I now have about 250 flower seedlings growing, with most of them hardened off outside (although I brought them back in the basement Wednesday night because of the cold storms this weekend). Most of what I have here are:

• Dianthus deltoides ‘Brilliancy’ — a relative of carnations with purple flowers
• Delosperma cooperi (cold-hardy iceplant with purple flowers)
• Rudbeckia hirta, the annual kind of black-eyed susan flower
• Eschscholzia californica, California poppies — these are the ‘Summer Sorbet’ variety, which is pink-to-red (if they came true from seed I collected last year)
• Annual geraniums (pelargoniums) — a pink kind from cuttings off a flower my daughter received as a gift last year and the ‘Apple Blossom’ variety from Park’s Seed
• Lavatera tauricensis from seed off my own plants (see this earlier post with photos of the flowers)
• Gaillardia grandiflora — cuttings from a yellow-flowering specimen in my yard last summer
• Oenothera missouriensis — a low, yellow form of evening primrose (not as invasive as the pink ones), from cuttings off my plants las t summer
• Hibiscus moscheutos ‘Blue River’ from seed exchanged on GardenWeb
• Verbena x hybrida ‘Imagination’ also from that seed exchange
• And only two seeds sprouted of Heliotrope arborescens, which also came from that seed exchange

I found that my seedlings stopped growing at a pretty small size while left under the fluorescent lights in the basement. I don’t know if it was the lighting not being adequate for further growth, the Jiffy mix seed starter soil being too sterile, or the temperatures being too cool in there. But after planting them up in these four-inch pots with a potting mix and putting them in the sun for part of the day, they are growing well. The verbenas, iceplant, and dianthus are particularly responding well to the changes.

The hibiscus seem to be struggling. The seedlings are a little yellow and aren’t growing much. I hope they take off soon.