Rose Cutting - 3rd Week

The cutting is now 3 weeks old. I'm sad to say I lost that lower right hand set of leaves, which is turning yellow in this picture. But you can see on the left hand side a new set of leaves!

Aphids decided to take up residence in those tender new leaves, too, and I didn't realize it until I saw large ones crawling around the rest of the cutting. Luckily I had some rose spray left from last season, and now that's taken care of. On the lower branch to the right is another leaf bud coming on, so I hope it keeps going.

I'm still cautious about calling it a success yet, but it has been fun to watch!

Wintered Plants, Beware

Sunburning Wintered Plants

This is what sunburn looks like on an Airplane Plant and an Aloe Vera cactus:

 This past winter was my first time to winter plants in my house. I took some to work and borrowed generous windowsills there, but my biggest plant, the Airplane plant, had to make due with being shuffled between the windowless laundry room, a back bedroom, and the porch (on warmer days).

 The Aloe was wintered in a north facing window, and when I brought it home this spring I placed it under my carport on a table. It sat there last summer and did very well. The next afternoon, I came home and the whole thing had turned brown, like above. It didn't occur to me til then that my carport was open to the east and the south. Oopse. If I turned the plant around the other way, so the opposite side was facing out, it was bright green. Oh yes, my Aloe had tan lines.

The airplane plant got scorched because I let the cool weather fool me into thinking it wouldn't hurt to sit it out in the full sun. Ah well. Lesson learned. 

Update on the Flower Garden

Roses

My Sarah Van Fleet roses have been blooming like crazy for the past week or so. In fact, we've had so many roses on the bush that, for the first time, we were able to bring in a bouquet of roses to sit on our kitchen table. 

Sarah Van Fleet on left; Lafter on right

 The rose cutting I was given is now a day or so shy of two weeks old. In the picture you can see there are no yellowing leaves on the main stem I've rooted (the yellow is coming from a tiny leaf branch I took a gamble on and stuck in the dirt too). Also present on the rooting are signs of new growth! I'm not sure if this is left over leaf budding utilizing energy from when it was attached to the bush, or if it's actually making roots, but I did pinch off all the visible unformed leaf buds still on it at the time of rooting, so these are definitely new.

Two week old rooting of yellow Peace rose

 And finally, the darling of my rose garden, my Don Juan Rose has opened up its first bloom. It's been open for about a week now, and as you can see, the color is wonderful. The petals are only now opening all the way out, and the fragrance is incredible. More buds are about to open.

First bloom on Don Juan climbing rose

 Oriental Lilies

So a week or two back I bought an assorted back of 12 oriental lily bulbs. They are now all sprouted! I think they're looking good.
Here is the first barrel with 6. Will definitely be watching these as the season progresses. I anticipate wonderful flowers... 

And here are the Walmart special, "Oriental Lilies." These are the ones mom and I bought last Easter. The research I did lead me to believe they were Stargazers, but after observing their growth and seeing more in the store, and with some subsequent reading, I believe they are in fact the Stargazer look-alike, the dwarf After Eight. All the impact of the stargazer... in a much smaller (read, 1/3rd smaller) size.

This clump started out as two. There are at least 8 now. Or more. 

Airplane Plant

So I adopted my grannie's Airplane plant last summer. If my rosemary was the second most root bound plant I've encountered, the airplane plant I retrieved from my grannie's house is the first-place winner. I couldn't get the plant out of its dry-rotted pot. I had to break the pot off of it, after which the whole plant sat on the ground and kinda went, "yea? And?" I stuck it in the biggest pot I had at the time, and it seems to like it so...

 I honestly can't take a stab at guessing how old this plant is. The dry-rotting plastic pot it was in leads me to believe... old. And when I was much younger (15+ years ago), my grannie gave me one of her airplane plants, and I'm absolutely certain those plants came from these. So. We're looking at a very... very matronly lady here.

When I got it, all of its airplanes had died and were a tangled mess, so I had to cut them all off. But late in the fall it made one or two more, and below you can see the oldest, from last fall. I decided to take a stab at planting it today.

