Guess what?

There is a bud on my English daisies.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy!

None of the plants seem to have suffered from being divided and repotted, by the way. Everything I read about transplanting goes on about transplant shock, and I've yet to lose a single plant from repotting, transplanting, or otherwise interfering with them.


Also, a second variety of nemophila. This one is called variously Penny Black, Pennie Black, or Total Eclipse.


The first aster is almost open. They must be the slowest-opening buds in the world of flowers; at least on my balcony they certainly are.


Female flower buds are starting to mature on the pumpkins.

And also, there are flowers in planter #14.4, the shady end of the Wall of Insanity. And they're Stars of Yelta. Of course. And while I appreciate their speed, I wouldn't mind to see something else for a change. I really need the other varieties to get happening so I can collect seeds before winter.

Things I love about gardening

I love to watch my plants drink water. Because my life is just that exciting.

Consider the following. Friday night before bed, I thought the pumpkins would need water on Saturday, but they didn't just yet. But it's a big plant and Saturday was hot, so by the time I went out to water, they had sucked their soil so dry it was cracking (and this is potting soil) and were drooping.

Gasp!

I gave them four liters of water, which is a lot considering the pot itself is only 8 L. Some of it flowed into the false bottom, but it didn't overflow. That's how dry they were, even though the day before they looked ok.

Within minutes, all the droopy leaves and flowers were upright and full of pep again.

Fascinating!

If you thought this story was boring, consider yourself lucky it took a lot less time to tell it than to live it. But I found it fascinating. Also, by evening they had sucked up most of the water in the false bottom already. They might need more tomorrow, but usually I try to avoid watering them too much on the weekend, so they'll hold a lot of water on Monday, which is their fertilizing day. More water, more fertilizer, therefore hopefully more pumpkins.

Another thing I like about plants is they're clever. Now you're thinking "no they're not, they have no brains."

Be that as it may, whenever there is a thunderstorm, most of my tall plants go limp. I don't know how they do it, because I thought rigidity depended on how much water is in the stem, but I'm starting to doubt this theory. Because they very clearly give up some rigidity whenever there is a strong blast, and straighten themselves out afterwards. Obviously this reduces breakage from the wind. What's amazing is that creatures with no brains figured it out.

The fly question

My experts tell me the flies on my plants are grass flies. They "can" form large swarms and they "can" be a serious pest of grasses and cereals. Nowhere can I find anything that says they ruin the things I have in my garden, especially in small numbers. They're not even walking on the grass.

More of the same

Pansies, phacelias and five-spots looking good. The rest... still waiting.

Baobab Friday

No change in size. Digitata has four true leaves which are growing slowly. Za has one true leaf and doesn't seem to have moved at all since last week.

Here endeth the lesson.

I was right about the pumpkins

I googled it and indeed pumpkins produce male and female flowers on the same vines. According to my sources, the male flowers start about two weeks before the female flowers, so it's normal that I'm not getting any females so far. They should start in about six days now. And inadequate pollination is indeed a cause of poor fruit production. So I don't need to pollinate anything now, just wait until next week for the females to show up.

I learn something new every day.

Pumpkin theory #2, then #3

Something else occurred to me, which is that there aren't many insects on my balcony, therefore maybe my pumpkins aren't getting pollinated properly.

Ok, no problem. I can pollinate them by hand.

Then as I was looking at the buds, it occurs to me that some buds have a round bulge at their base, but most do not. Therefore maybe the rounded ones become pumpkins, and the others do not. But so far this year, all the buds with bulges have either spontaneously fallen off, been damaged by traffic near the plant, or been cut off because the stems were broken (again, traffic). So, maybe my pumpkins don't fruit because they're disturbed too much. I'd be surprised though, given how touch the leaves, stems and flowers are, why would the fruit be the only fragile part of the whole plant?

Clealy, this needs more research.

