NEWS FLASH: PLANTS. GROW. UP.

Upside-Down Sweet 100

Upside Down Big Momma

I mean, seriously.

The big thing with Lavender is that it’s a Mediterranean plant — it’s used to growing in well-drained soils with minimal annual rainfall. Lots of lavender growers here in Texas brag that they don’t water their crops except when there are drought conditions present, and then they might throw some water on them once or twice a year…

Since my plant’s in a container, and I live in a hot, relatively dry, WINDY area of Texas, I wasn’t sure that I could get away with the “not watering” thing .. the plant did seem to put on a spurt of growth every time I water it, so something must be making it happy about getting water. How do you figure out a watering schedule for an evergreen plant from an arid area?

I happen to have two other mediterranian plants in containers — a Cyclamen and an aromatic rosemary herb in a small container. The latter two are used to the same sort of arid climate, and prefer well-drained sandy soil as well, so it’s not too much of a stretch to keep them grouped together (although they are in a protected area of the backyard so that the dogs don’t eat the Cyclamens, which is poisonous.)

My watering schedule for the Lavender has become simple. When the Cyclamens looks peaked but the rosemary doesn’t, I water the Cyclamens and splash a little on the Rosemary. When both end up looking peaked (as they did yesterday when I got home), I water all three (Cyclamens, Rosemary, Lavender) heavily until they drain out the bottom.

So far the Lavender seems happy. I’m still crossing my fingers that it’ll bloom this year, as it’s getting quite large, but I don’t see any signs of it forming buds or flower stalks. Regardless, it’s pretty and it smells amazing and is one of my favorite container plants.

Mini Bolero Marigolds... check out the colors. I grew these from seed.

The gladiola that I’m about to show you were given to me free as sprouting bulbs by a woman who was having to clear a bed of bulbs her grandmother brought with her to Texas. I didn’t expect to get ANY blooms, frankly, and was just happy that the bulbs are alive and doing well. But surprise, surprise, they bloomed … and they’re GORGEOUS.

And what’s this behind the Gladiola? Well, the Super Sweet 100’s were planted here last year, and it looks like they self-seeded some volunteers! What a hardy plant. I killed that thing twice before it got to bear any fruit, and it not only fruited, but reproduced. I’m curious as to what kind of fruit it’ll bear this year, so when I’m feeling better I’ll unearth it and pot it up in a container.

As I’ve said, I’m not sure if I’ll actually get any edible broccoli or cauliflower, but I did have one cauliflower with a golf-ball sized head. As I’ve noted on my Cauliflower page, to get the head to produce a white and sweet tasting fruit, you should tie the leaves up over it.

I tied the central leaves up over the head to protect it from sun.

My worry, of course, is that I’m going to produce a nice little habitat for aphids and other pests. I’ve been picking them off over the past week or two. It’s stormy today, but I will have to spread some sevin dust and probably spray orange and neem oil this weekend.

My broccoli is also starting to bear. I don’t know if it’ll end up bolting straight to flower, since it’s a touch warm for the head to mature properly, or if it’ll actually produce some edible fruit.

Broccoli... will it head, or flower?

All my store-bought peppers have started to bear; the ones I grew from seed are still much too small … although they’re growing rapidly. The sweet orange pepper in the raised bed has a baby set and some blooms.

First sweet orange pepper baby

No tomatoes yet, but I do have a baby Quinault strawberry that is about to ripen! The Quinault is an everbearing variety. The june-bearing Sequoia has blooms on it.

Pink and ripening

And back to the cabbages for a second — the first planted (back in Feburary) of my Kohlrabi plants is actually forming fruit. I’m not sure if the later ones will or not, but this one is bulbing out nicely! I’ll harvest it when it’s about 5cm wide, carve it, and eat it salted and raw. Hopefully it won’t be too woody and I’ll get to enjoy this weird fruit that my mom and I both love.

Kohlrabi bulb forming

I have a few Bush Champion zucchini plants that are stressed the heck out, and I can’t figure out why. The weird thing is that even though they have one, or maybe two small leaves, they’re producing multiple large blooms. They were started very early in the season, though, and I’m hoping that their biological clock is just way off. That’s why they’re in pots. I’m clearing some space in the garden for them this weekend and we’ll see if amending the soil with a bit more clay and manure will make them happier.

Stressed Zucchini producing blooms

Hopefully these Kentucky Wonder pole bean plants, now sown at the right time, will grow and prosper as the sweetpea in the background has. Here’s one just poking above ground…

Good morning!

… and another one with it’s leaves already tracking the sun.

*stretch*

Black Krim tomato, Lemon Geranium, and Flamenco

They were only $2 each at the farmer’s co-op end-of-planting-season blowout sale. They followed me home, honest. Can I keep them, mom?

I just hope my experiences with cheap plants don’t rival my experiences with free dogs.

These pictures from Gardenweb are pretty amazing… amazingly bad, that is! Poor plant!

Note the purple back of the leaf.

But their purple stems and spotted leaves tell another story. They also seem to be growing and making new leaves slowly … I think these have been in the ground for three weeks now. I’m THIS close to giving up and running over to Lowe’s for a couple of nice half-foot tall tomato starts, since I’m growing hybrids anyway and because our spring growing season might be cut very short due to drought.

