Garden Diaries

02 April 2007

Well, everything on the poarch survived a late season set of blizzards this last week, though I brought the pansies indoors. Good thing too. The hail was pretty nasty.
Started two seed sprouting bags with beans three sub-species of tomatoe, basil, and sage. Most of these seeds are from lst year, so we'll see how well they sprout. The beans are already doing great, and it looks like I won't have any trouble with the tomatoes.
The butterwort has put out four sets of flowers so far this year. I'll have to get a new picture of it up in the Carnivorous plants section. Still no sign that the venus fly trap is returning. :-(
I took more step-by-step pictures of the Globe Bamboo project, which have yet to be posted.

24 March 2007

Yay! One of my strawberry plants from last year is returning. Hopefully many more will follow suit.
The daylillies I received for my birthday last year have decided to return. Since they are definately not on the stardard container list, and Inever pot them in a larger pot, this is quite exciting.
Three or four years ago, one of my roommates brought home a lily. After it died I continued watering it slightly and the next year it returned, but didn't produce any flowers. However, it produced so many offsets I seperated it into three different containers. Last year that roommate moved out taking two of those container. The last container of lilies has sprouted and I'm hoping ot get it to bloom this year.

18 July 2006

All of the tomato plants are now growing tomatoes. The problem with container gardening tomatoes is keeping them watered. In one gallon plastic pots I'm now watering them once in the evening, and once in the morning. You can be pretty sure with tomatoes that if you see the soil dry out, you've lost at least one fruit.
It's currently averaging 100 degress here each day. That's bad news for the peppers. While they don't require nearly as much watering as the tomatoes, I was recently reading that peppers will not produce fruit in temperatures over 90 degrees. They drop their flowers at these temperatures. One possible solution is to move them indoors right next to the patio. They should get enough light there. The problem with this idea at the moment is that our A/C is broken. Until it's fixed, I don't expect to see a pepper crop.
I originally planted two small pots of cilantro/coriander. Both started out well enough, but despite my efforts, one pot has completely died out. The other is still growing and thriving. Not sure what I did different between the two. But I have enough seeds that I may just have another go at it.
The Basil is doing wonderfully. Pinched off a set of leaves so that it will grow more bushy. They still have three pairs of leaves left on each and seem to be handling the pinching just fine.
A while back I bought some snap dragons to add in with my pots of pansies. All were in bloom when I bought them and all the blooms fell off quite soon after the transplant, with no other blooms appearing. I've kept watering them to see if anything would happen, though the petunias have since died off. The snap dragons have since produced several side shoots from the main stem which are now blooming. Rather excited about this development.

12 July 2006

I've ripped out the pansies in the flower boxes. Instead of just throwing them away, I let them dry out and then crushed them and mixed them back into the soil. There's a slight possibility that this will re-seed the soil and bring me a new set of pansies in the Spring.
I've replaced the pansies with petunias I bought quite a while back. I've been keeping the petunias watered, but in their trays they came in. Before planting them I had to thoroughly rinse off an aphid infestation.
Much as it pains me to trim the beautiful flowers they had, the petunias were growing into a single long stem. By trimming them back they should grow nice and bushy.
Several of the tomato plants are now growing tomatos.

22 June 2006

Moon flowers are doing great. Moved them to outdoor pots.
Moved several beans to outdoor pots. Moved several sprouts to growing medium.
Peppers are taking forever to get anywhere.
Lost another Venus Fly Trap.

13 June 2006

Added another seed bag of moon flowers. I think I've had the seed pack for over a year, so we'll see if they sprout.
Current seed bags are doing well. Beans are sprouting. Green peppers appear to be sprouting, but Yellow and Orange show no sign of sprouting yet.
Lavander is sprouting. No sign of Thyme and Mint. Rosemary, Basil and Cilantro still doing well.
I got my fountain working again. It was having trouble with getting enough water flowing through the pump no matter how full the main basin was. This was fixed by putting larger rocks at the bottom and then covering them with the smaller rocks. This allows better water flow to the base of the pump. The fountian now runs fine only half full, but with summer heat and thirsty plants, I still need to add water almost every day.

