Lemon balm, feverfew, and garlic chives that was sown right before I left for SD have germinated. I think the lemon balm and feverfew are pretty much done germinating, but the garlic chives are still...thinking about it. (I KNOW that I put in more than just two seeds). Both lemon balm and feverfew are surface-germinaters, but chives need to be covered. Maybe that's a reason for the slight delay.
Today I put in: chamomile and bee balm. I think both of these need light to germinate also (well, we'll see). By the way, all the seeds, except the chives, are traded from GW. I'm also going to be putting in blue flax, celosia, and more forget-me-nots, but I need to look up sowing info for flax and celosia because I've never grown them before. The results so far has celosia covered (one to two inches of soil), and the same for flax. If I still have any soil (and pots) left I'll try marigolds too. I think they'll do better in pots because the snails congregate less, so hopefully it means that less will get eaten when they germinate.
Why do cultivated lupines look so much uglier than the wild ones? Ditto (I think) for larkspur.
20080630
20080624
Three day absence
After my three day trip to SD (involving three days without watering for my poor plants) I have lost:
1 strawberry
1 mint
1 strawberry
1 mint
20080619
The reminants
After much searching, what is left of my veggie garden can be summed up as:
3 green onions
3 potatoes
2 tomatoes
1 basil
7 chives
Vegetables don't take to neglect well.
3 green onions
3 potatoes
2 tomatoes
1 basil
7 chives
Vegetables don't take to neglect well.
Harvest time!
I've been up since 7:30 this morning which, yes, is a bit sad considering that this is summer and I'm taking the time off. ("Just relax," mom said, while I was busy trip-planning last night. "Didn't you say you're taking the time off?" "Um," I said, "I am.") But -- it's round-two of the garden clean-up after a quarter (well almost, I did come back once, in the beginning of spring quarter) of neglect, and it's really hard to stop a work already in progress, especially if it's something that you enjoy and you're getting really into it.
In fact, this morning's round of digging up weeds (three piles yesterday, two more piles today) has left me positively bouncy. There's nothing like weeding to make you feel productive, because afterwards you get to see a giant pile of weeds that you dug up. Nothing like a cleared path of garden plot, with a pile of weeds beside it, to give you the warm glow of a job well done.
Picking bugs off of myself, on the other hand, is the less appealing aspect of gardening. That's what warm showers are for, right?
I harvested loads of seeds today. The columbines are pretty much spent at this point, though way in the corner of the garden I did find a late blooming plant. Or maybe it's just one that has a really long blooming period. In any case, it's this gorgeous double-tiered dark blue-purple flower from the McKana's giant hybrid mix. I took a photo of it and collected a bunch of seeds of it. Then I remembered that columbines are notorious for not breeding true to parent, but well --! Purple and white ones are pretty, too.
Have giant amounts of calendula seed now. In another month or two I should also have a healthy load of butterfly iris and carnation seeds. The dill seeds are drying still, and I will have a lot of those again. This year's dill is somewhat shorter than last years (a reassuring 4ft instead of last year's giant 6ft tall monsters), but they seem to be sturdier, so there's less chance of them falling over half-way and losing all the seeds. I might have lavender seeds, but I haven't actually checked yet. Alyssum seeds are...well I've given up on harvesting them. They spread. They eat other plants. My goal in foreseeable future is just to keep them contained enough so that they don't end up devouring my entire garden.
We're getting strawberries now! After I divided the plant (into 3) in the ...spring? there was a pot kept in the shade, one in the sun, and one directly in the dirt. The one in the pot/sun environment did best (pot/shade died due to over-watering, dirt/sun is recovering from being under-watered while in poor soil) and it smells fantastic. Store-bought strawberries don't smell like that...it's a little bit like an almost sticky-sweet scent of honey and strawberry mixed together. Too bad the fruit is really small and the plant produces about three ripe strawberries at a time. Oh well....
In fact, this morning's round of digging up weeds (three piles yesterday, two more piles today) has left me positively bouncy. There's nothing like weeding to make you feel productive, because afterwards you get to see a giant pile of weeds that you dug up. Nothing like a cleared path of garden plot, with a pile of weeds beside it, to give you the warm glow of a job well done.
Picking bugs off of myself, on the other hand, is the less appealing aspect of gardening. That's what warm showers are for, right?
I harvested loads of seeds today. The columbines are pretty much spent at this point, though way in the corner of the garden I did find a late blooming plant. Or maybe it's just one that has a really long blooming period. In any case, it's this gorgeous double-tiered dark blue-purple flower from the McKana's giant hybrid mix. I took a photo of it and collected a bunch of seeds of it. Then I remembered that columbines are notorious for not breeding true to parent, but well --! Purple and white ones are pretty, too.
Have giant amounts of calendula seed now. In another month or two I should also have a healthy load of butterfly iris and carnation seeds. The dill seeds are drying still, and I will have a lot of those again. This year's dill is somewhat shorter than last years (a reassuring 4ft instead of last year's giant 6ft tall monsters), but they seem to be sturdier, so there's less chance of them falling over half-way and losing all the seeds. I might have lavender seeds, but I haven't actually checked yet. Alyssum seeds are...well I've given up on harvesting them. They spread. They eat other plants. My goal in foreseeable future is just to keep them contained enough so that they don't end up devouring my entire garden.
We're getting strawberries now! After I divided the plant (into 3) in the ...spring? there was a pot kept in the shade, one in the sun, and one directly in the dirt. The one in the pot/sun environment did best (pot/shade died due to over-watering, dirt/sun is recovering from being under-watered while in poor soil) and it smells fantastic. Store-bought strawberries don't smell like that...it's a little bit like an almost sticky-sweet scent of honey and strawberry mixed together. Too bad the fruit is really small and the plant produces about three ripe strawberries at a time. Oh well....