You insects better not be nefarious

These insects have been walking around my garden and I'm not sure what they are. Yet. I'll find out sooner or later. They can hover, but I don't think they're hover flies because they're too small and the stripes are in the wrong direction. And that's too bad, because hover flies eat aphids. They could be some kind of fruit flies, in which case I want them gone, or some kind of pomace flies, in which case I don't see what they're doing in my garden as there is nothing to attract them. Or they could be some kind of tachinid flies, but again, there is nothing for them in my garden.

I suspect they're fruit flies. But like I said, I'll find out for sure, and woe to them if they're up to no good in my garden. I'll get some wolf spiders to come and eat them.

Bloom or die

I weeded out this plant from the Jungle. I think it was the last of the four o'clocks. It had no buds and was shading my interesting plants, and I don't really care about four o'clocks. They sounded interesting, but if they're going to take forever to bloom and shade my other plants, I don't want them.

Right now, everything that isn't a) something I recognize or b) blooming or about to bloom gets to die. I don't have time for weeds anymore this late in the season.

I am not amused

I finally get a reply from my supplier for the blue geranium. Did they tell me anything about why my geranium isn't blue? No. Instead they're sending me a new one.

What????

I don't want a new geranium. I already have one and it sucks. I have no desire to waste more garden space on geraniums. I never even liked geraniums. I just want to know why it's not blue.

I am NOT amused.

I need more planters

I'm looking at what's going where for next year. Yep. Only seven weeks till first frost already. Sigh...

Anyway. Two problems: one, I need planters for all my trees, and two, I need bigger planters. Most of what I have is 6, 8 or 10 inches, and that's just not doing it. I can put trees in the tall 10"es for a while, because trees need height more than surface area, but for the flowers, I need more ground, not more depth. I need more 12- and 14-inch planters.

So first of all, for next year I need to buy nine tall 10" self-drain planters (that's the ones with the false bottom). That's gonna cost money... which hopefully I'll have because we'll be working in Rocanville? Pretty please? Then I can also buy that big wheeled planter for the peonies.

Other than that, I think I'm gonna move the pansies to the 12" planter currently occupied by Peng Dehuai. Right now they're occupying half of an 8" planter. For next year I'm getting three more packs: Black Knights and two more mixes from Veseys' Matrix series. So four times as many seeds in 12" should work out great.

The 10" planter currently occupied by Liu Shao-ch'i is going to be for the shooting stars.

The planter boxes are gonna be phacelias in one and nemophilas in the other, not the two together.

The geraniums are not coming back, given their dismal performance, and I'll only keep one pot of English daisies. The two planters thus freed will be for trees. The asters are also not coming back because they're failing to amuse me, but I'm not sure what to do with their planter. It's a regular drain one so I don't want perennials in it, as I don't like having those pots in the house. Likewise Insanity Plant's pot is retiring from Insanity service and will be outside with some annuals, not sure what. Maybe they'll be the catch-all for impulse purchases that would normally clog up the Jungle. Maybe some dianthus and marigolds.

The baobabs may or may not move to bigger planters, depending how fast they grow. Then the little 6" planters can be used for things that got crowded out this year, particularly Darth Plant.

The Wall of Insanity and the pumpkins will continue as they are now, as will the lemons.

That leaves jacks-in-the-pulpit, and I'm thinking of buying a rose bush. Those will need somewhere to go, no doubt. I'm thinking jacks-in-the-pulpit can go in the Jungle.

Ah, the Jungle. Once again failing because once again I got impatient and threw all kinds of seeds in it to make more volume early on. Now I'm gonna have to weed out everything that should never have been there in the first place, and plant way more globes. And more flax. And none of all the other crap I threw in there. Then once all the superfluous stuff is removed, that should leave room for jacks-in-the-pulpit... and no doubt all kinds of new I'll pick up on impulse at the store and curse for months afterwards when it shades my prize plants.

One of the good things about gardening is, there is always next year.

Iceland poppy

The first of the Iceland poppy mix. It's hard to shoot because it's way down on the outside of the railing.


