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These are a donated trio. They need potting on but even their grower is puzzled as to how this year’s seedlings are proving so slow to get going/growing.
When I got off the train this evening, there was a whole “flower” bed of dandelions, on the station platform, gone to seed. Given that commuting is the ultimate in habit forming behavoirs, I must have walked past this little edged bed many times before but paid it no attention. But today, preoccupied by thoughts of how nature schedules things (nearly as capriciously as a train company but perhaps with a greater intelligence behind the design), I wondered at the fact that nearly all the dandelions were now seedheads. So if the seeds are now dispersing – when will the new plants appear? ( And yes I know this is a weed but when a little further on in my walk I came across a strolling dad and toddler duo – with the little boy being taught to huff and puff to blow off the dandelion seeds it seemed even more portent!)
Answers on the wind please!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I don’t know about dandelions specifically, but weed seeds tend to be able to germinate when conditions allow – which might be when they land on fresh soil, or many years later, when previously overgrown land is turned over and disturbed.
I must say, it does gall me a little to see the weeds thriving year on year, when those plants we cherish must be cossetted – especially the way the slugs ignore the brambles, docks, and spurges that throng my garden, while grazing my peas down to the earth. At least dandelions are edible (and pretty)! I have less of a problem with wild plants that I can use.
My largest plants are at about the same stages as your adoptees, having probably been uninspired by the recent lack of sunny, warm days that they’re probably expecting. Others are still seedlings. Whenever summer arrives, they’ll probably be off like little rockets. I’ve hopefully avoided the rubbishy ‘green’ compost that delayed my plants last year – once they felt the good earth beneath their roots they soon caught up. Until I’m proved otherwise, I’m avoiding peat-free composts on the grounds that they just don’t work!
I’m with Scyrene; why don’t slugs, snails etc. munch on dandelion leaves rather than our food crops? I’ve dug so many dandies out of the laughingly-called lawns this year… I hope the earthworms in my compost bin like them! Anyway, I hope your adopted plants will soon feel at home; it’s only a few weeks to planting out time!