

Pollination isn't the only thing I'm hoping these little flowers will do. My daughter (4) has been compeltely thrilled going out and watching the garden every day and seeing if anything new has come up. Oh, her excitement when the flowers first sprouted! Above, is I believe a Sweet Pea. We planted two different colors of them and they took nearly twice as long to sprout as the other two varieties of flowers we planted so we were very happy when we finally saw them sticking up out of the ground. - This picture was taken roughly 2.5 weeks after we first planted the seeds. 

This next picture shows the other two varieties, one of which I'm not entirely sure what it is because I lost the baggie of seeds... but I'm sure they'll be beautiful whatever they are :p 

I know that the smaller sprouts are Dianthus and I am pretty sure the larger sprouts are a type of Zinnia. Hopefully I find the bag and can confirm. Otherwise, we'll just wait till the grow into flowers and find out then!

When we originally positioned the flowers, the Sweet Peas were to be in the middle, as they would get the largest, then what I think are Zinnias would be around them ending with Dianthuas as they would be the smallest. Since my four year old was helping plant, they didn't get as perfectly situated as one might hope but I think all the colors and the final look will still be beautiful and I know my little girl will be super proud of herself because she's put a lot of work and time into growing these already!