| I will turn any living space in which I inhabit into a jungle just watch me | locked in an eternal battle against kudzu |
currently inactive. may or may not return at a later date, fully dependent upon if I manage to find that mythical artefact known as 'good health'.
haven't talked about the porch plants for a while so...
(also, my mother bought me an olive tree, which is the itty bitty little stick of green leaves right behind the front banana plant's leaves in the top pic. I don't know how big it gets so finding it a container is going to be interesting!!)
and of course, my spikey sons!!! big boys!! thinking I might have to give them their own individual pots sometime soon, because the boys are getting very crowded here! they're about a year and a half old now, I think!
this is all sweet potato foliage with like... three blades of grass mixed in and that's it for weeds.
CORN
this is the true gold sweet corn- heirloom, so I'm curious at how it's going to taste! since heirloom corn tends to not be as sweet as hybrid sweet corn and all.
My lovely lavender bushes
@yugioh779 you got a tomato already?? consider me jealous, ours are taking their sweet time! XD
While I don't have a picture of it before SOMEONE (mon pรจre) ate it, I do have this one!
Aren't they adorable???
!!!! precious babies!!!! <3 <3
general plant/garden update/status/plans/whatever you want to call them: (warning- LONG POST)
everyone's been moved outside to enjoy the summer weather, saving electricity on the grow lights (which wouldn't be on anyway because it's too h o t)
the ginger and turmeric plants are set and settled, probably won't need anything other than some water here and there until winter. roughly 9 months to go until harvest.
both truly tiny banana trees have hit huge growth spurts, and interestingly enough, one of them (in a shallow dish that had more sand mixed in the soil) is having just overall lots of growth, while the other is slightly slower (deeper dish, less sand), but seems to be forming a pup at the base!
the plumeria got hit hard by spider mites and lost almost all of its leaves :( got it treated with soapy neem, now the lingering, old diseased-looking leaves are all dropping off and healthy, bright green new leaves are growing back! it's in desperate need of a transplant to a larger container, though. gonna do that soon.
several succulents are starting to form pups/offshoots! baby retusa haworthia has grown out into the star/circle shape it's supposed to have. the spikey sons are continuing to grow but a few are showing signs of pest damage, probably going to have to treat with soapy neem.
new plant baby incoming!! I got my hands on a scented geranium! :D :D she's a peacock geranium and she smells like roses!! she is very little and baby but she should be moving up into a new pot soon <3
main gardens
LOTS OF SUMMER GROWTH
the entire garden got mulched!! I didn't get to help with that because my allergies were kicking me in the face so I got sent inside asdfghjkl. but this was super badly needed and should hopefully make the garden a bit more resiliant this summer!!
baby tomatoes and peppers are growing!! set's not that heavy, so I plan to do a circit every day or so to flick flowers and hopefully get some more tomatoes on those vines. lots of vine growth though, nice and healthy green!!
scarlet runner beans were blooming, but for some reason we're suffering on the pollinator front and nothing pollinated them, so the flowers all died without making any beans :( probably not going to get a crop from them unless they rebloom, which I am keeping an eye out for!
jack-be-little pumpkins all blooming! since the pollinators are MIA I'll probably pick a male flower here and there to try hand-pollinating the female flowers just in case. probably not that far off from a harvest, since they're a 55 day mini pumpkin!!
MY DRAGON'S TONGUE BEANS HAVE BEANS ON THEM!! eeeee they look so cool, I love them?? green beans with purple specks!! I'm kinda just keeping an eye on them for now bc I'm not 100% sure when to pick/snap/can them, I think I can go ahead and use some of them fresh tho.
balsam, black-eyed susans, calendula, snapdragons, bee balm, bachelor's buttons, borage, and poppies are all blooming!! and some roses of course, they're all looking lovely!! gotta pinch those snapdragons back tho
the sweet potatoes have taken off. I'm gonna have to take pictures later, they're just turning into this slowly-spreading carpet of green leaves and it looks so cool!! my poor pretty red/pink regular potatoes got hit super hard by that late frost though and I reluctantly must say I don't think I'm going to get much from them :( oh well, there's always next year!!
