The seed catalogs are starting to arrive, and I’m already thinking about what I want to sprout for next summer’s garden. Two plants I’m going take a pass on this time are Celosia ‘Chinatown’ and Snapdragon ‘Frosted Flames.’
Celosia ‘Chinatown’ has brilliant blooms and dark red foliage, but my plants were a bit scrawny and many of the flowers sat atop “chicken leg” stems. I might try it again in the future, but space in my seed-sprouting area (as well as my garden) is limited, so for now I’ll take a pass.
Snapdragon ‘Frosted Flames’ was a bust for me. This is another front-of-the border plant with interesting foliage. Unfortunately, the plants pretty much looked like the above photo all summer long (the lilac blooms are from neighboring petunias). One of my plants even withered and died for no reason. I wasn’t impressed. Heat was certainly not an issue since we had a very cool spring and a perfect summer (only hitting 90 degrees once and that wasn’t until the first week of September). I’m not sure why the plants sent up so few flowers.
In the big (garden) scheme of things I need to be thankful that there are disappointments every year or I would never have room to try anything new. Time to dive into that stack of seed catalogs!