I got to hear a bonsai guy talk about stuff awhile back, and the weidest thing I remember is that apparently they only put a plant into those shallow tray things when they've reached the desired size/shape for the plant. before that point they keep it in a sort of smallish regular pot so that it produces enough new growth to work with. and the best plant to buy for a bonsai is the sort of weirdly-shaped ones that no one wants for landscaping, because they've got character :D
i... actually have no idea because we don't use plantfood or fertilizer at all in the garden for various reasons, most of them coming down to "effort and/or this is a food plant" Everything we have has to deal with the clay-y soil as is or die :')
That is exactly the rhododendron I got! It's kind of sideways and funky and i love it, I'll post a picture when I get a chance
The squirrels have been eating my seeds! I brought some stuff inside, since they seem to leave the actual plants alone :/
I suspect that one set of tomatoes has fried in the sun. :/ The other set is still doing good, though. Hopefully the possibly-fried set will perk up, since the seedlings just looked wilt-y; I watered them, so...I'll have to see how they're doing tomorrow. (And possibly water them sooner, too, if they survived.) The corn's doing okay, and the peas continue to be not-dead. And there's a lot more sprouts in the herb containers.
Has anyone tried starting tomatoes directly from the tomato? Like instead of from seed packets, sorry that sentence was funky I'm super tired
I haven't, but anecdotally I have heard that if u leave a tomato sitting out long enough (like hella long) the seeds will just start to grow out the tomato. which will probably get kinda moldy I imagine you could blorp out the insides and just mix it in some dirt? or if u want clean seeds u could let them sit in a jar of water until the goop separates, and then drain and plant them. I'm guessing a quarter-inch slice of tomato would have more than enough seeds while keeping them sorta spaced a bit, if you planted the entire slice flat in a pot? one time I snagged some tomato guts from a variety I was cooking with at work (open pollinated, not hybrid) and took them home and dried them on a piece of paper. I ended up with a billion of 'em and they still sprout nicely five-ish years later. ETA: maybe this means I have technically done the thing? there was a drying period involved, it wasn't directly tomato-to-dirt which is how I read the question, lol
There was a post going around on tumblr about a life-hack post where they went "grow your own tomatoes! Just cut a slice of tomato with seeds in and drop it into the dirt!" (followed by "do not use more than one slice, my mom did this and had sixty plants and So Many tomatoes"). So - yeah, it's a thing which can be done. Might even work better than from seed packets, honestly.
I got some beautiful heirlooms from the grocery store and I've been sticking some of their seed goop right into the dirt as I chop them up, so I was curious. I guess I'll have some data in a week or so on the viability of the direct goop method.
Wow, I have data sooner than I thought! I got home from work today to find almost twenty seedlings from a single bit of seed goop out of an intensely flavorful purple cherry tomato that I planted less than a week ago. That is so many more than I expected, I'm kind of floored tbh. So I guess I can recommend the direct goop method. It's nice because it's often cheaper than buying a seed packet and you get to eat a delicious tomato.
So my mum got me some flowers 'cos I faceplanted into tarmac on Tuesday (long story) and the bouquet includes some gorgeous red and yellow paint-splotchy roses. Does anyone think I'll have any luck if I try sticking one in dirt to root before they all die off? I've tried sticking roses in dirt before but it's never worked, I'm not sure if it's just that I'm being overoptimistic about their chances or if I'm doing something wrong. It'd have to live in a pot, I have no garden, but they look like pretty small roses so ETA: shitty dark phone pic of
mmmaybe a piece of stem with some leaves would root, but I have my doubts about a flower rooting. all the energy resources will be going to that flower instead of potential root production. if there's a long enough stalk with good leaves, maybe snip the bloom off and give it a shot? rooting hormone wouldn't hurt either, if you have any. ETA: for context, one time I was involved in pruning a giant rose shrub and I took home a bit of approx. pencil-width stem to try rooting it in some water, which it did, so I potted it up and that plant is living in somebody's front yard now & doing great. however this pruning was in spring before flowers came out, and the cutting was very fresh and from a large, healthy, notoriously vigorous plant. I'm very curious to know if cut flowers could produce a rooted cutting.
Matesprit brought home more soil yesterday! And also two blueberry bushes and a raspberry cane (in containers); the raspberry is probably going to need a bigger container, and we're probably not getting more than a couple berries each out of any of the three this year - all three of them are still very young. Hummingbird spent part of yesterday separating out the pea plants so that they're properly spaced now and repotted the beans while she was at it. I separated out the corn today, and potted several of the other seedlings. The tomatoes aren't looking great (they look all wilty again), but they might not be dead. I'm torn between trying to restart if these ones die, or just getting an already-thriving vine.
That's aaaaabout what I thought but hey I'll give it a shot! Didn't think of cutting off the flower. I'll do that hopefully tomorrow when I repot pepper seedlings.
The tomato seedlings have unwilted (again). I stg, I am on the verge of nicknaming them Lazarus and Rasputin, because this is twice now that they've looked dead and then perked right back up the next day.
some of my zucchini seedlings were doing that... I eventually figured it was that they were too big for their tiny seedling pots and needed an amount of dirt that would stay moist through the whole day. they're planted out in dirt now and hopefully that'll treat them better. maybe yours are getting floppy during the warmest part of the day and recovering after a good watering? tomatoes are usually pretty durable, which is great imo
That might be it, yeah. They weren't floppy today, which is probably a good sign; I did move them into a bigger pot yesterday, so that may be helping. One of the blueberry bushes has a small cluster of flowers - small ones shaped enough like berries that I thought they might be at first. The other one doesn't seem to have any flowers, but did have a couple wilty-looking leaves and a handful that were dead or very chewed-on; the raspberry cane has some things which...might turn into berries? idk, I didn't usually look too close at the raspberry bushes in the house where I grew up until the berries were already formed - and those were old bushes, anyways, pre-dating when we moved in. I'm pretty sure the thing that's been chewing on the blueberry leaves is a caterpillar - I've seen one crawling around the patio, orange and all furry-spiky; I'm going to be looking up ways to keep the bushes from getting eaten. Nearly all of the herbs and small plants are in bigger pots now; the only exception is the herb mix, and I'm considering moving that into a better spot so that it's getting more constant indirect sunlight. I'm also considering planting some more seeds - carrots and radishes, stuff that'd need direct seeding, maybe some more flowers.
Not doing any annual veggie gardening this year, but boy is the perennial herb and fruit garden looking great after all our rain! Only some of my strawberries bloomed though, and I don't remember if they did that last year too? Could be everbearing while the ones currently producing are June bearing. I think I'm going to divide the clump that did bloom after harvesting and plant it around some more.
Lmao I gave my neighbor some of my extra seedlings (got to make room for my cutting experiments, I wanna see what method gives the best roots for bonsai) and he responded by mansplaining gardening to me. People are incredible.
Like apparently his thing is, instead of allowing seedlings to harden over the course of a few days by bringing them outside for a few hours before planting them out, he puts them under a grow light for 3 weeks and then plants them without hardening, intentionally shocking them. Apparently the stunting this causes is a good thing somehow? Anyway, he illustrated this point by showing me some pepper seedlings with sunburned leaves and bragging about them. He says it's an "old Indian method" which... what. Also I'm pretty sure he's running a grow op and it's making the house hot. I think my surplus seedlings can go to the community gardens from now on. In other news, my "space saving" cucumber is now a vine almost as tall as me, and it's flowering like a champ. I am going to have so many salads if I can figure out why my lettuce keeps dying.