the arches for the climbing plants are starting to get covered!! currently in the lead is luffa gourd, which is actually being a nice and obedient plant and climbing the trellis without trying to escape (unlike the cucumbers, who are trying to eat the tomatoes)
corn is up, squash is up, but I did lose all of one variety of squash to squash beetles. watermelons are also up. peanuts are blooming, not sure they're getting pollinated so I'll be looking up what to do there, alpine strawberries are continuing to produce a handful of strawberries a day, and the sprouting broccoli is still producing!
lastly- I planted like 200 sunflower seeds and they're up and growing fast. some of these babies are going to hit 10-12 feet!! (3-3.6 meters) there's also a dwarf type I planted, but it's had some pretty spotty germination and seems to be struggling a bit. I want to sow some more around, because it's impossible to have too many sunflowers!
food forest
my base plans have Changed but it's still happening!!
I got some trees to plant, the little elderberry babs I started from cuttings are probably going down there too. finally managed to get my hands on a witch hazel!! I'd love to get more though, we should be having them all over the place and they're a vital source of early food for the bees
current goal is to get my hands on some mulberry tree cuttings, blueberry shrub cuttings, and some grape cuttings from my late great-grandfather's ancient concord grapes because they're stubborn and tough and will probably outlive me by a matter of outright decades as long as humans don't decide to rip em up
I also want comfrey. like, I'd fight a man for comfrey, that's how much I want it. important plant.
also turns out alpine strawberries make a great groundcover for a food forest so guess who 100% intends to try and start like 150 alpine strawberry seeds next january??
other plant projects
still haven't planted my roses. we're trying to find spots, but we're currently overloaded byyyyy.........
the large number of plants my parents and I indulged in getting because we all are incredibly paranoid by the absolute mess this year is (what with the shortages and all) and we're all on-board with trying to become way more self-sufficient. I have claimed the porch as plant-space. I am doing my best to cover it completely.
the plants for two woodland medicinal gardens are in the works, one down at the creek, one a bit closer. I've got money set aside specifically to buy ginseng and goldenseal seeds this fall, and hopefully I can get my hands on some ramps seeds and blue cohosh seeds too! trying to work on restoring some native plants around here!
pollinator garden plants. we all got kind of spooked by the vanishing pollinators, so we're planting milkweed, bee balm, and the like. also planning on large amount of multi-seasonal flowers (if we can find them) and trying to plant enough flowers in general to support at least one hive of honey bees next year (preferably more, but just one would be an absolute blessing)
I still don't really know what to do with my seed-started lemon trees whoops?? they're growing like crazy too, some of them are starting to get thorns! I don't need 7-8 lemon trees tho asdfghjkl that is. too many for the space I'm working with XD
I'd really like to be able to get some dwarf orange trees/dwarf coffee shrub/dwarf olive trees and some other stuff like some saffron crocus bulbs and then just some other tulip/daffodil/iris bulbs (and maybe a new type of peony??) just for the pretty but I'm not sure that can happen this year, gonna have to wait and see
basically my life is just plants right now tbh
#plants #gardening #gardening plans #long post #asdfghjkl tbh I mostly wrote this down to organize my brain so I could visualize what to do next because the to-do list never shrinks #anyway if you've been wondering what I've been up to it's pretty much 100% gardening and hunkering down building up our storeroom for the winter up here #it's also incredibly hot and it's big allergy time just to add insult to injury #mimosa trees are the worsttttt ugh #but I got a nice hat now so no sunburn yay!! #just lots of sneezing and itchy eyes lol
5 notesI!! ducked out real quick even though it's raining to check on my baby paw-paw trees that I started from seed last year, and you know how I thought only two survived?
turns out all seven of them lived!! they're leafed out and pretty much unmistakable at this point, I had just missed seeing them because it was too early in the year before!! :D
finally pruned my coleus's today and got a pretty bouquet for my table!
