Friday, December 30, 2011

Baobab Friday... and all the other days

Saturday, December 24 (10 days old):


Sunday, December 25 (11 days)


Monday, December 26 (12 days)


Tuesday, December 27 (13 days)


I missed a day for some reason, then Thursday, December 29 (15 days), I didn't use the right white balance but in any case:



And today, Friday, December 30, at 16 days old:



Good progress so far. You can't really tell from the photos, but it's been getting taller and taller. It's taller than Za 1 ever was, but that might be just because of the lack of daylight. It's slowly turning green, and the first set of true leaves is getting started. I'm paranoid that it has too much water, or too little, or too something, but actually, it's not giving any sign of ill-health so far.

Inshallah...

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

More, more, more!

You know what's great about having your own baobab? Everyone who knows you will think of you every time they see a baobab, forever. People used to say to me "how is your dog?" or "I saw you walking your dog." Now they say "I saw a baobab on TV and I thought of you." Yay, people are thinking of me!

Also, when you have a baobab, people actually want to hear about your garden. Or at least about your baobab. People who don't know me well still ask about the dog; true friends ask about my baobab. (I suppose it would be nice if they'd ask how I am, but, you know. Baby steps.) And unlike the dog, I can go places without being asked where is my baobab. I see people at the grocery story and they ask "where is your dog?" As if dogs were allowed in the grocery store. But as I don't walk around with my baobab, people don't actually ask where it is.

Anyway.

The downside of having a baobab is, you have to have more baobabs. I suppose most of you don't know the saying "one is too many and a thousand is never enough," but it's true of baobabs, too. One baobab is too many, in that they're a lot of anxiety and way too big to keep as indoor plants. But then I was watching a documentary about Madagascar, again. That's what started this whole baobab mania in the first place. And if you watch baobab documentaries, you'll notice there is never a baobab. Baobabs are very gregarious; they form gigantic forests, further than the eye can see.

Not only that, but as you may recall, there are... I think 10 species of baobab: one in Africa, three in Australia, and six in Madagascar. A. digitata is the African one; A. za is one of the Madagascar ones. Those two are easy enough to source online, but then I discovered something else: the poster child of baobabs, the one everyone thinks of when they think of baobabs, is actually A. grandidieri. It's the tallest and "the most beautiful" of baobabs. And it's named after Grandidier, who also named Grandidier's vontsira.

This can only mean one thing: I must have a Grandidier's baobab.

A. grandidieri, however, is more difficult to source. I found a supplier, of course. I pretty much find whatever I want. It offered packs of five or bulk packs of... I don't know, 500 seeds? Or 50? I didn't look at it that closely, as I'm not after planting baobabs in bulk. I put one pack of five in my shopping cart, and then I thought better of it and put a second pack... and it told me there wasn't enough in stock.

What?

Are you suggesting that in the whole of the Intertubes, there are only five seeds of A. grandidieri to be had?

No there isn't. Not anymore, because I bought them.

But then, the supplier's minimum order is $15, and the A. grandidieri seeds are $4.90, so I added two more baobabs: A. madagascarensis and A. suarenzis. But at $4.90 each, that's still $0.30 short of the order limit. Yargh! Darn you to heck, baobabs!!!!!

I filled up my order with a cheap pack of black pepper seeds, formerly one of the most expensive commodities on earth.

My New Year's Resolution is, not to plant any more baobabs until I have a grow light for them.

What else baobabs need

Daylight. Everyone here is desperate for daylight. I think I've explained before that we're on the shore of a mighty lake which is supposed to freeze in the course of November. While the lake is open, it snows; once the lake is frozen, we get cold but clear weather which is very pleasant. Unfortunately, this fall has been hideously warm, so it's been overcast for three months. There have been a few sunny days; I remember that clearly. At least four of them. Five, even. But mostly, there is a general feeling that we haven't seen the sun in months. Everyone who has a SAD lamp is using it, and those who don't are trying to buy or borrow them.

And so with plants.

My flesh-eating aliens are now immensely tall, and one has a bud, but they're pale and I have to rotate them every day, because they lean towards the window. The monitor morning glories are all thin and pale and lying flat, though not dead. The lemon trees are dropping leaves; Hope, as always, is making a big drama of it, and Faith, as always, is stoic but nonetheless stressed.

And my new baobab is pale like an endive, and taller at two weeks of age than Digitata 1 was at three months. It must have light. And I don't have a grow light.

Luckily, I got a raise just before Christmas, so I will soon have a budget for grow lights and such things, but not until my January 13 paycheque. Then by the time I place the order and they ship me a large parcel in the mail... and hopefully it all gets here in one piece... I'm thinking this baobab needs to make it another six to eight weeks with no light.

Sigh...

Mind you, the lake could freeze in the next six to eight weeks. By the time I get the light, I might not be needing it. Who knows.

Anyway, my baobab needs light, so I put it on the desk under the desk lamp. It's not a grow light, but it's all we have for now, and plants do respond to artificial light to some extent. If I stay up quite late, by the time I go to bed, the more flexible plants are leaning towards the floor lamp I use. So, I put the baobab under the desk lamp. Hopefully that will help.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Water for baobabs

I have developed a cunning strategy for keeping Za 7 alive: give it exactly what it wants. I don't negotiate with terrorists, but I obey baobabs.

This raises the question: what do baobabs want?

I googled it. Sadly, no one seems to have posted a precipitation graph specifically for A. za, nor can I find with any certainty where exactly A. za is most successful. In fact, I couldn't even find any specific information as to where it grows at all, except I know it's in Madagascar, and it's got to be on the west side, since that's the arid part of Madagascar.

On that note, observe what interesting things one learns from gardening. If I didn't have an interest in baobabs, I might never have learned that there is a mountain range down the length of Madagascar, the east side being exposed to the Indian Ocean monsoon, and the west side being the rainshadow side and therefore arid. But anyway.

What I did find by googling is a handful of climate graphs for a handful of cities on the island, which I then located using Google Maps. The driest one was Toliara, somewhere close to the west coast in the southern part. And the precipitation graph for Toliara is as follows:


Hmmm... Question: is this per day, or per month? I'm guessing per month, but I'd better find out for sure, so I don't misjudge my watering by a factor of 30 one way or the other.

Then I converted it into the number of milliliters of water for a 4" planter, where Za 7 is currently. It comes to about 300 mL for the dry months, up to 3 L for the three wet months. So actually, it's not really that dry. In fact, putting 3 L of water into a 4" planter in just a month seems perfectly impossible to me, unless the tree is drinking like an Irishman.

And the next question is, what part of the cycle is right now? Obviously not "December" since we're in the opposite hemisphere, but not "June" either, or at least I would think not. You'd think plants would start in the rainy season, not in the dry one. But I don't actually know. In captivity, baobab seeds tend to germinate rather randomly, and they don't like wet conditions.

Then again, does the amount of light drive the drinking? That would seem logical, in which case they need the extra daylight to use the extra water. Or not, because they're spongy; they don't really drink the water, just store it for the dry season.

Hmmmm...

I guess the moral is, I still don't know any better, except that at some point, I need to make it drink half a cup of water a day. And that's certainly not what it needs right now.

Friday, December 23, 2011

Baobab Friday rides again!


This is Adansonia za #7. It's kicking arses and taking names.

Bansai, little tree!

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

No pressure, little tree

You may or may not know that I currently work as a driver for people with disabilities. It's a nice job, but the downside is, my clients are somewhat more likely to die than the average construction worker or truck driver. (Though as to that, when I was driving in Alberta, there were drivers dying every week. It's a real bloodbath down there.)

Accordingly, one of my favourite clients died last Wednesday, December 14. She was 87 years old and had been widowed only five months, after 69 years of marriage. If you're into TV, you may be interested to know that she was the mother of Joe from Ice Pilots NWT. Because my life is that cool.

Why am I telling you this? Because the same day, my Adansonia za seed sprouted, after three other seeds failed and this one had been in the soil for two months.