20080618
Propinquity helps
Spent the entire morning weeding today and I still haven't finished yet. There are a lot of weeds. Carpets of wood sorrel are going to seed but luckily I got to them just before the seeds are dispersed (after which there is NO HOPE). I also dug up a bunch of something probably closely related to miner's lettuce (family "Portulacaceae" -- forgot what it'll get merged into), which is edible, but still weedy. There's also loads of something from Polygonaceae and, of course, invasive grasses. On the bright side our backyard is still bermuda-grass-free. Once THOSE things get established removing them is impossible.
Finally torn down the dead sweet peas (as in yellow-and-dried dead), I'm not entirely sure why my parents kept it there for so long, since keeping dead plant material, when they're not in a compost heap (I miss my worm bin; mom doesn't) tends to breed diseases. The four o' clocks are semi-bolting and so I trimmed them a bit too. Next on the list is getting ALL the calendula seeds harvested (still going to have a giant row of them by the door next year, though) and pull up some sweet alyssums. They've gone and ate my daffodils & paper whites again.
Carnations are blooming though. We have white ones and pink ones. I'm not sure how harvesting the seeds will work out, but we'll see.
Finally torn down the dead sweet peas (as in yellow-and-dried dead), I'm not entirely sure why my parents kept it there for so long, since keeping dead plant material, when they're not in a compost heap (I miss my worm bin; mom doesn't) tends to breed diseases. The four o' clocks are semi-bolting and so I trimmed them a bit too. Next on the list is getting ALL the calendula seeds harvested (still going to have a giant row of them by the door next year, though) and pull up some sweet alyssums. They've gone and ate my daffodils & paper whites again.
Carnations are blooming though. We have white ones and pink ones. I'm not sure how harvesting the seeds will work out, but we'll see.
Plant of the day
Plant of the day is eucalyptus, of genus Eucalyptus from the family Myrtaceae:
They are actually not native to CA, but to Australia. However, back in the railroading days enough of them were introduced that they've successfully naturalized into the Cal landscape. A particular south Cal campus comes to mind.
The plant is characterized by oil glands in the leaves (little black or transparent dots if you hold a leaf blade up to the light) and showy stamens. Yep, the pink stuff is all stamens. The petals and sepals fuse into this odd cup-like little thing that falls off when the flower blooms.
I like the way they smell.
They are actually not native to CA, but to Australia. However, back in the railroading days enough of them were introduced that they've successfully naturalized into the Cal landscape. A particular south Cal campus comes to mind.
The plant is characterized by oil glands in the leaves (little black or transparent dots if you hold a leaf blade up to the light) and showy stamens. Yep, the pink stuff is all stamens. The petals and sepals fuse into this odd cup-like little thing that falls off when the flower blooms.
I like the way they smell.
20080617
Discovery and predictions
I've discovered that mom has left a lot of plants go to seed and didn't harvest most of them in time. By next year we're probably going to have this giant thing of sweet peas and the doorway to the backyard will be swallowed by calendulas. The hen-and-chicks will probably quietly wither away somewhere beneath all the sweet alyssums (they're carpeting again). I wonder where I can put the peas. They're the only vegetable that I'm planting this year but I need somewhere to put them where they won't be completely swamped by other things.
Gardening day tomorrow! I got a lot of basic paperwork and stuff done today and the rest will either need to be done over a period of time or will be done two weeks later, because they'll take that long. I expect I'll have a seed list up soon, though.
Gardening day tomorrow! I got a lot of basic paperwork and stuff done today and the rest will either need to be done over a period of time or will be done two weeks later, because they'll take that long. I expect I'll have a seed list up soon, though.
Plant of the day
I'm starting to clean up my data and going through my floristics photos. There is a lot of stuff:
Common name is, I believe, "catch-fly". The family Caryophyllaceae is generally identified by having opposite leaves, swollen nodes, and claw-and-limb petals in multiples of five (usually lobed, sometimes to the point where it looks like there are ten petals instead of five). Silene in particular has sort of ribbed calyx tube and hairy stems.
Common name is, I believe, "catch-fly". The family Caryophyllaceae is generally identified by having opposite leaves, swollen nodes, and claw-and-limb petals in multiples of five (usually lobed, sometimes to the point where it looks like there are ten petals instead of five). Silene in particular has sort of ribbed calyx tube and hairy stems.
20080607
20080601
I miss my garden
Floristic course is at an end. Our last lab is the "fern lab" and here is my favorite fern:
The back (Pteridaceae members have false indusia):
Also went to Ernesto's talk on South Africa plants this week and he had some really awesome photos. Here's one of them, with an endangered flower:
My jasmine is dying. Or maybe I should say "dead" since the chances of it recovering at this stage is statistically insignificant. I over-watered the week before, when the temperature dropped suddenly, and the soil didn't have a chance to dry, ever. This week's not hot enough for it to drain. I kept meaning to stick outside in the sun for a very long time, which would've helped but I kept on forgetting, so now the water-logged soil has killed the roots that I've painstakingly germinated and I have lost my jasmine.
Plant fail.
The back (Pteridaceae members have false indusia):
Also went to Ernesto's talk on South Africa plants this week and he had some really awesome photos. Here's one of them, with an endangered flower:
My jasmine is dying. Or maybe I should say "dead" since the chances of it recovering at this stage is statistically insignificant. I over-watered the week before, when the temperature dropped suddenly, and the soil didn't have a chance to dry, ever. This week's not hot enough for it to drain. I kept meaning to stick outside in the sun for a very long time, which would've helped but I kept on forgetting, so now the water-logged soil has killed the roots that I've painstakingly germinated and I have lost my jasmine.
Plant fail.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)