with the added benefit that they won't wilt but instead grow new plants
more plants... brassica babies
last pic is one of the arches we set up to trellis on- between the two beds and the arch, there's 21 sweet potato plants, the arch itself is lined with small gourd seeds, and two lil baby peppers were planted on the bed to the left. they're doing good so far!!
hngh
finally started the pink banana seeds and carob seeds soaking for planting after procrastinating out of nerves and I dropped two of the banana seeds under the porch hgfasdfghjkl
I am full of many nerves
My bedroom window is the only place in my apartment that gets consistent and good sunlight ๐ . so I could do herbs!! Does rosemary grow tall? I've only seen the fresh sprigs and that's about it haha. I have steak sandwich hybrid tomato seeds and I think carrot seeds but I might plant those whenever I move out and have my own place/house. Now I have to be on the look out for dwarf tomato seeds either online or in the stores.
for the rosemary, depends on how it's kept! rosemary's capable of becoming a 4 ft shrub, but if you're willing to do some root pruning once a year you can keep it smaller. basically, once your rosemary plant is the size you want it, you take it out its pot once a year, snip off about 1/3rd of its roots, and put it back in the same pot with fresh dirt.
just to throw it out there, I got my dwarf tomato seeds from baker creek/rareseeds.com- baker creek's currently sold out of just about all their seeds, but they offer three types of dwarf tomatoes, minibel, micro tom, and orange hat! other seed sites carry them too, though, so they're far from your only option for dwarf tomato seeds. I can personally verify that minibel and micro tom both produce absolutely delicious little tomatoes :D
tag reply:
#unrelated but I simply adore your username!
๐ thank you! I'm pretty proud of coming up with it haha
fun fact of the day the california poppy reproduces by making these really long seed pods when theyre done flowering and then the seed pods explode scattering their seeds everywhere
i think theyr neat
banana babies,,, growing way too fast and already in need of a transplant!
I think part of my brain didn't register that this banana tree is still... a tree. like, yes, this is still such a small tree you can grow it in an apartment- 2-4 ft tall (60 to 121 cm) but. still a tree! and it needs all the rootspace that implies!
my sweet potato slips finally arrived!! they're a bit wilty but I stuck them in some potting soil and gave them a good watering and they should perk up :)
the tricky part here is that we're going to need to fix up special places for them, probably some raised beds, amended with a bit of creek sand. which we can't do right now because everything's sopping wet. oh, well, maybe in a few days!
so I completely forgot about this but remember when I was trying to grow all sorts of fussy/tricky plants from seed? this is the current only survivor, the henna tree (or at least I hope it's a henna!)
looking a bit rough because of a really bad aphid infestation, but it looks like it might have finally shaken it. it's actually getting pretty close to a year old now, I think!
last one for now! my mom's double peony bushes are blooming- they're very small bushes, but according to her they were given to me by my great-grandfather, and are probably around 50 years old!
I'm so proud of my lil paw paw babies,, they're still hanging in there!
second pic's a type of wild rose that grows in patches around here and I swear it's more fragrant than any rose we have planted
third pic- wild blackberry flowers! I'm gonna make ink out of the berries this year again if I get the time :D
remember when I mentioned I was trying to figure out how to root plant cuttings + my grandparents wanted some elderberry trees?? I have succeeded, behold my very short, very young tree children!!
complete opposite of blueberry cuttings so far. all of my blueberry attempts just kinda withered up and died, so I'll probably try and do dormant cuttings of them next and see how that goes. we don't have enough berry plants around here!!
I did find that my bleeding hearts roots that I planted earlier this year actually bloomed!! I was worried they hadn't made it (roots looked to be in pretty rough shape) but they're there and growing away!
also lots of pea pods in the side garden... just waiting for them to fill out and then I feast
I took a quick walk today and remembered to take my camera with me so I have many plant pictures now!
second pic is a lilac bush's seed pods!! I'm hoping I can catch the harvest for them too and see if I can get me some seed-started lilacs!!