As you know, I only consider a plant "sprouted" once it has broken the surface. This seed, however, was planted way too shallow, so it broke the surface when it had not even half an inch of root. And this is lucky, because it had white mold all over its shell. Because it broke the ground early, I was able to see it, wipe off the mold, remove the contaminated soil, and bury it again. But as the root kept growing, it kept pushing out of the soil, so I kept having to heap more soil over it. I though it would die for sure. As of today, though, it's still growing, and now the shell is split and you can see the baby leaves getting ready to emerge. In a few more days, it should be able to right itself and become a bona fide "sprout" rather than just a seed with a root.

But the thing is, because it sprouted the day Bertha died, I have formed a mental association between the two. Now it's like the baobab is a reincarnation of Bertha, or a memorial, or somehow a continuation of her spirit in baobab form. Now if it dies, I'm gonna feel like I let Bertha down. And it's rather likely to die, I should think, seeing as it's a tropical tree hatching in 60 N latitude on or around the winter solstice.

Nope, no pressure at all...

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Darn you, CryoVat!

Today, I destratified my holly seeds, after they had spent 60 days in warm stratification and 61 days in cold stratification.

The good news is, they didn't dry out.

The bad news is, they got mold.

Hmmm...

In the beginning, I think there were about 30 seeds. Some got buried, some stayed on the surface of the CryoVat. The mold is of a type that seems to operate only on the surface. Therefore, it is possible that there may still be live seeds in there somewhere.

Whatever.

I planted them in #18, previously a lychee / baobab nursery which never seemed to stay moist. I'm pretty sure everything in there is dead; on the other hand, it never got moldy, either. So I remoisturized it, dumped in the CryoVat, and raked it in.

When I think about it, the CryoVat was scalded soil, which may account for the mold being only on the surface. Or not. Whatever.

Then, I threw a few of my harvested morning glory seeds on top of the holly nursery. Partly because I'm not having any luck with sprouting lately and morning glories are easy to sprout, but more importantly, because I have trouble maintaining suitable conditions in my nursery planters. The little geranium pots with the coffee, kwyjibo, baobabs and cherries are always either too dry or too wet. (Good news though, no mold, except one of the kwyjibo seeds rotted completely. I'm guessing it wasn't clean to begin with, seeing as none of the other pasteurized soil has any issues.) And the thing with seeds is, you can't tell if it's too wet or too dry until they're dead. So I figure, morning glories will let me know whenever it's too dry, and absorb excess water quickly when it's too wet.

That being said, if you're gonna try the same thing at home, don't go too crazy with them. Morning glories are jungle plants, they can tolerate disgustingly wet conditions that favour mold. In fact, jungles are pretty much built on mold. So just because your morning glories are happy, doesn't mean everyone else is ok. It's just a guideline, really.

To get back to my poor holly seeds, now that they've spent four months in stratification, they're still supposed to take "16 months to three years" to sprout. That is to say, we should get something some time between February 2013 and October 2014.

Um...

That's not gonna work. I can't say for certain that there are any mold-free seeds now, but I'm pretty sure there won't be in three years.

Thus the moral is, I must try again. But this time, I'll seed them outside in a large container. That seems to work much better for stratification than messing with small containers in the fridge. If I seed them at the end of June, they'll have two warm months and two increasingly cold months, and then come inside just as the ground is freezing outside. That's a much better approximation of natural conditions.

Better yet, I'll make two batches. One will come inside at the end of October, one will stay out on the balcony. The more methods you try, the more you might succeed.

Also, I need to identify the perfect monitor plant. It has to be fairly shallow-rooted, to monitor conditions near the surface, where the seeds are; and it has to be fussy about moisture levels, and have a clear way of communicating when it's unhappy, and whether the problem is too much or too little water.

Hmmmm... I'm thinking nemophilas.

Ah well. As I always say, there's always next year.

Monday, December 5, 2011

I like you, plants

Yesterday, I moved the aliens from under the piano to a "sunnier" spot. Of course there is still no sun and the lake is still open so there will not be sun for a long time. Anyway, I moved them to a better spot. I also measured the leader. It was 8" tall yesterday, but it was leaning towards the lack of sun. I rotated it, and now it's looking straighter and taller. They have still made no attempt to devour the dog and me. I'm hoping that by establishing a good rapport with them now, I can sic them after my enemies come summer.

Later that day, I watered... I don't remember what, but I know it's in my log.

Today, I watered Deng Xiaoping. It's more than doubled in size since it started leafing out. It's got lots of pretty, small, pale leaves. And it's still a rebel, obviously.

Sometimes I check on my hard-to-hatch seeds that never hatch. They can't win forever. There is plenty more where they came from.

Do I have a point?

Probably not. But plants are good company, in a way. They don't talk much, but they're always up to something interesting. (Except sometimes they die, but then, so do people. Plants are better company while they're alive.)

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Still alive!

The third flesh-eating alien hatched about two days ago. The first one is now at least three inches tall. I don't want to provoke it by approaching it with a measuring tape, but it's clearly growing very fast. Nonetheless, so far none of the aliens have tried to attach themselves to myself or the dog. Phew!

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Now I'm angry

I have two bowls for the ravens, a red one and a yellow one. They know what they're looking for, and they can see whether there is food in the dish as they fly by. It's a bit of a code between us.

Today, the weather was really nasty, so I put food out early instead of waiting for Chicken to come by. Several ravens came. Given the blowing snow, there wasn't much else they could do if they wanted to eat today.

Each raven started picking up food and taking it away to a cache... until one smartass decided that the bowl itself is the source of food and it would be easier simply to take the bowl home.

You stupid bird!!!!!!

I thought ravens were supposed to be smart. Chicken knows that I fill the bowl, the bowl doesn't fill itself. This other idiot bird just totally took me for granted and stole my red bowl. I bet you anything it was a male raven. Men totally do this sort of thing.

Now I'm mad.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

More bait of Satan!

I got a new seed catalog in the mail. This one is from Stokes. I haven't shopped from them before, but I'm about to.

As far as seeds, Stokes isn't exactly up my alley. They supply not only gardeners but commercial growers, so they have a very large selection of vegetable seeds, which they can ship in staggering quantities. But since I'm not into growing food and there is only one of me anyway, that's rather beside the point. Their flower seed selection is, predictably, more "commercial" than what I'm after. They sell the stuff people buy; I'm more into the stuff people have never heard of.

There are, however, two very attractive features in the Stokes catalog. One is their selection of pansies. I'm in love with pansies since my Matrix experience this summer, but unlike Ipomoea, I have no desire to collect every pansy cultivar ever created. Moreover, there are many pansies I totally don't like. So far I had only found a few choices, mostly as mixes, and although I love the Matrix mixes at Veseys, I was displeased with the overall selection from my suppliers. Stokes, on the other hand, offers over 100 varieties of pansies. I kid you not. And they're packed by variety, not just as mixes. I've picked out about 14 so far that I want. The only downside is that some of them are not available in less than 250 seeds. Oh well... Seeds keep.

And point 1b, they also have twice as many varieties of pumpkins as Veseys. Mmmmm... Pumpkins...

The other thing about Stokes is, clearly they must be getting volume discounts along the way, because a lot of their gardening tools and supplies are much cheaper than at Veseys. For example, the same heat mat that Veseys sells for 39.95 is 28.99 at Stokes. That timelapse plant camera I want is 119.95 at Veseys, but only 86.99 at Stokes. And, most importantly, they have a grow light for only $71.99. That's considerable cheaper than anything at Veseys. Still not within my current budget of $0, but once the budget increases to above zero, I can definitely afford a $72 grow light. That will make a world of difference, I think.

211 days until last frost...

Friday, November 25, 2011

The Great Pumpkin Problem

I may have mentioned, repeatedly, that I have a problem with pumpkins. Namely, they don't grow fast enough. But the cool thing is, so does everybody else here. So it's not me being inept at pumpkins; there really is a pumpkin problem here.

