{"id":296,"date":"2002-03-08T08:47:36","date_gmt":"2002-03-08T13:47:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.168.1.5\/gardens\/gardenlog\/?p=296"},"modified":"2017-07-17T19:15:30","modified_gmt":"2017-07-17T19:15:30","slug":"starting-seeds-for-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/garden-essays\/starting-seeds-for-summer\/","title":{"rendered":"Starting Seeds for Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The trouble with spring in Austin is that the gardening bug bites at a time when it is almost too late to plant anything. We have a growing season of about 90 days, counting from our last freeze date to the time the temperatures reach the high 90s.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t grow a lot of summer annuals from seed because it takes too much water to keep them growing through the summer&#8211;my water ration is for the roses and the vegetable garden. I&#8217;ve switched to perennials (crape myrtle, esperanza, Rose of Sharon, vitex, ruellia) to provide summer color.<\/p>\n<p>However, there are some annuals that I&#8217;ve found easy-to-grow from seed. I usually start them outside in a special bed and then transplant the seedlings where I want them.<br \/>\n* cosmos<br \/>\n* sunflowers (a great variety now available in all heights and colors)<br \/>\n* gomphrena (southern batchelors buttons)<\/p>\n<p>Flowering annual vines provide a lot of color and are easy to grow because they usually have large seeds.<br \/>\n* dolichos lablab<br \/>\n* luffa<br \/>\n* morning glory<br \/>\n* black-eyed Susan vine<br \/>\n* cypress vine<\/p>\n<p>I sometimes find it more economical to simply buy the 6-pack flowers from Home Depot.<br \/>\n* marigolds<br \/>\n* pentas<br \/>\n* coleus<\/p>\n<p>Bulbs for summer that can be planted now.<br \/>\n* canna<br \/>\n* caladium<br \/>\n* asiatic lily<br \/>\n* zephyranthes (rain lily)<br \/>\n* crocosmia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When the gardening bug bites, it&#8217;s usually too late in the season here in Austin, to plant anything that will survive the searing heat of the coming summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[432],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5198,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions\/5198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}