Snapdragon Highs and Lows

Growing snapdragons has been quite the roller coaster ride this year. Last fall we started and planted out a 30 foot row of snaps and then placed a low caterpillar tunnel over them in December. Snaps are very cold hardy and I even did a small trial of them without being planted under a tunnel and they did just fine even through the crazy cold snap we had in January. The snaps planted under the tunnel did amazing and are over 3 feet tall. Look at that stem length!

I can grow loads and loads of weeds too :-)

This year I am succession planting snapdragons every 2-3 weeks to have continuous blooms all summer long. The picture below shows a bed that drastically needs pinched and netted. The netting will keep them from bending and toppling over.

Last Wednesday I planted a 50' row, planned to water them later in the day since it was fairly cloudy outside. Needless to say I ended up getting busy with other things, the sun came out full force that afternoon and I lost over 3/4 of the bed. Fried them to a crisp. Talk about a hard lesson learned. Hours were lost from the time it took to start them, water them under lights for 4 weeks, the time planting and then poof!...gone due to my laziness of not watering them in time. I licked my wounds and decided that I need to change my planting game.

You can see the hole on the top left has a fried little leftover.

I am using new fabric this year and feel like I've lost more baby seedlings than I did all of last year. I'm not sure if it holds the heat more than the plastic I used last year or what the problem is. Moving forward if we are going to have cooler, cloudy days or rainy days I will make sure to try to plant prior to ensure that they can become a little more established and not have to face the brutal sun immediately. Otherwise they will be watered in deeply as soon as they are planted. I usually let them sit outside for 3-4 days to harden off before planting, maybe I'll bump this up and give them 5 or 6 days. Regardless it stings when you lose a whole bed in the matter of an hour and makes you learn quickly.

For now though I am still ogling over my fall planted bed and am thankful I have it to boost my ego a bit.

Have a great week!

-Katie