While looking at the times-to-maturity of different varieties, to see when I should start them for a mid-August maturity, I quickly realized where the problem is. The average time from transplant to maturity, between all the varities offered by my supplier, is 96 days. That means having to transplant out on May 11.

Haha, very funny. There is still snow on the ground on May 11. Nothing can get planted out until the end of June, and keeping a pumpkin indoors for two months is a nuisance, as they spread over the floor like... fleash-eating aliens, or something.

I must think of a solution.

Another one!!!!!

The third flesh-eating alien hasn't emerged yet, but while tidying up in Planter #9, where the herbaceous perennials from the 2011 garden are wintering, I discovered something else. Presumably it's the oriental lily coming up again, which is annoying because it bloomed too soon "last" year, which was really this year but last gardening season, and now it's going to bloom even sooner and I'll have no lilies at all for Yards in Bloom.

On a positive note, the fact that this is almost certainly a lily suggests that the ones in Planter #21 might also be lilies, and not, as I thought, flesh-eating aliens.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

They're coming outta the walls!


See this?

I shot it on Tuesday, when I went to check the moisture in my incubators. The thing on the right, obviously, is a zombie morning glory that's starving for light. The thing on the left is one of those flesh-eating aliens that I received from Veseys on October 27 and had to plant indoors because it was too late to put them outside.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!

The aliens are coming. This one was actually probably two days old already when I spotted it. As of this morning, there is a second one. Unless the third one rotted to death, which doesn't seem plausible given the success of the first two, it won't be far behind.

Sigh... Now we're all gonna die.

And another thing that's been going on for at least two weeks is this:


This is a crappy photo because the light was miserable, but you can see it's Deng Xiaoping. And it's leafing out. What the Ford? What kind of tree leafs out in early November????


This is bad. Either the flesh-eating aliens are going to kill everybody, or they're actually lily bulbs, then they'll flower in December and be unavailable when Yards in Bloom judging rolls around. And Deng Xiaoping is going to have to keep those leaves for 10 months, which isn't necessarily the end of the world, but not what a mayday tree needs, either. This is absolutely the worst time of year for plants to be growing.

See, if you ever look at a map, you'll notice that Hay River is on the south shore of Great Slave Lake, one of the largest lakes in North America. This time of year, when it's well below freezing but the lake is still open, steam rises off the lake, thusly:


That big cloud isn't a storm, it's steam off the lake. When the wind is from the south, as it was that day, we get bright clear skies with a menacing cloud to the north. When the wind is from the north, the cloud blows over us, and it gets overcast, and it snows. And if it's a strong wind, it breaks up the thin ice on the lake, thus retarding freeze-up. Once the lake is completely frozen over, it stops snowing and we get mostly clear weather until break-up. And this is why, if you're obsessively tracking my photography, you might notice that I have almost no photos shot in November. Of any year. Because there just isn't any light here in November.

Back to my garden, therefore, plants shouldn't try to grow in November, because there just isn't any light. No one has seen "direct sunlight" in weeks. And even if the weather cleared up, the hours of daylight are still decreasing for another month. If my house plants want to go nuts in January, that's fine by me; by then we get actual "sunlight" and it's increasing. Plants that grow in November are either going to be spindly and pale, or they're gonna need a grow light. And as I've already mentioned, I can't afford a grow light. Plus there's nowhere in my apartment to set up a light garden, really. Though I suppose I could find a way. I always find a way.


Well, I suppose all this is irrelevant now that we're about to be picked off one at a time by flesh-eating aliens, right?

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Waaaaaaaaiiiit a minute...

Ravens can't read, but then again neither can most construction workers. (Technically, most people are functionally illiterate, but that's beside the point of this blog.) However, construction workers can read pictograms, and I'm pretty sure ravens are smarter than construction workers.

In conclusion, I need to make a pictogram that a raven can interpret as "don't crap in food dish."

Even more reasons I'm single

Ok, this has nothing to do with gardening, but since I started writing reasons on this blog, you're stuck with it.

On Sunday, my car didn't start. So I went and got my work vehicle and my cables, boosted my car, and went about my day.

Gasp!

You'd think that knowing how to boost a car wouldn't be the end of the world. I mean, considering that the guy I like to look at has been with a woman who beats him for a few years (off and on, after his off-and-on relationship of many years with his abusive ex-wife ended), you'd think that knowing how to boost a car would be somewhat forgivable.

The only thing is, a more likely to get laid woman would have gone looking for a big burly dude with a big burly truck and let him do the boosting. And refrained from pointing out that almost every big burly dude in the world will inevitably connect the cables wrong.


Ok, here is another reason that actually has to do with the garden. Now that it's cold and snowy, I've started feeding my raven again. Wait... That's one reason right there. But actually, there seem to be currently as many as three ravens: Chicken, his girlfriend Squeaky, and another guy named Hoggle whom Chicken beats up whenever he sees him. (Naming ravens: two reasons.) But most importantly, ravens don't care where they crap, and in particular, one crapped in the food dish this morning. And I don't like to have to wash bird crap off my dishes. Who knows but they might carry psittacosis, or something. (I can spell "psittacosis" and I know what it is: three, four reasons.) So I was thinking how to prevent that, and being also an Occupational Health & Safety leader (four reasons), the first idea that came to me is to write them a sign. "Ravens: please refrain from crapping in food dish."

Yes. I'm sure there is hope for spinsters who write OH&S signs for ravens.

And you know what's really sad? Even though I obviously know that ravens can't read, the OH&S leader in me refuses to let go of the notion that this is obviously an occupational hygiene problem and occupational hygiene problems can be solved by signs.


And another reason I'm single is, I actually wrote all these thoughts.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Er... not so much

I googled "solar-powered grow lights" and as I predicted, lots of hits came up. And as I should have predicted if I had bothered to think about it, most were targeted to the grow-op demographic. As it turns out though, you'd pretty much have to have a grow-op to make it worth the money, because solar-powered grow lights are incredibly expensive. I mean six, seven hundred dollars.

Yeah: I don't think so.

Mind you, the grow light itself is quite expensive, but even accounting for that, the cost of the whole thing is prohibitive. It would take years to save enough on power bills to recovered the initial outlay. Same with hybrid cars, by the way. I wanted to buy a hybrid, but then I discovered it would take twenty years to save enough on gas to make up for the higher sticker price.

In management (yes, management is one of my many unused skills) we learn that training employees is pointless; instead you just have to "make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard." Sadly for the environment, the right thing is almost always considerably harder than the wrong thing.

You know what I'm gonna do instead? I'm gonna buy a solar meter. It's a little device that you stick in the ground, and after 24 hours, it tells you whether that spot is full sun, part sun, or full shade. Then I'll do the math, and if I find it's really worth it, I'll just buy a regular grow light and run an extension cord to the wall. I've been meaning to do that (the extension cord, that is) in any case to plug in other environmentally-wrong devices such as heat pads (if my hotbox proves insufficient to winter the plants), Xmas lights, and a heat lamp for my raven.

Speaking of which, another thing I need is a dog house for my raven. As I keep telling you, gardening is so wild, it makes psychedelic drugs redundant.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Pray for my baobabs!

Currently I have six baobab seeds on the go, but I'm pretty sure one is dead and a second is not moving. Of the other four, two have been in the dirt for a long time, and two were just planted two days ago in pasteurized soil. I'm refraining from checking on them on the grounds that if they're alive, they don't need me bothering them, and if dead, there's nothing I can do about it.

In addition, there is still a lychee, which I think is dead; two kwyjibo seeds; three Robusta coffee seeds; 27 freshly destratified cherry pits; and the holly seeds that still have one month to go in the CryoVat. And then of course the dogwood and cotoneaster seeds in the outdoor CryoVat.

That's not all! There is also the peony root, the three alien spores, 12 tulip bulbs sleeping in the fridge, and 18 bulbs of various species spending the winter outside in the Jungle.