Poppies ensemble. The yellow one is on the left somewhere. These are "wild Flanders poppies", I think. I don't remember what the other variety, Pizzicato, is supposed to look like.

Daily pansies

There are now five colours: purple, blue, orange, yellow and red. I think that's all this mix is supposed to produce. If you want the same, since it's obviously beautiful, you can buy it here.

For next year I've found a black variety from my supplier of rare seeds. I think I'll be moving them to a bigger pot, too.

The first nemophila

That's the variety "Five Spot." For obvious reasons. Quite a few of them opened this morning, while the other two varieties (Baby Blue Eyes and Penny Black) are not even budding yet.

One thing about nemophilas is they don't like heat. Most days they're all flat by one o'clock unless I water them in the morning. Today, because it's particularly hot, they were already wilting by 8:30 AM. But they bounce right back up when you water them, even if they've been flat for some time.

Insanity thwarts me at every turn

This is the Star of Yelta in the Wall. It's flowering abundantly, on the balcony side. That's nice. I wanted Insanity Leader to flower on the balcony side and it's flowering on the street side; the Wall was supposed to flower on the street side and it's flowering on the balcony side. Of course.

New Perennials for Canada by Don Williamson

I just read this book, published in 2010. It's printed in China with financial assistance from the Canadian government, which annoys me somewhat. But I thought I'd tell you, my garden buddies, about it, because it might be of some value to you.

It's called "new perennials" not because the plants themselves are new, but because the author feels they could be used more in Canadian gardens. (Actually, he said "should", but you know how I feel about "should".) Unfortunately, like most Canadian gardening books I've laid my hands on so far, it's all about zones 3 and up. There are five plants rated to zone 2 and one for zone 1, but if you look the zone map for Canada, the vast majority of the land is in zones 0 and 1. Granted the majority of the people are in zones 5 and up, but since I'm in the minority, it annoys me. I'm in zone 0a, thank you.

The other thing with these garden books is, they're wrong about the zone ratings. Except Lois Hole, who was smart enough not to put zone ratings in her book of perennials, since it's not unusual for perennials to succeed even three zones out of their rating. Peonies, for example, are rated by my suppliers as zone 4, but there are tons of them growing all around town, so no. And the zones themselves are wrong too, because I'm supposedly in the same zone as Iqaluit, when obviously there are considerably more plants thriving here than there. I think the people who made the hardiness map didn't really bother with the territories. I suppose they figure we don't grow anything up here.

Anyway, back to Williamson's book, I don't really care what he has to say about zones. I can ignore the fact that he's too bossy and he had his book printed in China (which shows, by the way). What really annoys me, ultimately, is that I read through the whole book and didn't even like his plants. I only picked four: crocosmia, Jack-in-the-pulpit, shooting stars, and toad lily. I considered pitcher plants, but they eat insects, and there aren't many of those on my balcony, plus they'd eat the wrong ones. If they could focus on the mosquitoes and leave the wasps alone, that would be fine, but mosquitoes are not attracted to plants and wasps are, so they'd kill the bugs I like and leave the pests alone.

I suppose four new plants might be lots, given how crowded my garden is already, but I'll find somewhere to put them. That is, if I can find them at all. Because the flip side of the fact that they're not used much is, suppliers don't carry them. Chicken and egg, I suppose. So none of my regular suppliers carry any of them. I did find one variety each of shooting stars and Jack-in-the-pulpit from my supplier of rare plants, where I got my baobabs. For the rest... well, I suppose my garden is pretty full as it is.

Anyway, since most of you are well to the south of me, maybe you'd find more of use in this book than I did, so I thought I'd mention it. But get it from the library, don't buy it. No need to subsidize China further when you could be sending your money to, say, Somalia instead.

Now what?

I noticed something about my convolvulus.


It's growing from the stalk, not from the vine climbing on the stalks. Which means these stalky things I took for four o'clocks are in fact convolvulus (convolvuluses? convolvuli?), and the supplier was right about the "non-climbing habit" after all. But then... what are these vines doing in the Jungle? I didn't plant anything climby in the Jungle, or I thought I didn't. The leaves don't look right for morning glories, and now it has buds on it which are most definitely not morning glories or convolvuli.


