Today I started tiny tomatoes, zuccini, green onions, lettuce, and a whole host of thai hot peppers. I keep having to remind myself that I won't see any growth for days or weeks and looking at them isn't going to change that :p
Well, I'm currently fairly plantless. My mum killed my flytrap Audrey when I was on holiday for a week, and I'm pretty sure my sword fern is toast after I neglected to water it for weeks on end. My phaleonopshis orchid refuses to flower. My wonderful big basil plant was also killed by my mother at the same time as Audrey was, and the one I got to replace it was infested with pests which took ages to eradicate, Grandpa's chives at the front door have been murdered by by neighbour stubbing his fag dowps in it, the slugs destroyed my hostas, my Zepherine Drouhin roses are being strangled by next door's wild ivy, and I think the frost got into my Kiku-shidare-zakura because I noticed way too late that it was situated under a badly-fitted joint in the gutter. I'm sure it doesn't help that the spruces which border our lawn but are technically next-door's because of the fence haven't been cut for like six years and have reached about 20 ft tall and there is no sunlight, holy shit, and god knows where the bramble coming in the back fence originates because it's one long tendril snaking back into the mess. A bit of gentle gardening would be nice, I could get half an hour or so outdoors without having to worry about collapsing somewhere with no prospect of getting home, I just want some green in my life to make me feel connected to nature again. Has anyone ever tried setting up a hydroponic system? because having year-round access to my own home-grown food without worrying about neighbourly sabotage or rabbit damage would be so great.
bad news: the echeveria seen in my previous post has died a tragic death caused by insufficient drainage/airflow good news: it has been replaced by this cutie who has been potted in a better soil mixture in more porous pot, and thus will hopefully not suffer the same fate
Dug in some green manure and built a new runner bean frame today! It's one of my growing staples, but it didn't do well last year and I feel like it was because of growing it against the same spot three years in a row. Trying somewhere new this year, fingers crossed it won't like bomb out on me like it did last year. Also thinking very hard about starting some peas on a pyramid I've got spare, but idk if it's already too late here.
So, we're in the process of setting up more plants. We bought eight old cultivars of roses at a specialty market, perfume and kitchen varieties (three kinds of damascus roses, an apothecary rose, uckermark kitchen rose, and a couple others, basically we were looking for smell and taste rather than flashy visuals). We also have even more lavender (some white and pink too!!!) and a small perfume violet. But the really important part are the fruit and berry bushes and trees. The Juneberry bush is FULL of flowers! the apple and pear trees are also already starting to sprout blossoms and I am very excited! but even more exciting is! That Mom! Bought me a Small Blood Plum Tree today!!!!!!! IT IS SO PRETTY!!!! (lots of random photos under the spoiler because i am full of excitement) Spoiler: plant photos My love. My darling. My goth fruit tree. One of the other fruit treeeeees The herb planter! feat. perfume violet and blood dock Very dignified and elegant Juneberry blossoms. So restrained and pretty. Bonus: my witch hazel in february.
ooooh, nice witch hazel! I love the reddish-orange ones. curious about the blood plum - is it a fruit producer or an ornamental?
-vibrates slightly- it is indeed supposed to produce fruit! the roundy red and sweet plums, incidentally, not the blueish sour ones, which is very convenient. Blood Plums are overall redder than their more-normal cousins, so the fruits are likely to be red on the inside as well. But that one's a young babbu so i am not holding my breath for anything this year xP if it does carry fruit it won't be much and not particularly big likely.
My weeping cherry isn't dead after all, it was just sulking because Scottish springtimes are crap. It needs repotted one of these days when I can muster enough energy.
a neat trick that I learned about shrubs/trees: if you want to see if it's dead or just resting, touch the branches or trunk - if it's alive and taking up water, it'll feel cool in comparison to your hands. a dead shrub will be room temp and gradually warm to your temperature because it's just a stick at that point. and if all else fails, snip off a bit of twig and see if there's any green tissue under the cut, as opposed to dry brown tissue. eta: obviously if the trunk has a thick enough bark layer it'll be hard to tell that way, so go for a branch in that case
Poppies are apparently ridiculously easy to grow. My parents have a mostly empty (aside from a hive, yay pollination) place above the garden, I could put some there and use the flowers for stuff, I love the flavor. My mother is actually planning to go get a bunch of petals in the wild to make liqueur, I guess I'll see if there are mature seed capsules already.
yeah definitely, I mean poppies are pretty much just wildflowers that were domesticated at some point (pretty early on in human agriculture iirc), but they still have all the hardiness of a weed. Good luck with the seed capsules, but i thiiiiiink they are unlikely to be done already during the prime season for picking the petals, given that capsule is considered mature when the flower itself is entirely wilted and the petals have dropped off!