Why am I on about this? Because some weeks ago I read an article about the efficacy of prayer. You see, I'm a Lutheran, and I would say a fairly devout one. Though of course since Lutherans are fairly rare (about 0.26% of Canadians, if I'm not mistaken), I only meet them at church, and ipso facto every Lutheran I know is "fairly devout."

Be that as it may, I don't believe in prayer.

GASP!

How can you be a devout Christian and not believe in prayer? Because we Lutherans believe in thinking about what we believe, whereas most people consider that faith and reason are intrinsically incompatible. But if you look at prayer logically in the context of what we believe we know about God, it should be self-evident that prayer, as most people do it, is useless. There are three things you can do with prayer: give glory, give thanks, or admit you're powerless and affirm your trust in God. Most people, however, use prayer to make long to-do lists for God, and therefore expect that God will manifest his approval by getting some of the to-do list done. And then they'll tell you "prayer works."

All right then. I set out to find out what evidence there is of the efficacy of prayer. Because one thing I can tell you for sure, I've read the entire New Testament, and nothing in it supports the idea that you can tell God what you want and he'll get 'er done for you. So if there is evidence for the efficacy of prayer, given that it isn't supported by the Bible, it better be supported by something very, very convincing.

Promptly I found an article titled Scientific Research of Prayer: Can the Power of Prayer Be Proven? by Debra Williams, D.D. (1999 PLIM Retreat, (c) 1999 PLIM REPORT, Vol. 8 #4).

Ok, first of all, "D.D." means "Doctor of Divinity". I have a B.Sc., "Bachelor of Science." That means I have scientific training and she doesn't. So I feel competent to question her findings. Or lack of findings, insofar that the article isn't original research, but a survey of some of the existing research. In particular, I find the following statement: "In a study on germinating seeds done by Dr. Franklin Loehr, a Presbyterian minister and scientist, the objective was to see in a controlled experiment what effect prayer had over living and seemingly non-living matter. In one experiment they took three pans of various types of seeds. One was the control pan. One pan received positive prayer, and the other received negative prayer. Time after time, the results indicated that prayer helped speed germination and produced more vigorous plants. Prayers of negation actually halted germination in some plants and suppressed growth in others."

Hmmmmm...

Most interesting. Further on, regarding an experiment using bacteria:

Bacteria presumably do not think positively or negatively. Another major advantage of microorganisms in studies of distant mental intentions has to do with the control group. If the effects of intercessory prayer, for example, are being assessed in a group of humans who have a particular illness, it is difficult to establish a pure control group that does not receive prayer. The reason is that sick human beings generally pray for themselves; or outsiders pray for them, thus contaminating the control group, which by definition should not receive the treatment being evaluated.

In studies involving microbes, this notorious "Problem of Extraneous Prayer" is totally overcome because one can be reasonably certain that the bacteria, fungi, or yeast in a control group will not pray for themselves. And that their fellow microbes will not pray for them.

If the study involved negative intentions instead of positives, the advantages remain the same. The thoughts of microorganisms do not influence its outcome.

Jean Barry, a physician-researcher in Bordeaux, France, chooses to work with a destructive fungus, Rhizoctonia Solani. He asked 10 people to try to inhibit its growth merely through their intentions at a distance of 1.5 meter.

The experiment involved control Petri dishes with fungi that were not influenced in addition to those that were. The laboratory conditions were carefully controlled regarding the genetic purity of the fungi and the composition of the culture medium, the relative humidity, and the conditions of temperature and lighting.

The control petri dishes and the influenced dishes were treated identically, except for the negative intentions directed toward the latter. A person who was blind to the details of the experiment handled various manipulations. The influences simply took their stations at the 1.5 meters and were free to act as they saw fit for their own concentration. For 15 minutes each subject was assigned five experimental and five control dishes. Of the ten subjects three to six subjects worked during a session, and there were nine sessions.

Measurement of the fungi colony on the Petri dish was obtained by outlining the boundary of the colony on a sheet of thin paper. Again, someone who did not know the aim of the experiment or the identity of the Petri dishes did this. The outlines were then cut out and weighed under condition of constant temperature and humidity. When the growth in 195 experimental dishes was compared to their corresponding controls, it was significantly retarded in 151 dishes. The possibility that these results could be explained by chance was less than one in a thousand.

Hmmmmmm...

You see, I'm pretty sure that this proves the opposite of anything, but first of all as the more educated scientist here, I take exception with the idea that "one can be reasonably certain" that micro-organisms cannot pray for themselves or each other. In fact eukaryotes very much have the ability to sacrifice themselves for the good of the colony, so whatever non-thoughts go on in their non-brains, I think the last thing I would want to assume about them is that they're not capable of wishing for the well-being of their peers with all their non-heart, with all their non-soul, and with all their non-mind.

Regardless, if we make the assumption that humans have far greater capacity for prayer than bacteria, we can still explain this result as a sign of the power of prayer, in a sense. But if we grant (which I haven't so far) that this proves that prayer does indeed reliably control the growth rate of bacteria, then it also proves that the mechanism by which prayer works has nothing to do with any Higher Power. If the power of prayer lay in the ability of humans to dictate the actions of a Higher Power, then most certainly this experiment would have failed, because the Higher Power would not waste its time speeding and slowing the growth of bacteria over and over as the humans dictate. If there is a Higher Power, then by definition we do not have power over it, therefore we can't make it do this sophomoric little trick with the bacteria every time we ask.

So apparently, attempts at scientific investigation of the efficacy of prayer have shown us two things: 1) prayer makes plants grow faster and 2) this is completely independent of a/the Higher Power. Which means that it isn't necessary to believe in any Higher Power, or in the efficacy of prayer in influencing said Higher Power, in order for prayer to make plants grow.

Ha.

Well actually, that's rather to my advantage. If I believed God listens to those whiny lists of demands and goes out of his way to comply, I certainly wouldn't pray for something as irrelevant as a baobab seed. But since obviously this has nothing to do with God, and since there is some rudimentary support for its effectiveness, it's worth trying. So if you're NOT the praying type and/or you do NOT believe in a Higher Power, please pray for my seeds, bulbs, roots, rhizomes and alien spores. Because the more you do, the more I'll have to blog about.

QED, yes?

Ok, so here is what I need

I was contemplating the sad problem of my balcony. You see, most of it is in part shade, and some is in full shade. And most plants I like want full sun, which is at a premium on this balcony.

An obvious solution would be to move to an X07 apartment, which has a southeast exposure, whereas X01, where I am now, is a northeast exposure. But the X07s are one-bedroom and therefore much more expensive. Besides, the one on my floor is already taken, and I like my floor. Plus, I don't want to move. So no.

Second solution: grow plants that like shade.

Meh. I grow plants I like. I'm not gonna grow plants I don't like just because they like it in the shade. If I see a shade plant I like, I'll get it, but otherwise, no. Though as to that, pansies, nemophilas, and allegedly the non-blue geranium, all do quite well in the shade. So I could sow my upcoming Sea of Pansies on the shady side, I suppose.

Third solution: get a grow light. That's what you do when plants don't get enough light, right? So I could get a big grow light and mount it to the underside of the balcony above. But then I'd have to pay for electricity, which is stupid. I'm not wasting power on making plants grow.

Fourth solution: get a solar-powered grow light. Is the idea of a solar-powered lamp ridiculous? Sounds ridiculous. Nonetheless, I would almost bet money that if I google, I'll find solar-powered grow lights somewhere. And if not, it doesn't matter much, because you can get a solar panel and a grow light separately anyway. Then I can mount the solar panel on the sun side and the grow light on the shade side, and as long as the sun shines on the sun side, the lamp will shine on the shade side.

Gardening is so surreal, it makes psychedelic substances redundant.

Perlite rocks!

I don't know what perlite is. I mean, I know that it's a white granular substance and what it's used for, but I don't know what it's made of, where it comes from, or why it does what it does. I do know that perlite is awesome.

