Other than the baobabs, there are a few plants in my garden. I've been gardening since 2009 and I blog about it on my private blog; but since nothing I grow is illegal and I now have a baobab blog, it seemed fairly logical to migrate the gardening part of my private blog to the public baobab blog. So for anyone coming here from my private blog, this is an update on the garden, and for the masses who are undoubtedly reading this fascinating blog with rapt attention, this is an introduction to everyone else in my garden.
My garden is a windy seventh-floor balcony with a south-east exposure, or a little east of south-east, in 60°50' N 115°47' W. In the garden, there are 21 planters numbered from 0 to 17, plus the lawn. And here is what's growing:
Planter #0 a.k.a. "the Jungle"
The Jungle is a 20" planter with a long and varied history. In 2009 and 2010, I used to just throw everything in that I happened to get my hands on and couldn't fit anywhere else. This year I uprooted everything, added some vermiculite and new soil, and I thought I'd do something nice and orderly on the theme "European wildflower meadow". Or something. But it still ended up being a jungle. Currently in the Jungle, I have the following intentionally: bellflower, California bluebell, candytuft, convolvulus (mix), delphinium (mix), dianthus, flax, forget-me-not, four o'clock, globe thistle, hollyhock, lupins (mix), three kinds of Nemophila, oriental poppy, ornamental grass, three kinds of regular poppy, and Shasta daisy. But then, there are the "zombie seeds", which is everything that's been there in prior years and could still be lying in wait.
Things I and my regular readers have been following particularly:
The globe thistles. The big one on the right is the one I seeded May 6 with Deng Xiaoping, transplanted to the pansies' planter on June 5, and then transplanted again to the Jungle a few days ago. It's doing fine. The other three were seeded directly to the Jungle on May 12 and didn't sprout until June 13. If you're just joining us, the Jungle has been outside almost the whole time, whereas everything else has been staying inside whenever the weather wasn't warm. So that one globe thistle had a huge advantage over the others, which shows. There is also a fifth one that went rogue and is growing among the flax. I really had my heart set on this species, so I'm glad there are five coming up.
The poppies. As I mentioned, poppies make very tiny seeds, so they come many in a packet. In this little section of the Jungle, I seeded probably 4000 poppy seeds. Oops... A little overcrowded.
Zombie plants. This is the most numerous variety of zombie plant, the one that came up first before anything else (May 15, nine days before any seeds from this year), the biggest and most vigorous species so far... and I have no clue what it is. I looked through photos from previous years to see if I could recognize the foliage, no cigar. I'm thinking maybe columbines or lavateras, but there is a chilling possibility that they might be petunias. I wonder if I shouldn't pull them up now, just to be sure. Or maybe leave just one, to see what it was, and if I like it, let it come back next year.
Shasta daisies. Another species that comes by the thousands in a packet, and yet that's all they've done so far. Looks like more sprouts coming though, so maybe we'll get some density yet. Also that one thing that doesn't look like the others, I'm thinking might be a zombie cornflower. Again, we were trying to get away from the cornflower infestation, but if it's just one or two, that's not so bad. I do like them, I just don't like how aggressive they are.
Planter #1
This is a 14" planter which contains an oriental lily. As you can see, it's still inside. I haven't moved it out to the balcony because I worry about the wind breaking it, because I'm running out of room outside, and because it does well in the shade, so it's filling a niche in my living room that I have no other use for. However, I'm considering moving it to a sunnier location now that everyone else is outside, and see if it will flower faster.
For comparison, this is what the lily looked like on May 4, four days after I planted it. It had already grown considerably. I bought it as a bulb from the hardware store. It was cheap and I didn't like the way it was packaged, so I thought it would fail, but it's been thoroughly happy and vigorous from day one. I like its attitude.
Planter #2
This is a 10" planter, I think. It contains asters and English daisies, seeded May 14. It's spent more time outside than most of the others, which may be why it's looking so weak. Hopefully it will be more interesting when it's older.
Planter #3
The queen of my garden: Insanity Plant. Insanity Plant are morning glories. Like I've explained to my regular readers, it's like Borg: many vines, one hive mind. Singular noun, plural verb. So, Insanity Plant are morning glories.