Is this another zombie? Did I seed anything climbing in previous years? I remember I had sweet peas, but they never flowered and the leaves aren't right for that. But I don't know any climbing weeds in town either. That might not be to the point, since I did finally discover some black mustards growing in my landlord's garden, but that's not to say mine came from his. Could be the opposite. In fact his are much smaller and haven't flowered yet, but then again, he's had a guy with a weed-whacker go through it once or twice, so maybe they're only growing now because no one has paid any attention to that garden in some time.

Speaking of the black mustard, by the way, the parable of the mustard seed was read at church this Sunday, and it says that mustard is a tiny seed but grows to the size of a tree. Really? Good thing I killed all of mine then. It probably wouldn't grow that big in this climate, but I have enough to do with the trees I planted myself.

Anyway, so I still don't know where the black mustard came from, or for that matter the fleabane, which is much bigger than the ones growing wild in town. And I have no idea what this vine in my Jungle is and where it came from. Judging from the buds on it, it's gonna be another pathetically small flower and I can get rid of it too. But I'd really like to know what all these weeds are doing in my garden and how they get here. Could insects be carrying them? I noticed some of my leaves have been chewed by insects, though not in alarming numbers.

Gardening is such a mysterious thing.

Continuing progress

At least the pansies and poppies are true to type and multiplying. The Star of Yelta in planter #14.1 as well, though that's not exactly a desirable circumstance. Also, I discovered I don't like the smell of pansies, but it's not very strong so that's ok.

What a gyp...

My geranium bloomed.

What does that have to do with a picture of something that is neither a geranium nor blue?

My point exactly.

The supplier's photo looks like this:


Ok... I can see the similarity in shape, but why is mine mauve? I hate mauve. I want my BLUE geranium, dangit!

I've emailed the supplier for help. Maybe it needs different nutrition. How disappointing though...

Are you a zombie?

I don't like the look of this. I have to wait for it to open and see if it's something I planted, but it looks a lot like a zombie so far. And it would be nice to chop it off, because it's making a lot of shade. We'll see when it blooms.

I think I must be high

Or something.

I found a supplier for... dandelion seeds.

Surely I hallucinated that? People do not actually buy dandelion seeds?

Well, at least I wasn't actively looking for them. I happened upon it by chance.

A tip on filling planters

I hope no one is actually taking advice from me, because I don't really know what I'm doing, but I'll tell you something about filling planters. If you just fill the pot to the top and soak it like it says on the bag of potting soil, it will have air gaps and will settle afterwards, leaving roots exposed.

What you want to do is work in layers. Four to six inches, pack down with your hand until it won't pack any more, then soak with water. See if any part of the soil sinks after the water recedes. If so, it needs more packing. If not, do another layer, and so on.

It's also good to have a reserve of soil handy, in case settling happens anyway. If there are a lot of gaps, the soil will keep settling after each watering, and you'll have to keep topping it up until it stops moving.

Garden dog

I think my dog is jealous of the garden. As soon as I spend any amount of time gardening, she tries to get in the middle of things. She is also fascinated by the smell of bone meal, so here she's trying to get into the bag. Once it was open, though, she wanted none of it. I think the smell of the whole mass is too strong for her. Bone meal is a natural product made from, obviously, crushed bones of animals such as chickens. This one in particular has no cow bones in it - I suppose they tell me that so I won't be worried about Mad Cow? So anyway, I doubt it would do the dog any harm. It smells and looks like fish food, mostly.

Taking chances with my plants' lives

This is my pot of English daisies. They have no buds and they're way overcrowded. I googled to see if I could get some good advice, and the only thing I found is confusion. Some people say they're annuals, others say biennials, and yet the species name is Bellis perennis and my supplier says perennial. Or actually, I just checked: two out of three suppliers say "biennial", the third says they're biennial in warm climates and perennial in cool climates. Wow, that's so not helpful.