The leaf on the right hand side is rather spotty.

Any suggestions on how to save these guys?

The weirdest thing is that the variety of Sweet 100 I bought from Burpee is supposed to be resistant to the virus…

Close up (click for expanded view) of the blighted leaves and purple stem.

Oddly, the veins aren't purple. (Click to see larger.)

Another view of the stem, also showing the back of the primary (seedling) leaves.

Side note: Great-grandmother Hrica was far before her time. As she harvested produce from her garden, she restored and enriched it by burying organic matter like plant waste, sticks, leaves, vegetable scraps, and eggshells in the dirt as she turned it. Funny how many of our “organic practices” have been practiced all along.

To modern backyard farmers who have really put some effort and study into their gardening practices (or stupid hacks like me that make mistakes until they finally do some research and figure it out), it’s obvious: Flowers attract bugs that pollinate, bugs that eat plants, and bugs that eat bugs.

My mom’s habitual list of practices are good ones.

Research what local bugs you have that pollinate (your state’s agricultural extension or your local Master Gardeners likely have a list along with what plants attract which bugs) and try to provide flowers they like plus a good habitat. In my area, we have a number of pollinators that become active in the early season, and lay eggs or nest in particular diameter holes bored in wood. I’ve placed a few blocks of wood with the right diameter holes in the top of my garden.

Alternate pollinators are sometimes far more efficient than the honeybees that we know and love. One species of green wasp here in Texas can pollinate 500 blossoms per hour, while most common species of honeybee are limited to twenty or so. Honeybees produce the happy side effect of honey, but you don’t want to rely on them … especially until scientists understand colony collapse disorder and figure out the cause and any workarounds.

Research the blooming seasons of your plants, and try to have ones blooming in every season. A good example is some of the local wildflowers I’m planting — their seeds should germinate this week, but I won’t see actual flowers for another 100 days after germination. That’s a long time! On the other hand, all of the Lupinus seeds should start blooming here fairly soon.

Place the plants in various places around your yard and garden, and not just at the edges. Some bugs will travel short distances, but some bugs will travel longer distances and hit every plant in between the two they’re really searching for.

I had a few problems and a few “Duhs” with the jiffy pods … and really, planting in general. I should really read directions more, but the basic problems that I had revolved around what order to do things in and how deep to plant the seeds. I put the blame squarely on my Y chromosome. If I had two X chromosomes, I surely would’ve read the directions instead of tearing right into things.

Number one on my list of mistakes was adding the seeds first and expecting the pods to grow up around the seeds. It just doesn’t work that way. Water first, then seeds!

I've added about 2 cups of water to ths tray. Note the lack of seeds: Don't add seeds until later!

Number two on my list of mistakes was not pushing the seeds down into the peat far enough. What I should have done was make a hole with my pinky and push the seeds down into it. What ended up happening as a result (which I unfortunately don’t seem to have a good picture of…) was a profusion of seedlings growing out the sides of the peat pods.

Where the Jiffy pods did indeed shine was the planting process. Once I figured out the right way to start things in them, the planting process went off without a hitch. Just drop and go. Then again, with the right preparation, (letting them dry out a little, ‘massaging’ each cell before pulling up gently on the seedling), planting things that came out of the normal cells was just as easy as long as the plants were of equal maturity.

Frankly, I reuse my seed trays heavily. I don’t want to be tied to one use per pod. The increased price and lack of ability to reuse makes the peat-pods a “no sale” for me, even if I do understand their appeal.

And watching them inflate was just kinda cool, ya know?

• The kohlrabi and lettuce seedlings that I’d started months ago have finally all gone to the big compost pile in the sky. I’d hoped to save some of them, but it’s just not realistic… they have underdeveloped root systems, they’re far too tall to be practical, and they’ve received so much damage from wind and other environmental effects that I don’t know if they’ll ever mature.
• My Hippie Planters didn’t work. You know those really cool ridges, textures, and stuff that make it easy to grip a bottle of gatorade? Well, it turns out that those ridges aren’t really conducive to getting a seedling and dirt OUT of the bottle of gatorade. I gave up and threw out all of the seedlings I’d transplanted into them after killing five of the few remaining not-too-leggy kohlrabi seedlings.
• I had been keeping track of the planting dates that things actually made it into the garden in a notebook. Yesterday, that notebook happened to be sitting on the fence rail when I was planting some seedlings. It smacked down, non-waterproof-ink side down, right on top of a seedling I’d just planted, crushing it. Klutz.

I guess that’s why I work with computers and not, say, medicine, right?

As a result, I’ve started a bunch of kohlrabi, carrots, and lettuce in the actual ground in the garden. I filled up the last empty quadrant, and culled a few other plants (some onions and cauliflower that got crushed in the process of protecting the garden from our freeze last week). Tonight when I get home, I have some wildflower and annual seeds to plant in the front bed. (As per links from my beneficial bugs page, I’m planting purple coneflower and white cosmos among others to try to attract the Big Eyed Bugs that eat the Chinch bugs that eat my lawn.)

In better news, my MacBook Pro is back from the shop with a new keyboard and trackpad, and I’m restoring my Aperture libraries and other items from backup as I type this. We’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming here in a bit!