Consider this: I just de-stratified some cherry pits which had been in a cryovat full of only perlite for six weeks; the perlite was still moist, and there was no mold whatsoever. In contrast, all my previous soil-based cryovats developed mold sooner or later, and had to be destratified early, or simply failed. Now I can't say for sure that these cherry pits are still alive, much less that the dormancy has been broken, but at least I can tell you for a fact that they are neither moldy nor dried out. So if I fail to get a sprout out of 27 seeds, it won't be the perlite's fault.

See, when you stratify seeds, like I keep saying, they're exposed to Killer Fungus for extended periods of time, in their most vulnerable state. So ideally you want a "sterile" medium. Not "sterile" in a surgical sense, obviously, but more in the sense of "not having the ability to sustain life." Many websites suggest wet paper towel, but this does not regulate moisture very well. When you put water on it, it gets soaked right away, and then it dries out right away. Perlite, on the other hand, absorbs water and apparently releases it very slowly, so that it changes very slowly from "wet" to "dry" or vice-versa. And it does not support the growth of mold.

Great. Now I just need to sow all my seeds in perlite, and I'll be set for life, right?

Well, we'll see. Meanwhile, I scalded the cherry pits, because I have a hard time believing that a sprout can break such a hard shell. Obviously, I should have boiled only half, to have a test group. Oh well... If these don't sprout, there's always next year.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

What else can I pasteurize?

The thing is, there is no point pasteurizing your soil if you're going to touch it with the same germy tools you use in the contaminated soil. So then, you're supposed to pasteurize / sterilize everything that will come into contact with the soil. And me without an autoclave...

Ok, I boiled some forks and spoons, which I will be using to scoop the soil into the pots and cultivate it. I didn't boil the containers themselves, which are 4" geranium starter pots. Being made of plastic, I don't think they'd take kindly to boiling. I did wash them with dish soap, as I don't have bleach on hand just now. These pots have never been used anyway, so there is no reason they should have seed-eating vermin in them yet.

You know what else might be carrying vermin though? The seeds. What if there is vermin on the seeds? I guess the baobab seeds are safe since I boil them before seeding anyway, but what about the kwyjibo seeds?

Ha. If you thought gardening was a sound, relaxing pastime, you've come to the wrong blog.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Stink, darn you! Stink!

After about 25 minutes at "250 F", the soil was emitting a not unpleasant smell of hot soil. I figured, let's turn it up higher, then it will stink.

So I crank it to "300 F", whatever that is in real temperature inside the oven. As the temperature rose, however, the soil started to make a crackling sound, suggesting boiling water and therefore that it was too hot. I opened the oven again and found that the noxious fumes were stronger but the smell of soil was if anything weaker than at "250 F". So I turned it down, then back up, then back down.

Then I got tired of the whole thing and turned the oven off. My eyes are burning and I want to go to bed. Hopefully this killed some of the evil in the soil and my hard-to-hatch seeds will stand a better chance. If not, meh... There's always more seeds where those came from.

How to pasteurize soil

Actually, I have no idea, in that I'm quite sure I'm not in the process of succeeding. But in theory, here is how you either pasteurize or sterilize soil, depending who you ask.

Moisten soil, to the moisture content you want for planting. Put soil in an oven-safe dish, no more than four inches deep (the soil, not the dish). Cover tightly. Stick a meat thermometer into the soil. Then, heat the soil until the internal temperature reaches 180 F, and maintain this temperature for 30 minutes. Done.

First caveat: allegedly, this process produces a foul odour. Second caveat: allegedly, if you cook your soil to 200 F, it will produce toxic chemicals that will kill your plants.

Ok. Whatever. I wasn't gonna try it, but I'm getting more and more seeds that are expensive (as seeds go) and hard to germinate, and which therefore spend a long time in the ground getting eaten by the fungi. Usually I just pour boiling water on the soil, on the theory that more heat for a shorter time works for milk, and what's good for milk has got to be good for soil. Nonetheless, I decided that perhaps I should try the real deal. Except I don't have a meat thermometer, nor did I feel like buying one, so I thought, "meh."

Ok. I wet the soil, put it in the dish, covered with foil, preheated oven to 180 F. Except the markings start at 200 F, so that was a best guess anyway. And then I suddenly remembered that the last time I used this oven, being in 2009, it didn't work right and took hours to bake anything, and I had to turn it way up. Hmmmmm... Then I remembered that allegedly it was repaired in 2010, but I haven't baked since, so I have no idea whether it's really fixed.

Hmmmmmm...

I used to bake and cook, you know. Before I became a bitter old spinster. But anyway.

After the soil had been in the oven 15 minutes, I decided it mustn't be working, because there was no foul odour. But then I noticed corrosive fumes, which however were not previously mentioned, and might be caused, possibly, by the oven being dirty, or maybe there are cobwebs in there or whatever. In any case, I figured that corrosive fumes were just as good as foul odours. I opened the window, which was stupid since I only just yesterday got the landlord to put the heat up, after the temperature in my apartment had reached down to 62 F. Then I went to walk the dog, leaving the oven on, the window open, and some scented candles burning, none of which are safe practices. Oh well. My Field Level Risk Assessment tells me this was a low-priority hazard.

Returning from my walk 45 minutes later, I detected more corrosive fumes, but still no foul odour. I opened the oven, still no foul odour. Hmmmm...

At first I decided to leave well enough alone, until I remembered that soil most definitely produces a characteristic smell when you pour boiling water on it, and therefore if it wasn't smelling, it really mustn't be hot enough. Stupid oven... And stupid me for being too lazy to get that meat thermometer.

So, at the time of writing, the soil is still in the oven, now cranked to 250 F, the window still open, and still no foul odour detected. Sigh... I'd really like to go to bed, you know.

Now you might be thinking that the question is not so much "how" as "why" I'm pasteurizing soil. Simple. As you recall, some seeds rot instead of growing. This is due to vermin in the soil such as larvae, fungi, molds, bacteria, and who knows what else. Also, all my soil is riddled with zombie seeds. Pasteurizing is supposed to get rid of just about every living thing in the soil, so your seeds don't get eaten.

Wait and see, I guess. Or keep calm and carry on. Or something.

The kwyjibo tree

I got some seeds in the mail this morning. They're called "crocodile bark jackal berry."

What's a crocodile bark jackal berry?

I have absolutely no idea. I was looking for something else and I saw the name, and the supplier didn't have a picture, and it was "only two bucks." Like I always say, everything is "only two bucks" until you buy 150 of them.

So, now I have five seeds of crocodile bark jackal berry. I could google it, but I'm not going to; that way it will be a surprise. Assuming I can even get them to sprout, as tropical seeds are a bit of a bother. But the thing is, Blogger post tags can only be 255 characters total, and "crocodile bark jackal berry" is 28 characters, so that's a waste of space. So for the sake of brevity, it will henceforth be known on this blog as the kwyjibo tree.

So now you know.

Monday, November 7, 2011

The new love of my life

THE love of my life is my dog, the incomparable Tinky-Winky. Followed by the man known as The Handsome One, whom I've been stalking for years. Sadly, the only way I'd be any less his type is if he were gay. But other than that, I found the new love of my life today: Summer Hill Seeds.

If you go there and search for "morning glory", it returns 54 results. Fifty-four (54) results. Really.

At last, someone who's as crazy for Insanity Plants as I am! (Haha, what a crappy pun.)

I sure hope the quality of their seeds is as good as the quantity. 54 types of insanity... Mmmmmmm... (drool)

Sunday, October 30, 2011

You know what I forgot?

Roses. I totally forgot to order up some roses. All my cuttings laughed themselves to death in the fun gel, so I was going to order some roots in the fall, particularly J.P. Connell. I thought I had a list somewhere, but I can't find it. Anyway the supplier I had found will not ship fewer than three plants, so I was thinking of getting J.P. Connell, Alexandre Mackenzie and Reine des Violettes. But I totally forgot.

Oh well.