What I did find however is one guy who says you "should" (I hate the word "should", if you're new here) buy them from a nursery because from seed they take a long time to flower. So there you have it.

This did not solve my crowding problem, so I decided to divide them. I could also thin them, but, I've made my choice.


First I dumped them out of the pot, and you can see there are lots of roots right on the outside. That's not good for them.


I broke off two clumps (left) from the original mass (right). Separating them makes a horrible noise as the little fine roots break. Technically I know that plants can survive some root breakage and this is for their own good (I hope), but I still find that sound really awful.


Detail of the separated clumps.

I repotted the original mass. I thought I could just stick it back in the pot and pack some dirt around it, but it had lost a lot of height in all the manipulations, so I had to add quite a bit of soil to the bottom first. Then I did the other two. I didn't get the height of the clumps quite right so I had to pile up dirt over the top of the roots. Then I gave them some bone meal, to help re-establish the roots, and some water.


Hm. They still look crowded after division. Maybe I'll have to thin them as well. Or maybe some will die from being transplanted and I won't have to.

I'll let you know if they survive. (Well, duh. That's the whole point of this blog, innit?)

Insanity Plant strikes where you least expect it

I have no idea how I managed to find this flower, because it's on the outside of the railing, about the height of the pot, and hidden in foliage, and there is no particular reason I should be looking there. In fact, it's rather inconvenient for taking pictures. But there you have it, the first flower of the Wall of Insanity, in only 45 days from seeding. A new record. And it's a Star of Yelta.

At first this did not disturb me in any way, since Star of Yelta is the fastest cultivar of the ones I've grown so far. And then it hit me: I did not plant any Star of Yelta in this planter.

This is the sunny end of the wall, planter #14.1, where I planted the more valuable things: Heavenly Blue, because it failed last year, Kniola's Black Knight because it looks really cool, Darth Plant, moonflower and maybe some cypress vine. Star of Yelta, being the easiest, fastest cultivar and one I have in abundance, is at the shady end of the wall in planter #14.4. So either this is Kniola's Black Knight and I totally got ripped off, or Star of Yelta has somehow managed to colonize this planter.

Well, be that as it may, I have a flower on the Wall of Insanity. BOOYA!

Yellow pansy

How about that?

Yep, the first poppy finally bloomed, 12 days after budding. I can't imagine why it takes so long, but then, it's not like I know anything about the lives of plants. In any case, once all the other ones that have buds open too, it should look pretty good.

It's a jungle out there

I didn't do individual photos because those plants who have had significant changes already got their own posts. For the rest, mostly they're growing a lot of greenery. The Wall of Insanity, having reached the railing thanks to my bait, is now colonizing it with great gusto. One might even say élan. Some of the vines have already reached the top of the railing. Now let's get some flowers going, m'kay?

The Jungle is junglelicious as always. I killed the Head Zombie, detangled it from the convolvulus and replaced it with a 4' stake. So, the "non-climbing" convolvulus is at the top of the stake already. There is still only one vine of convolvulus blooming in the entire Jungle. The poppies are just hanging there looking lame. The four o'clocks and phacelias have some buds. The globe thistles don't seem to be making progress, having let themselves get shaded by everybody else. I'm gonna buy more next year and figure out a different approach. Other than that, there is still all sorts of stuff growing in there, and we'll know what it is if it ever flowers.

Everybody else is doing fine with not much change from last week, except the rose cuttings. They had so much fun in the fun gel, they partied themselves to death. See what fun will do to you? So, I got new ones yesterday. If those don't work I might have to wait until next year to try again, because the mother plant is running out of suitable growth for cuttings. Assuming I have any idea which growth is suitable for cuttings.

More pansies

The purple one is at an awkward angle and like I said, the colour messes with my camera's head. Half the time the autofocus can't even find it. The stem of this flower has been hanging over the edge of the pot for weeks and I had meant to cull it, but never got around to it because it didn't seem to do any harm. Good thing I didn't, this is my favourite pansy so far.