09 June 2006

Calla Lillies are blooming.
Started taking pictures of the plants. Postings will be up soon.
Rosemary is sprouting. Looks like thyme bit the dust.
Added more seed-starting bags. More beans and trying to sprout some pepper seeds.

31 May 2006

Daffodils didn't bloom long.
Strawberry watering technique working very well.
Planted lavander, rosemary, thyme, mint and cilantro. Cilantro and Thyme are sprouting.
New watering can sucks. It sprayes water in all directions and it only comes out of a few holes.

24 May 2006

Beans definitely sprout better in the plstic bag. I'll sooon have plenty, with four already planted in a large pot outside.

Bought some peppers and planted them, but a recent batch of salsa left me several seeds that I may attempt to sprout in the plastic bag fashion.

Bought some snap-dragons to add height variety to the petunias.

The Dafodils are blooming.

New technique for watering the strawberries. Water the top set thouroughly first. Wait a few minutes, then add water to the water bottle. And get a good-sized draining tray.

Made use of a store-bought strawberry case. It's clear with plenty of holes for ventilaiton and drainage. Put the Butterworts in there. They should do well. Probably no good for other canivourous plants though. The others get too tall.

May 12th 2006

Recently added more basil to basil pot. Of the frou original seeds, all sprouted, but two died. Added several seeds. Will then when they're stronger.

Moved the tomatoes into bigger pots. Two Roma, two Sweet 100, two red cherry. Only have two milk gallons right now. They're on the cherries.

In the last month, six more Calla Lily steams have broken through for a total of seven sprouts. Some are about eight inches high now.

Planted all the Gladiolis in three pots about a month ago. They are sprouting like crazy. Each two-gallon pot contains about 15 bulbs. But the looks of it, every single bulb is sprouting, and more shoots come up each day.

Black pot strawberries are thriving. The Ceramic pot strawberries are not doing so well. The watering system doesn't work nearly as nicely as I'd hoped. The top level berries do pretty well, but the lower levels are struggling. I'm trying to brain storm some sort of funnel system I can put in each of the nine pockets.

Beans still haven't sprouted, so I placed bean seeds and marigold seeds in a plastic bag with a wet paper towel. Here's hoping that works.

Built another trellis. Need beans to grow up the trellises.

Petunias are thriving. Dafodils have sprouted. They're a bit late, but I think they'll still bloom.

Only the red peppers sprouted. Adjusted by buying green, yellow, and Jalepenos. Recently bought some peppers for eating. May try the papertowl method of sprouting seeds.

Bought several more perennial herb seeds. Yet to plant.

Bought a wind chime from home depot and hung it with garden string. Found it a few days later in the bushes, string all frayed. It's been windy. Will need to re-hang.

April 5th 2006

One of the Calla Lillies has broken through the soil.
Amazingly, last year's Tiger Lilles appear to be returning. May need bigger pots. They didn't flower last year. I will have to see if I can get them to this year.
Eve's Jasmine smells lovely.
Strawberries in terracota pots need LOTS of water.

April 3rd 2006

Built a trellis from sticks found along the river.

March 30 2006

Planted strawberries from nusery plants. One of the Cherry Tomatoes and the Petunias are sprouting. Basil is sprouting.

March 23 2006

Planted Red, Orange, Yellow, and Green peppers, and Jalepenos. Also planted Calla Lilles. Planted pansies from already grown plants. Dead-headed the pansies in the window boxes, but not the ones in the pots.

16 March 2006

Planted Roma Tomates, Sweet Million Tomatoes, Red Cherry Tomatoes, Marigolds, Petunias, and Sweet Basil. All but the latter planted in seed starter. Basil planted in regular pot.