Like I always say, in the garden, there's always next year.

The bait of Satan

That's the title of my Tuesday night Bible study class. Bible study always makes me think of Fight Club: "it's cheaper than a movie and there's free coffee." Anyway.

You know what the real bait of Satan is? Seed catalogs. I said it before and I have seen no reason to change my mind: seed catalogs are the work of the devil. They're full of lurid temptations.

See, in my fall bulbs order from Veseys, there wasn't just bulbs, but also, a catalog. the "spring 2012 advance sale" bulb catalog. Now bulbs are easier to resist than seeds, because they're much more expensive and you have to actually have a place for them, not just figure "oh, I'll put them in the Jungle, they'll be fine." You can seed 4000 seeds in a big pile and tell yourself it's ok; bulbs won't let you do that. So to make sure you buy these advance spring bulbs, Veseys is offering $35 off any orders above $75 from that catalog. Not from seeds or from any other catalog, but strictly from the advance spring bulbs.

Hmmmmm...

So I open the catalog and the first thing I find is a really beautiful peony for... $39.95.

Ha.

On the one hand, that's an expensive peony, especially considering it's a herbaceous and not a tree peony. On the other hand, it really is beautiful, and no one else in town has it, and peonies activate your feng shui. And besides, if I buy this peony, plus another $0.05 of product, I get $35 free. Oh, and also, your credit card doesn't get charged until they're ready to ship in the spring, so it doesn't matter that I don't have the money right now.

The funny thing is, there wasn't really another $35.05 worth of product I wanted in that catalog. A lot of perennials don't really appeal to me in the first place, and in any case they're not hardy for Zone 0a. But like I've said before, zone, schmone. Peonies are supposed to be hardy to Zone 3 and they're all over this town. Maydays are hardy to Zone 2 and some of the tallest cultivated trees in town are maydays. (If you're here in Hay River, check out the one at 8 Mansell. That is one crazy mofo.) In addition, my balcony is a warmer climate than most of the town. I get more hours of sunlight, less frost and more heat. Only the hollyhocks at 39 Riverview lasted almost as long as my pansies, but even they died in a hard frost when my flowers were still alive. So I figure anything that's Zone 3 is fine, Zone 4 is plausible, Zone 5 is a stretch. On the other hand, anything that has Zone 5 as its cold limit typically goes to Zone 8 or Zone 9, which is to say it doesn't need really cold weather to set flowers, so it can probably be brought inside. And some plants can also be dug and stored, particularly tulips. The others are of limited interest to me.

So... Where does that leave us? Still not wanting $35.05 of product from this catalog, but since it was free, I ordered some oriental lilies, toad lilies and windflowers. I covet the windflowers in every catalog and I always don't get them because they're only hardy to Zone 5, but, we'll see.

So, if I can remember to load up some money on my credit card in spring when they go to ship this, I get a spectacular peony that no one else in town has, plus $35 of free flowers. And that ain't not bad. And that, I suppose, is exactly why Veseys does this. Because they just sold me an extra $35.05 of flowers. For free, mind you, but I'm assuming their markup is so grotesque that they can absorb this promotion easily.

Seed catalogs: truly the bait of Satan.

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Welcome to the Winter Garden

Here is what's going on in the Winter Garden, that is, my living room. (I live in a bachelor suite, so my "living room" is also my bedroom, music room, office, kitchen to the extent that there is no wall between the two, and tropical plant conservatory.)

  • Planter #8: one Passiflora edulis that survived my complete lack of effort and some overwatering over the summer. Also there are some seed pods I harvested off an unidentified yellow-flowering plant in someone else's yard, and an avocado pit that I've buried in there, but I'm gonna dig it up because it's probably just rotting instead of sprouting.


  • Planter #9: the oriental lily, having now shed all its leaves and been cut back to the ground; the alleged "blue" geranium, still alive, still not blue; and two or three globe thistles, one of which is putting forth some new growth. I don't expect much from any of these, but that's no big deal. I'll get more globe thistle seeds in the spring, and the other two never meant much to me.


  • Planter #10: two pear trees.


  • Planter #11: the Hope lemon tree, beautiful as always though currently dropping leaves. I gave them 6 L each of water around October 13, when they seemed to be finally thirsty, and as a result they are again showing signs of being over-watered. In addition, they are getting no light lately, October being a particularly bad month for sunlight. People think we lack light in winter; in reality, the real winter months have lots of beautiful sunny days, but while the lake is open in October and November, we get mostly overcast skies and precipitation. It's depressing for people, and makes lemon trees pale and sad.


  • Planter #12: the Faith lemon tree, again showing its strength compared to Hope by not complaining so much about the circumstances. On the other hand, and I'll tell you more in a later post, Faith has the problem of very poor branching habits so far, so that I have the choice of pruning almost everything off or letting it go on with really crowded branches until a path suggests itself.


  • Planter #13: two pear trees.


  • Planter #18: baobabs and lychees. This planter is now in a dark corner against the heat register, after I read a post on a gardening forum from someone who couldn't get his kaffir lemons to sprout until he built them an incubator and raised the temperature to 35 C. That reminded me that my original baobabs were sprouted in June, so in warm weather, and my lemons were sprouted by leaving them against the heat register for a month. So I hie the planter thence, and sure enough, now I have a digitata sprouting. Perhaps even two digitatas, as I planted the dried-out (I thought) seeds from the previous attempt, and I seem to be seeing two roots. However, time will tell. At least one za seed is not sprouted yet; I know because I removed some surface mold with a fork and found it, the mold, had reached the seed. So I washed off the seed, which seems healthy though not cracking yet, and replanted it. As for the lychee, I'm not touching it. I can see its shiny carapace, so I know it hasn't rotted yet, and there is no point in disturbing it yet again.


  • Planter #19: Deng Xiaoping


  • Planter #20: the peony, which is of a variety called "Shirley Temple". I don't like that name, but the catalog photo was pretty. This afternoon I decided to make sure I had the planting depth right, so I dug it up, measured 1 3/4 inch up each stalk, tied a string marker there, replanted it so the dirt came up to the string, and then removed the strings. We construction workers like this sort of simple-minded trick. So now the peony is also by the heat register, awaiting its fate.


  • Planter #21: the Asiatic lily / grotesque carnivorous alien bulbs. This one is in the kitchen right now, but I might move it to the heat corner... later. If the fancy takes me. And if I get around to tidying up that corner, which was recently occupied by some sort of amorphous clutter.


  • CryoVat: there are actually two cryovats going right now, one for cherry pits which I plan to destratify in two weeks or so, and one with holly seeds which still have six weeks to go, and even so, I mentioned it before, can take "18 months to three years" to sprout. I'm not sure where I got the idea that I want to be challenged by my garden, but apparently, that's the path I'm taking.


Meanwhile, on the balcony:

  • Outdoor CryoVat: Planter #17 is out on the balcony with dogwood and cotoneaster seeds. Like I said before, I figure that since it worked for the maydays, it should work equally well for anything I harvest around town. Meanwhile it's also contributing to my heat reservoir, if only a little.


  • In the Winter Hut: the Jungle, with bulbs of tulips, daffodils, and stuff I don't remember the name of which is welcome to die; and also hollyhocks and flax from this year, which I hope will live to fight another year. Also, Liu Shao-ch'i and Peng Dehuai, which I really really really hope will make it. Inshallah.


So now you know.

Bulbs, schmulbs

I received my fall bulbs on Thursday. October 27. What the? I thought the supplier was supposed to have a schedule of when to send these things out so we get them in time for planting?

See, here in "the north", we have six seasons: spring, summer, fall, freeze-up, winter, break-up. Fall bulbs have to be planted in the fall. October 27 is not fall, it's freeze-up. Fall bulbs needed planting a month ago. And in any case, I winterized the summer garden on October 23, and I'm not taking it all down again for some bulbs.

So, bulbs.