The mother plant has about 13 more airplanes on it, and they look incredibly good. So this one will be my test case, and I hope to make some more pots for myself and others.

 

I checked the root growth on it and thought it looked good, so I snipped the stem attaching it to the mother plant, and pushed it gently into some potting soil. Then I gave it a good watering, and now it's sitting alongside my root cutting.

I've been wanting to give this a try for a long time, so we'll see how it goes!

M is for Mobile

The M*A*S*H* 4077 Mobile Garden

So this year I'm doing my entire garden in containers. Last year's garden was a complete fiasco; along with some family problems that kept me away from the garden weeks at a time and drought, I had every kind of pest, mold, and fungus one could develop. Black-turning leaves, white fly, worms, stunted growth, nematodes... The only way I got tomatoes at all was by purchasing some 5 gallon buckets and some starts from the garden center late in the season.

But I accidentally stumbled onto something good.  This year all the garden is mobile. So far just the peas and squash/zucs are planted, but have a look:

Crowder Peas

Squash and Zucchini, two to a box

Personally I think the idea of using tomato cages in with my peas was ingenious. I've used the stake and twine method to make rows for two years now, and I've found it tedious but do-able. This year is an experiment, but I already like the direction it's heading. In both pictures you can see my little sprouts!

Also mobile is my strawberry patch. They're looking much better than they did in February.

And finally, an update on the tomatoes and pepper plants. Look how big they're getting! I topped them off with some fresh dirt today, and I'm aiming to set them out in their own mobile containers about the first of May.

Gathering herbs from the garden

Also: How to make homemade mint tea and how to make your own seasonings

 

Pruning the Mint Plants: 

 

So, from time to time, it's a good idea to cut on your herbs. At first I was a nonbeliever, and I didn't want to cut a single fragrant leaf. My KC mint got three feet tall and spindly, flopping over to the ground. My chocolate mint nearly died, and my rosemary kept getting taller and thinner.

This year I said: I'm going to give this cutting thing a go. I started with the KC mint, took a pair of scissors, closed my eyes, and started cutting. It was like I'd put the plant into overdrive! That mint plant pratically exploded with lush new growth. The rosemary was next, and it's gotten bushier by the week. So now... now it was the chocolate mint's turn.

My chocolate mint had a rough start; it was super tiny and not growing too well. But in the past month I was able to re-pot it into something that gives it more horizontal room. When I turned the plant over in my hands to get the old pot off, the crushed leaves sent up such a blast of spearmint that it was like I'd chopped into an onion! My eyes started watering and I could barely breathe. It was wonderful.

Here's a picture of my chocolate mint, pre-trimming on left, post-trim on right:

It went from an over-sized afro to a scant buzz cut! It looks a bit thin on top now, but I know in a few weeks, it'll be huge again. Just look how much I cut out of it:

  

 I was about to throw the clippings away... but then I decided to bring them on inside and wash them up. I could decide what to do with them later. Then I got struck by the brilliant idea to make some homemade mint tea. 

First, I washed the mint leaves very well in the sink. Then I filled my tea brewer with about 12 stems worth of leaves. 

It wasn't exactly an exact measurement. I just kept adding leaves until I decided I was tired of adding them. I tore most of the biggest leaves as I put them in, and then I poured about 8 oz of hot water into the brewer, and let it steep. 

 Chopping up the Rosemary:

 

While that was cooking, I remembered some rosemary I had harvested on March 16th, a month back. I'd washed it and laid it out to dry. So I decided to chop it up to add some dried rosemary to my spice cabinet. First I stripped the leaves from the branches, starting at about the middle and gently running my fingers backwards down the stem. Then using a large knife, I chopped the little leaves up until they were as small as I wanted them:

Dried Rosemary stems

Here I've stripped the leaves from the stems. I used a small ramekin to catch the fly-away leaves.

Using a knife, I chopped the leaves up until the bits were fairly uniform in size.

Close up of the finished product.

And finally... I didn't forget to enjoy my first homemade cup of mint tea! All in all... it's actually pretty good! 