Insanity Plant started in 2009 when I seeded a packet of Star of Yelta in a 12" planter. Looking at photos now, it makes me laugh, because in 2009, Insanity Plant looked like this:
Morning glories are annuals, but they reseed themselves. So in 2010, I had volunteer seeds from 2009, but I also added a pack of mixed varieties and a pack of moonflowers. And a 33" tomato cage. So by the end of 2010, Insanity Plant looked like this:
Then at the end of 2010, I was out of town for nine weeks. When I came home in December, I watered Insanity Plant, and all the seeds sprouted. So they've been growing since December. First I had the 33" tomato cage, but they outgrew it. I gave them 4' stakes, they outgrew that. I gave them a 6' stake, now they're at the top and still looking for something higher to latch on to. They're taller than me. I'm hoping they don't reach the balcony above us and try to colonize the neighbour.
I first moved Insanity Plant out to the balcony today. I tried it earlier, but the wind kept blowing it over, because it's so tall. So now that "last frost" is probably past, I moved it out to the balcony, guyed it out, and weighed down the planter with some granite samples from someone who was redoing a kitchen, and a lot of water. Four liters. It drained out so much, it overflowed the saucer, but soon after it started to reabsorb. That's one of the crazy things about Insanity Plant, how fast it drinks water. Also, it's growing practically out of thin air, because it's in a 12" planter with soil from 2009, and not even the whole planter, because that year I cheaped out and filled my planters about 1/3 with sand instead of soil. So there is almost no soil, certainly no nutrients left, and yet this thing grows bigger and bigger. The more you water it, the taller it grows; the taller it grows, the more it drinks. I wonder how gigantic it could get if we weren't limited by the ceiling height.
Another reason I call them Insanity Plant is they flower at all hours. In this photo, which was in the late afternoon, there are no flowers. That's how it should be, because morning glories are supposed to flower in the morning, and the flowers only live till afternoon. The next day, they have new flowers. But sometimes Insanity Plant flowers in the evening, or in the middle of the night, and sometimes not at all. You never know.
At the end of the season, I will be emptying that planter, so now instead of letting the seeds fall, I'm collecting them. I hope to get a monstrous amount of seeds for next year.
Planter #4
These are mayday trees, or chokecherry trees. It's the same thing. They're offspring of this tree:
Back in 2009, I noticed that these trees make beautiful flowers in the spring, and handsome berries in the fall, so I collected some of the berries and put them in the Jungle. It didn't work. So in 2010, I collected more berries, about 50 of them, put them in a separate planter, and put them out on the balcony to stratify them. In January, I got bored of stratifying and brought them inside, where they sprouted February 1. Unfortunately, I ended up with 23 sprouts, so I had to cull them ruthlessly, which made me unhappy. I was gonna keep only these two, which were the most promising, but there was a third one that just wouldn't say die, which you'll meet later.
I like to name my trees, and I had just read a biography of Mao Zedong, so the one on the left in this photo is Liu Shao-ch'i, because it's crooked at the bottom and straight at the top, and Liu Shao-ch'i followed Mao for a long time but then spoke out against him; and the one on the right, which is straight up all the way, is Peng Dehuai, an army commander who stood up to Mao from the very beginning to the end.
Also in this planter are two apricot pits I planted today. I tried last year and it didn't work, but this year I soaked them in boiling water, like the baobab seeds, so hopefully it will work.
Planter #5
Wow. Is that ever a bad photo. These are more morning glories. See, for this year, I bought every variety of morning glories I could find. I had a plan. But then time passed and I was bored, so on April 20, I took two seeds out of each packet and seeded them in this planter. Sprouting performance was dismal, so on April 28 I took another two seeds out of each packet and added them. But in total, that's still only 44 seeds, and as we've seen with Insanity Plant's baby photos, that's just not a lot of seeds for morning glories. You need volume, big time. So I think I'm gonna rip all these out and use the planter for something else. However, the first flowers did bloom on June 19, which is only 50 days since sprouting, and that's the fastest I've ever got morning glories from sprout to flower. And of course, they were Star of Yelta. That seems to be the earliest blooming variety I ever get.