Light blue pansies. I like blue, but I have to admit the purple one is way more spectacular. I'm keeping a close eye on the timing of these, because I'll use their timeline to calculate when the purple one probably flowered.


Yellow bud.


Ensemble. It's a crappy photo, but I think this is gonna look really good when it has more than three flowers on it. I'm sure glad I planted them.

Insanity Plant, detail

For once, I thought I'd shoot Insanity Plant in the morning, when it has flowers, but being Insanity Plant, it's flowering on the dark side, facing the street instead of the balcony. That's one thing about Insanity Plant: no matter where I put it and how I turn it, it always flowers on the side away from me. Another way it keeps up the metaphor, I guess, because mental illness often looks a lot better from the outside than from the inside.

Baobab Friday

Adansonia digitata at 34 days:


It's still 3" wide but now 1 1/2" tall and seems to have three or four true leaves. Let's say I'm calling it Isaiah, subject to change without notice if I feel like it.

Adansonia za at 31 days:


This one has actually lost height, from 1 1/2 to 1 1/4, but that's because like I said, the baby leaves were standing up instead of opening out. Now they've opened a little more so it's gained in width what it's lost in height. It still has only one true leaf, as far as I can tell. Let's say I call it Ezekiel.

This week we had thunderstorms Monday and Tuesday afternoon, and then overcast with chance of shower Wednesday afternoon through Thursday evening, and now it's sunny again. I left the baobabs out in the rain because on the one hand, they're so short and stocky that they're indifferent to wind, and on the other hand, I'm pretty sure it does rain in Africa, so surely they can take it. But now there is a green moss growing in their planters. Some of the other trees have it too; I think their soil is too humid because they drink water so slowly. However, it doesn't seem to harm any of them.

And that's all that's happened with the baobabs this week. Still no sign of the other four seeds that were planted. So if you're trying to grow baobabs, I highly recommend boiling them instead of just soaking them.

Pumpkin flowers, day 2

Pumpkin flowers are edible. If I knew how to cook them, I'd be pigging out tonight.

The second pansy

It's opening pretty slowly. Makes me wonder how long the other one was open before I noticed. There are actually two of this light-blue colour. There are also two pale yellow buds and one that looks burgundy, but maybe it's another purple one.

I'm sure glad I've succeeded at last. Pansies rock. Why is "pansy" an insult? Pansies are awesome. Baby's breath is a crappy flower; let's make that an insult.

When did THAT happen?

In all that, I totally failed to notice:


A pansy! The camera systematically failed to capture the colour properly in six tries, for some reason. It's a beautiful deep purple.

I wonder when it hatched, because it was on the dark side of the pansies, and the only reason I noticed it is because I decided to eat "al fresco" with the dog, and since there is no room for a chair and table on the balcony, we were sitting right on the floor. And from that level, I noticed something purple among the green, turned the pansies around, and there it was!

That's awesome. I tried pansies last year and failed. This year I planted something called "matrix jewel mix" from Veseys. So far, I'm very pleased.

By the way, I'm making a list of my suppliers in the sidebar, so if you see something here that you like, you can go buy it too.

In other news, there are now some buds among the nemophilas as well.

The down side of the garden

Gardens attract bugs. Some bugs I love, such as wasps. Some I tolerate, like dragonflies. They scare the crap out of me, but they eat mosquitoes, and the enemies of my enemies are my friends. (That being said, I don't get too many mosquitoes, being on the 7th floor and nowhere near standing water.) And some totally creep me out.


See?

I don't like butterflies. They may be harmless, but they're totally creepy. This one spent the whole night on my balcony. I think it must have got caught in the thunderstorm, because its wings are torn and it wasn't moving much when I found it after the storm. By morning it was feeling better and flapping its wings in the sunshine, which is something butterflies do to warm up. And just when I was about to get a nice close-up of the top side of the wings, it took off. How ungrateful...

Oh well. At least it's gone. I don't like butterflies in my garden.