Yeah, it's really unlikely but who knows. In the worst case, I can see if there are decorative varieties sold somewhere around here, but I'm not sure they'd be as good for culinary purposes. Or I can wait until the wild ones are producing seeds.
decorative cultivars tend to not have so much in the way of smell and taste sadly - see also my frustrations with most roses these days and why mom and I went out of our way to get 18th century reconstructed cultivars with culinary and perfume emphasis. Though i wouldn't give up on that count quite yet, amazon has a pretty wide variety of seeds for all kinds of needs in general, so there may be culinary and/or wild poppyseeds sold there
I did end up finding capsules! Some are ripe-looking but not dry yet, I'll see if drying them out in the sun will get me seeds. I'll also come back in a while and pick the dry ones.
hhhhey y'all does anyone have any watering advice for a vast and eclectic variety of plants? there was a plant sale at our school for the herbology club and I went A Little Nuts Rosemary Basil Kale Aloe Vera Tomato Meyer Lemon thank you so much,,
I'd say that everything except the aloe should get watered when the soil starts to look/feel dry on top; give them a good soaking when you do so they'll be good for a while. tomatoes are more forgiving than a lot of plants, and rosemary is a mediterranean herb that doesn't need huge amounts of water, but aim to keep the soil moist in all the food plants. the aloe will be happier with less water - it seems counterintuitive, but succulents have fleshy roots that rot when they're too damp for too long. put it in a bright spot without too much direct sun so the leaves don't discolor, and water thoroughly when the soil is dry/the pot feels light when you pick it up. don't let it sit in water, and keep it quite dry in the winter. if you've got plant food that you use I could try to recommend amounts...
@devils-avocado THANK YOU SO MUCH they're all indoor plants ATM and we can't get them a ton of sunlight jjjjust yet because we've got a bitchy roommate who'd shriek at us if we even Thought of putting anything with dirt in her Precious Kitchen (literally we all pay the same rent fuck off) but that's such good info THANK YOU SO SO SO MUCH I think we can + will get plant food soon (we're really hype to have ACTUAL GREEN THINGS) and I can send you a sorta pic/diagram—rn, they're all in front of windows w/ blinds on them? we're planning to put the aloe in the kitchen as soon as we can, and the others on a table under one of the windows that'll be open more often!
Started a whole bunch of seeds today, and they're set outside. So - hopefully we'll see something and they won't just get eaten by birds. There's one egg-carton of herbs; another of beans, peas, and corn; and a third of also beans, peas, and corn, plus tomatoes (cherry and beefsteak; I'm planning on putting them in a hanging pot if they sprout successfully) and some edible flowers. Plus two plastic tins of an herb mix and an edible flower mix, and Hummingbird refreshed the wooden planter-box and scattered lettuce and might-be-lettuce seeds in it. I have no idea how well the corn's going to work out, and I'm mostly trying it because growing my own corn seems hilarious. (So does growing brussel sprouts, although I can't seem to explain why growing brussel sprouts would be really funny.)
Today we had an adventure! Bought the pillar-nectarine and the mulberry, discovered that the nectarines are sold at a staggering height of a little under 2m, the mulberry is actually closer to 2.5m. That all sounds fun and like a great "get some bang for your buck" deal! As long as your car isn't kind of tiny. Soooo what I'm saying is... remember kids, Seatbelt Safebee says it's safe to drive as long as the seatbelt can snap close :') (It wasn't super dangerous but it was... kind of hilarious to hold two young trees as out of the way as possible while mom drove.) Also acquired goth af elderflower/berry (the black lace cultivar is just friggin beautiful) and a couple other small things. Only missing the blueberries now and we might wait another year for that because uh... weeeeee are kind of out of room with the old tomato cultivars mom found somewhere so.
Today, I learned that I could actually grow avocado trees in this climate. I really want to try but I'm scared that my parents will build something on top of the one garden we have that would be big enough. Also, summers might be a bit hot in the first few years.