Planting Days

Half of the garden is planted! I've got 6 five gallon buckets planted with crowder peas, and two 58qt buckets planted with squash and zucchini.

All of our rose bushes have buds on them, and our flowers are blooming like crazy.

Rain today almost made my pepper seedling float off and hasnt helped my tomato seedlings. They really shouldn't have been out in the rain, but it came during the night instead of in the afternoon. I think they'll bounce back; right now they look kind of pitiful.

I've definitely got strawberries! I've seen tons of blooms, and now I'm seeing the green, unripened fruit emerging. I'll have to put my efforts into shielding them from birds into overdrive.

I picked up a pot of French Lavender from the store. I've missed having this beautiful herb around my house. I'm eager to make some lavender sachets for my drawers. I also trimmed up the mint and the rosemary. I'm saving the chocolate mint plant for when I can make some mint syrup with the leaves I'll be trimming off.

I almost came home with a pot of calla lilies, too. But the orientals have the center stage for now. Speaking of, the 12 pack I bought from the store are sprouting nicely! In fact, all of the bulbs are up except one, and that one may just be a laggard. So we'll see. I also may have identified the Stargazers from last year as actually being a dwarf look-alike, After Eight. I'll be perfectly happy with that, since the assorted bulbs should get pretty tall.

The day lilies are putting on buds too, and the azaleas still have flowers. So many new things to look at every time one steps into the garden...

Propagating Roses from Cuttings

So I had the great fortune to receive a cutting of the Peace rose from a family friend. I've been wanting to try to grow a rose from a cutting for a long time, and I've read tons of material on it, but I've never had the opportunity to before.

The cutting came to me at 9:30 PM Monday night; it had been cut earlier that evening. It appeared to be a hard wood cutting with softwood sprouting from the tip. I'm sorry to say I don't have any pictures from the procedure since I was in a hurry and it was so late at night.

I trimmed off all but the top most leaves, and I also pinched off some new growth forming lower down the stem. Then, with a very sharp knife, I scraped the bark off of half of the hardwood stem. I filled a four inch pot with fresh dirt, and planted the cutting in it.

I topped the whole thing with a gallon bag propped open with some paint stirrers, which will serve to create a mini green house for the rose cutting.

Peace rose cutting, 3 days old

So far, the leaves haven't wilted! I'm taking that as a positive indication of moderate success. I will definitely be keeping close tabs on this experiment.

Blooming now -

So the roses have begun blooming! In reality, I think these first blooms from my largest Sarah Van Fleet are a touch premature; nevertheless, the bushes are covered in buds! And I'm thankful for the beautiful flowers, no matter what time of year (early or late) they bloom. Also blooming are the hibiscus, the Aster, and the azaleas!

Sarah Van Fleet rose

Sarah Van Fleet rose

Hibiscus

Aster

Pink Azalea

White Encore Azalea

Transplanting Tomatoes and Thinning Carrots

Today's garden foray was modest but important. The tomato seedlings were about 4 inches tall with two or three sets of leaves, and they were getting very tall for the seedling tray in which they were living. So, time to transplant!

Here they are in their tray... and here's how they look once in their new pots:

I think they'll be much happier now. I expect to see very rapid growth from here on out. On the other front, thinning the carrots was a new one for me.

I planted carrots last year - it was a dismal failure. You know what a pencil looks like when you've sharpened it all the way down to the eraser? That was bigger than the carrots I got. All six of 'em.

I got mad and tried again. Since carrot seeds are so tiny, I kinda just poured them into a narrow channel I'd made in the dirt with my finger. So they were growing up all clumped together, like this:

Not so good for carrot root formation. So I thinned them out to one carrot every inch and a half or so. I used fingernail clippers to clip off the leaves at soil level, so that I didn't risk harming neighboring roots.

It was disconcerting to be destroying perfectly healthy plants, but... I want some well formed carrots at the end of the season!

Here they are, thinned out:

What a difference, right? They might require some more thinning later, but for now, I'm leaving them be.

I might have yet another gnat problem in this pot, but they're growing fine so far, and I'm going to combat the gnats as best I can by drying out the soil and using pesticide Dust.

Tis all for now!