Mind you, not all "bulbs" are bulbs. Some are roots, others are rhizomes. I'm not sure how a root or bulb is different from a rhizome, but a bulb is certainly different from a root. So in my shipment of "bulbs" I had one bare root (of a peony), eight bulbs (of tulip), and three...


What in the world is this thing, anyway? A bulb? A rhizome? A spore that will turn into some hideous alien creature that will eat me and the dog from the inside out?

Be that as it may, these things were marked as "plant right away, don't allow it to dry."

Anything you say, boss. Except I didn't have a planter ready for them, as I wasn't expecting them, or anything else, on that day.

I soaked the peony root, because I remember reading that it's good for bare roots to be soaked. Then I filled Planter #20, which is a 12" self-draining planter, with soil, manure and perlite. Then I planted the root, which is a rather stressful operation because first I wasn't sure which side was up, and second, peonies have to be planted quite accurately, with the crown (where the roots and stems meet) 1 1/2 to 2 inches below the surface of the soil. So now I'm haunted by the thought that my peony is not exactly 1 3/4 inch below the surface and will never flower.

The whatever-it-is, on the other hand, is fairly easy to plant. It's an Asiatic lily, by the way. Or some repugnant flesh-eating alien. In any case, you plant it 6" below the surface. Aye, there is the rub... I didn't have any planters with 6" available. Almost all my planters are only 6" deep, and that only in the centre. So I had to bring in Planter #21, where the pansies were, bizarrely, still alive. I hadn't been watering them, so they were drooping, but the leaves were still green and there were still some open flowers. October 27. I kid you not. And the other thing about pansies, they're really shallow-rooted, so it's easy to reclaim the planter for something else.

Still, I had to wait overnight for the planter to thaw. Because pansies are so badass, they can bloom in frozen soil. I kid you not. So while waiting for that, I did some maintenance that was overdue on the rest of the winter garden, namely, pears and Deng Xiaoping. I had mentioned, I believe, that they needed repotting, and that I figured it would be easy because the pears make taproots and Deng makes wide, shallow roots.

Ha.

Outsmarted by a plant again. Sigh...

The pears had indeed made taproots. And mind you, there were five pear trees, not four. Somehow one of them had escaped my eagle eye so far. I may be eagle-eyed, but apparently I'm also eagle-brained. So anyway, these five little trees had made taproots, dug down to the bottom of the planter, and wrapped themselves around and around. "Pot bound", or "root bound", as it's called. A very nasty condition that one is supposed to prevent. On the other hand, if you're making bonsais, as I am to some extent, they do need to get pot bound, otherwise they don't get stunted.

But that's not the worst! The worst part is that Deng Xiaoping had made not only wide shallow roots that had tangled into the pears, but also some long deep roots that were winding around the bottom of the pot. Woe!

Fortunately, I clued in soon enough when I couldn't lift Deng out with the potting trowel, and got smart and dumped the whole pot out, so I could shake out the dirt and detangle the roots with a minimum of damage. Like I've said a few times, I've never lost a plant to repotting yet, and so far it looks promising. 36 hours after repotting, none of the four pear trees I kept are even drooping. I threw out the spindliest one. The other four are two in Planter #13 and two in Planter #10. I know, I know... I should have culled them down to two, but I want to see which two of the four do the best, and also maximize my chances of having any live pear trees left come spring.

Deng meanwhile moved to Planter #19, formerly inhabited by English daisies. Trying to kill and uproot English daisies is a considerable endeavour, so there are still roots throughout the soil in that planter, but hopefully they'll just decay and become "organic matter" for Deng to eat. Plant cannibalism. Ew.

The next day, Planter #21 being thawed out, I dug down 6", added some bone meal and manure, and planted the three alleged Asiatic lilies.

So in all that, the eight tulip bulbs are still in the fridge, and I'm wondering what to do with them. Tulips, allegedly, can winter in the fridge quite safely, but since I've never done it before, I'm inclined to plant four, leave four in the fridge, and see which group does best. But since tulips also need 6 to 8" planting depth, I'd need to set up another deep planter, and I'm not sure how I want to approach that. If it was spring and I was just waiting for the soil to warm up, I could bury them quite shallow and then replant them in a few weeks, but it's six months until summer gardening season, which seems like a rather long time to be in "temporary" planting.

One thing I like about gardening is, you never run out of life-or-death decisions that you're hopelessly unqualified to make.

Friday, October 28, 2011

And even more reasons I'm single


The lemon trees' birthday party on October 2. For the dog's birthday I usually buy a steak for the two of us. Since the lemon trees don't drink even water and their favourite food is manure, we didn't have much in common, so I gave them little hats instead.

Ten thousand years, little trees!

More reasons I'm single

Some people use their kitchen for cooking food. In my kitchen I have:


A peony root soaking in water prior to planting.


A fridge that contains almost exclusively dog food and garden things. On top of the fridge is more dog food and garden things, and some bird food. On the board are more seeds and notes about the garden. Not shown, to the left of the fridge is a pile of planters and a big bag of composted cow manure; to the right of the fridge are the dog's food dishes; and opposite the fridge is a bigger pile of planters. And the dish drying rack contains several garden tools.

I do use my kitchen for food, though. Sometimes I make toast.

Burlap: not just for prophets anymore

Here's the thing about winter. Mathematically, if you're a plant, winter is a semi-infinite cold reservoir and a semi-infinite heat reservoir, with 4 or 5 feet of snow in between. The cold reservoir is also very dry, whereas the heat reservoir is hopefully saturated with water; thus the snow not only slows down heat transfer but also prevents loss of water from the heat reservoir. And it's very important for frozen roots to be wet. Dry roots are much more damaged by freezing than wet roots.

Now on a windy seventh-floor concrete balcony, winter is a very small, finite heat reservoir surrounded by an infinite cold reservoir, with just a thin layer of plastic over most of the boundary, except at the top, where the two actually come into contact. If I'm lucky I might get 2" of snow from time to time on the balcony, but it blows away easily.

The problem, therefore, which I tackled last Sunday, is to convert a minuscule uninsulated heat reservoir into a semi-infinite, well insulated heat reservoir.

Hmmmmm...


Step 1: build a heat wall. That garbage can contain 98 L of soil, mostly reclaimed from decommissioned planters. And the burlap bags are a handy acquisition from the hardware store. According to the label, you're supposed to fill them with garden debris, and then soak them with water and leave them out in the yard over the winter, and in the spring you'd have compost. This seems unlikely to happen on my balcony, but certainly the garden debris can hold heat. And as it gets colder, I can progressively saturate them with water, which is an excellent insulant and heat reservoir. So here we see the heat wall, interposed between the cold reservoir and where the plants are gonna be.


Step 2: insulate concrete. Concrete is a great heat reservoir and a very poor insulant. In summer it gets very hot and burns plants, in winter it gets very cold and sucks the heat out of them. So here we have 2" of rigid insulation between the concrete and the planters. Notice that the pansies were still very much alive, this being October 23.


Step 3: profit. I mean, plants. Here you can see the Jungle, cleaned up a great deal, Liu Shao-ch'i in the foreground, and if you look carefully, you can find Peng Dehuai sticking up behind the Jungle. All these are saturated with water, of course. The last thing you want, like I just said, is to freeze your plants when they're dry.


Step 4: build a box. One layer of cardboard has very little R-value, but it will give the whole construct a shape in Step 5.


Step 5: batts. Every construction worker's least favourite insulant. I scored these, as I mentioned before, from a hardware store that was closing for renos and was trying to get rid of every last thing on the lot. So they gave me this big "damaged" bag of sound insulation for $10. Except only the outside was damaged; the batts are just fine. If you're going to insulate your garden with batts, though, here are four things to bear in mind.

1) Batts are not heat reservoirs. They slow the flow of heat, but they don't store heat themselves, therefore, they are not altogether a substitute for soil and snow.

2) Don't squish batts. Their insulating value depends to a great extent on the air they contain. If you squish them, they lose their effectiveness.