Planters #6 and #7
These two are identical window boxes on the balcony railing, and they both contain a mix of California bluebells and three varieties of Nemophila: Baby Blue Eyes, Five Spot, and Penny Black. Unfortunately that turned out to be about 5000 seeds, so some ended up in the Jungle. I seeded these on June 13, figuring the danger of frost had passed (average last frost here is June 24), and they started to sprout June 19. They're minuscule seeds, so they make minuscule sprouts.
Planter #8
Cropped from the same photo as Planter #5. Wow, that's nasty. But anyway, this is an 8" planter which in previous years I've used as a tree hatchery. That's where I start my trees, then I move them to something bigger. But now I've seeded pansies in it, and they're perennials, so hopefully it will be occupied for a few years. However, as you can see, the sprouts are all clustered together, so I will have to thin them quite a bit. At one time a globe thistle was in the empty half, but I moved it to the Jungle. Now I threw some... forget-me-not seeds in there, I think. But maybe just pansies is fine. Once they start to bloom, they'll look ok.
Planter #9
Geraniums. I never planned on planting any geraniums, but the photo from the supplier was awesome. They're supposed to be blue. Blue geraniums??? Ok. They come only eight in a packet. I planted them April 21. Six sprouted, but three died. The remaining three look healthy enough. I have very high hopes for them. Like I said, the photo looked awesome.
Planter #10
These are English daisies, one of my favourite non-blue, non-Insanity flowers. I could only find them as "mixes" from different suppliers, so I bought everything I could find and mixed them all together, but as far as I can tell from the photos, they all look pretty much the same. They're also perennials, so I'm hoping to enjoy these for a while. Though as you can see, it's pretty crowded in there, and I'll have to cull it ruthlessly.
Planter #11
This one looks pretty raggedy but it's one of my favourite plants. I call it Faith. You see, in August 2009 I bought two lemons and planted the seeds. About 15 seeds, if I recall. Five sprouted, two lived. Then I got a job in Yellowknife (484 km away from home) and because the lemons were so little, I brought them with me. They survived, and in the spring they were big enough to get each its own planter, and names. I was trying to think of something clever, but I started calling them "Hope" and "Faith", and it stuck. So this is Faith. Faith has always been slower-growing and less showy, but much more dependable. It never wilts or droops. In 2010 it came to Calgary with me whereas Hope stayed home. This is why the lower leaves are so burnt, because of the long car ride there, the difficult weather in Calgary, and the long ride back. But no matter how badly battered it is, Faith keeps on surviving and growing. It put out branches before Hope, even though it looks poorly. Now it has eight branches and is actually about the same height as Hope. So Faith actually lives up to its name, being the steadfast, unassuming, invincible one.
Planter #12
And this is Hope, the sister tree to Faith. Hope was always a drama queen. It has a big growth spurt, then it droops and sags. Without the stake, sometimes it flops like a mollusc. It's been putting on a ton of growth lately, and it looks very verdant and ambitious, and coincidentally or not, I've been living on hope all this spring. But unlike Faith, Hope is a diva and can't handle hardship. You can't count on it. So somehow, these random names that stuck to them turned out to be entirely apt.
You may notice that the lemon trees are not out on the balcony. Again, because of the threat of frost, but also because I'm worried about the wind damaging them. They may not go out at all this year, or maybe only when I can supervise them and bring them back in as needed. However, I noticed that all their growth was on the side that gets the sun, so after taking these photos, I rotated them 180° to balance them out. We'll see what they make of that.
One issue with these trees is, I didn't pack the soil well enough when I repotted them in the spring, so the soil keeps sinking. I'll know better when I move them up to the next size of planter.
Planter #13
This is Blogger having one of its fits of oppositional behaviour, so I can't get this photo straight. But other than that, this is the third mayday tree. It was the last one left from the culling, other than Peng Dehuai and Liu Shao-ch'i. But when I went to uproot it, it was so sturdy and tough, I didn't have the heart to kill it. So I made a deal: I would transplant it to another planter, but it would have to share with some flowers and live by what the flowers wanted, not by its own ideas. So I transplanted it. In fact it got transplanted twice in five weeks, once from the nursery to Planter #4, and from there to Planter #13. Then I seeded six globe thistles and six asters with it. One of each sprouted. Then the globe thistle was being shaded and not thriving, to I transplanted it to Planter #8, and then from there to the Jungle, as we have seen.