3) Wear a N-95 mask, available for cheap from your hardware store, while handling batts. If you think the mask is uncomfortable, you're gonna like having fiberglass dust in your throat even less.

4) After handling batts, have a cold shower and don't rub your skin. The fiberglass dust is very itchy. If you wash in hot water, it will open your pores and be even more uncomfortable, and the more you rub, the more you're rubbing it into your skin.



Step 6: make a burlap tepee. I can't guarantee that this step contributes anything to the survival of my plants, but in my opinion, it gives them some breathing room instead of smothering them with batts. Beside, having bits of fiberglass insulation in your flowerbeds is really unsightly; the burlap makes cleanup easier.


Step 7: more batts. Don't let the picture fool you, however. It looks like I'm putting tons of batts on top and few around the containers; in reality the container is the most important thing to insulate. You're trying to protect the roots, not the leaves.


Step 8: tarp. I was hoping to get an insulated tarp, but the hardware store had none, and given the price of the regular ones, I don't think I'd have paid for an insulated one anyway. The tarp of course provides very little R-value, but it has several other functions: 1) as a wind break; 2) to prevent water loss; 3) to absorb heat from the sun; 4) to keep precipitation off the cardboard; 5) to hold the whole thing together; and 6) to make it visually acceptable. Given that this particular tarp is 10' x 14' and my balcony is somewhat less than 5' x 10', you may be wondering how I managed to unfold and apply the tarp. Well, I'm a construction worker. One of the greatest skills of a construction worker is the ability to persevere when things are very awkward. What's much more amazing is that I managed the whole thing without swearing a single time, since it was Sunday and I try not to swear on the Sabbath.


And now the bigger questions. Is this enough? Is it too much? And how do I get back into my apartment?

As to the first and second, we'll find out in April if anything is still alive. And as to the third, again, I'm a construction worker; I can do these things. The point of building this whole contraption right in front of my picture window was to take advantage of the huge heat loss from said window, as well as get as much of the limited winter daylight as possible. But other than making access and egress difficult, it also blocked said limited winter daylight from getting into the apartment, where the dog and the non-hardy plants like to bask in it. So two hours later, though I had already showered and put on my pjs and it was getting dark, I went back out there and relocated the whole thing six feet away, where it's not blocking the window. It can still get some of the heat from both the picture window and the kitchen window, and some small amount of sun. Hopefully that won't be the difference between life and death.

I must say, I'm quite pleased with it so far. Granted I have no idea whether my plants are alive or dead inside, but it gives me the impression of having a live garden out there, it brought some closure to the summer garden season, and it keeps the place much tidier than having a bunch of planters full of dead things scattered all over the balcony.

The next day, it snowed.

Thus ends, therefore, the 2011 Summer Garden. Thanks for joining me, and stay tuned for the admittedly much mellower adventures of the Winter Garden, and the upcoming 2012 Summer Garden.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Suppliers' success rates

One thing I can do with my garden log is see if some suppliers have an unacceptable rate of failure. That way I wouldn't order from them again. So here is how it went down this year.

1. Veseys

I like them. I had about 14 varieties from them this year. The only one that produced nothing was the Pizzicato poppies, but most poppies failed due to overcrowding in the Jungle, so I don't blame them. A 7% failure rate in the horrid conditions in my garden isn't bad. The English daisies didn't live up to my expectations, but I overcrowded them. The "Pot & Patio mix" asters only produced one colour, which irked me, but again, I didn't give them good conditions. On the other the pansies were absolutely excellent and I'm totally buying them again; and the California bluebells also performed well. For next year I'm getting more English daisies and more asters, and hopefully by treating them better, I'll get better results.

2. Swallowtail

I had 19 varieties from them, of which 3 failed; 16% failure. All three were morning glories, however, and at least one of them I tried before and know it's a slow cultivar. Therefore, it's quite likely that all three simply ran out of time. I am definitely buying all these plants from them again, except their English daisies mix. Not that it wasn't good, I just don't need three English daisy mixes.

3. OSC

Seven varieties; one failed, two underachieved, and one I'm not sure, seeing as several other cultivars would have looked much the same so I don't know which supplier to give the points to. Well, that's not a very good record, but then again, all but one packet went into the Jungle, and one can't really judge a supplier by the Jungle. Nonetheless, I'm not planning to buy anything from them next year. I have better options elsewhere for the hollyhock, marigold and morning glory, and the rest weren't interesting. I only buy OSC on impulse at the hardware store anyway.

4. McKenzie Seeds

18 varieties, 4 failed; 22% failure. This includes the cypress vine and thunbergia vies, the delphiniums, and the "Falling in Love" poppies. I can hardly blame the poppies, since they were in the Jungle and were added very late, and besides, "Falling in Love" is simply not a successful endeavour in this house. Still, this isn't a very good performance. On top of that, most of what I bought from them was stuff I didn't even want, but again, the hardware store carries it, so I get sidetracked. For next year I'm doing the hyacinth bean (Darth Plant), flax, convolvulus and morning glories again, but I'm using other suppliers except for the flax, which I haven't found elsewhere. I may or may not do poppies again, but realistically, considering that I seeded 4000 Flanders poppies and many bloomed and went to seed, I suspect I will have no shortage of poppies for many years to come.

5. Seedrack

That's where I get my baobabs. I've read bad reviews of them online, but really, they sell rare seeds with specialized germination needs, so just because someone can't germinate them, doesn't mean the supplier is at fault. I had no trouble germinating the baobabs. I've received more seeds from them already for next year, and most of them are hard to germinate. Some are even hard to store. I sure hope the black pansies will turn out; for the rest, failure is to be expected.

6. Thompson & Morgan

Now these are the ones I'm displeased with. I had seven varities. One, "Kniola's Black Knight" morning glory, did not flower, but it might have run out of time. The convolvulus mix may or may not have succeeded, since I had the same from McKenzie and can't tell which supplier's seeds sprouted; however, the packet from Thompson & Morgan was packed in 2008, so I was pretty pissed off when I received it. And the worst thing was the "blue" geranium that turned out nowhere near blue, and which allegedly they shipped me again and I never received. The one thing that really turned out was the Flanders poppies, but like I said, I'll never get rid of them now, so I certainly won't be needing to buy more. So for next year, I will only buy a couple of things from them, and only because I don't have another source (yet).


In summary, my top suppliers are Veseys and Swallowtail, then Seedrack for rare seeds, McKenzie and OSC in the middle, and Thompson & Morgan last.

Previously unpublished nemophila


These "Baby Blue Eyes" nemophilas are my favourite. Not only they're the bluest, they're also amazingly long-lasting compared to the "Penny Black" and "Five Spot". They were still wide awake as of this morning, after several days of hard frosts and near-zero temperatures around the clock, and snow. But since they were in the window boxes that I really wanted cleaned up, I uprooted them all.

Anyway, the real point of this photo from September 9 is the white one. For whatever reason, one among the thousands of seeds produced a pure white mutant. Unfortunately I couldn't uproot it to keep it separate for further study and other purposes, since the obligatory stygian overcrowding makes separating one plant from my garden impossible. But just so everyone knows, I had a pure white nemophila in my garden. Neener neener.

Previously unpublished photos

Some of the morning glories I don't think I posted before:



These are from a mix called "Carnival" which is available from several retailers. The three colours flowered in 77, 78 and 83 days and were quite productive. I really like it.


This is "Flying Saucers", again, available from several retailers. I only got one flower out of it, partly because it took 109 days and so didn't flower until September 25, three days before the frost that ended flowering on all my Ipomoea. One interesting thing, whereas morning glory flowers normally live for only one day, this one stayed open for two or three; I didn't keep track, but it certainly lived more than one day.


And this is "Double Sunrise Serenade". It looks like a crappy photo, but that's pretty much what the flowers look like. It's a double morning glory with crinkled petals like this, and honestly, that doesn't look so good. Nonetheless I'm buying more for next year, because I collect morning glories.

So now you know.