When I transplanted the globe thistle, I noticed that this tree already has a branch, whereas its littermates don't, and the lemons took 16 months to branch. So because this tree is short and stocky and defiant, and because it survived being transplanted twice in five weeks, I named it Deng Xiaoping. Deng was very short and tough too, and he was purged twice and survived and still continued to defy Mao, so it seemed apt. I don't know why that one leaf is so burnt, but the tree seems as strong as ever.
Now there are also two pear seeds in there that I pulled out of the stratification vat on May 14 and May 16. My previous attempt at pears failed, but I hadn't stratified them. I'm hoping these do better; if not, I have six more still stratifying in the fridge.
Planters #14.1, #14.2, #14.3 and #14.4
This is my big project for this year: the Wall of Insanity. There are 1,100 seeds in there, including I think 18 varieties of morning glories: Blue Star, Carnival (mix, I think three varieties), Chocolate, Crimson Rambler, Double Sunrise Serenade, Early Call (mix, I think four varieties), Flying Saucers, Heavenly Blue, Kniola's Black Knight, Pearly Gates, Scarlet O'Hara, and more Star of Yelta. There are also moonflowers and cypress vines, which are both also part of the genus Ipomoea, a variety of thunbergia, and this:
These are hyacinth beans. I call them, collectively, "Darth Plant", because it's the weirdest seeds I've ever seen. Pictured here are the seeds on June 7 prior to seeding; then June 13, 18 and 20. I've never seen a seed sprout is such a bizarre way, but it seems to be surviving. However because it's been slow to start compared to the morning glories, it is rather overshadowed, and probably won't do as well as it would have on its own. If performance is not satisfactory this year, it will get its own planter next year.
I'm hoping that these vines will colonize the entire railing and present a wall of green to the street. With all the different colours of flowers, it ought to look very pretty. Then I will harvest all the seeds. Hopefully I get enough hyacinth bean seeds to do something ornamental with them. They're pretty. I hope all these hurry up and grow, though, because I've had some take 100 days to flower in the past, and that would put us at mid-September, which is the average date of first frost. I'd like a little more time for them to produce their seeds.
Planter #15 and #16
These are two 6" planters that I bought for the baobabs, thinking it would be at least next year before there would be anything big enough to need repotting. I guess I was wrong. This is the current state of the
Adansonia digitata sprout in Planter #16.
Adansonia za is in Planter #15 and like I said, there is a seed with a root, but it hasn't righted itself and broken the surface yet.
Both these planters are also still inside and I don't think they'll go out this summer at all. They're just too strange and unique to risk them outside.
Planter #17
These are my pumpkins. Every year I plant pumpkins, and every year they fail, but last year they did start fruiting. Then the fruits withered when they were less than 2" in diameter. I'm thinking maybe they didn't like sitting on the concrete. So this year I've got the pumpkins on the opposite side of the lawn from the sun, that way hopefully they'll stretch across the grass and be more comfortable. On the other hand, that puts them at the shadiest part of the balcony. They're still getting at least six hours of sun a day, but they might object, in which case I might have to move them to a sunnier spot later on.
Also new this year, I actually culled them to the best three, instead of leaving twenty in there and wondering why they're not thriving.
Ensemble view
This is as many as I could fit in one photo. You can see the lawn. It's 16 sq. ft. and quite lush. The lawn belongs to the dog; I sowed it for her so she could eat it and lie on it. She likes it. Sometimes she digs it up, though. I need to get some more 2x4s and build up the sides so I can have 7" of dirt in there instead of 3.5.
On the railing you can see one of the window boxes. The other one is out of frame to my right and is going to get a lot less sun, so it will be interesting to compare their water consumption and performance. Planters #14.4 and #17 are also out of frame. And of course Planters #1, #11, #12, #15 and #16 are all inside for various reasons, mostly having to do with the plants being too precious to take a chance outside.
So, that's everybody in my garden – for now. Thanks for joining us. I hope we'll have a nice non-controversial blog experience together. Surely, nobody's going to get critical about someone's garden blog, right? So welcome to the garden, and let's all play nicely together.
