I've mentioned before that the garden is the only aspect of my life that is in any way wild, spontaneous and out of control. I suppose this is good, for a garden. Nonetheless, when I envisioned the Wall of Insanity a year ago, I didn't exactly foresee this:
A huge mass of somewhat poisonous vines on my kitchen floor. Hmmmmm...
In my imagination, I would harvest the seeds off the vines at the end of the season, and then, I'm not sure how I figured that would happen, but somehow the vines would disappear from the balcony railing and I'd have a blank slate for next year.
Hm.
First of all, these things take a long, long time to die, and they don't look pretty doing it. And it's also unclear to me why after weeks of waiting, I suddenly ran out of patience after dark on a freezing Friday night. That's a very dumb time to be going medieval with the pruners, even considering that I don't drink. Luckily, I was at least aware of the stupidity of what I was doing, and therefore very cautious about where the shears were relative to my fingers. So other than the vines, nobody got hurt.
For all that these are supposed to be tropical plants from the jungles of South America, most of them were very much alive when I chopped them, which is too bad because they're much more allergenic alive than dead. Not only did I have an allergic reaction to them, which I expected, so did my dog, which I didn't expect and which made me feel quite bad because she had no part in this whole insanity project, and also I have no allergy medication for her, so she had to just live with it. I'm sorry, puppykins.
Why did I drag all the dead vines into the kitchen anyway? Because I was still after the seeds. So it took about an hour to inspect all the vines for mature seeds, harvest them, and then clean up the mess. And herein I discovered some "traditional knowledge" that I didn't magically inherit from my Neolithic ancestors, namely, that the ability for a huge field of plants to produce seeds that mature all at the same time for ease of harvesting is something we've bred for, not a natural trait of plants in general. So whereas wheat can be all chopped down by a combine, morning glories all bloom and produce their seeds at different rates. Insanity Leader bloomed continuously from March 27 to the end of September, which is quite amazing. Six months of blooms is not usual, especially in a place where winter lasts eight months. On the other hand, Insanity 4 hardly flowered at all, and the cultivar "Flying Saucers" in Insanity 2 bloomed for the first and last time on September 25. After the first frost, mind you. Again, pretty amazing for a tropical plant.
So the result of these variations is that I have a massive amount of seeds from Insanity Leader, which is mostly Feringa / Star of Yelta (I still can't tell them apart) and a mix from McKenzie Seeds which they used to call "Early Call mix" and now just call "mix". It has five colours and I don't mind it, but I don't really need this much of it:
Hmmm... Well, you, the reader, can't get an idea of how many there are from this photo, but my preliminary estimate is that we're looking at tens of thousands. And if I know me at all, I'm pretty sure I will take the time to count them all. Not only that, most of them are probably viable. Scary thought, if you consider that I planted "only" 1100 this year and they completely covered my railing. Tens of thousands could wipe the town of the map. And that reminds me, I still have no idea what to do with those seeds, but one thing is fairly certain, namely, I don't want to plant them. Not just because there are too many, but because as I was saying, the vast majority come from Insanity Leader, not from the many other interesting cultivars I had planted. For example, we can be quite sure none are from "Flying Saucers", and equally certain that there are no "Heavenly Blue", partly because it failed to flower yet again, and partly because its seeds have a distinctive shape and I'd have noticed if I had harvested any.
So now, it's time to make like my Neolithic ancestors and reflect on what I could do better next year. Because yes, the Wall of Insanity is definitely coming back next year, with some modifications.
1. Keep cultivars segragated.
Segregation may be bad for people, but it's good for plants, if you want to know what seeds you're harvesting. So for next year, each cultivar gets its own little container, with one stake on which to grow; no more colonizing the railing and getting all tangled together. Where this will get slightly complicated is when I can only get a cultivar as part of a mix. However, morning glories have the huge advantage of being all left-handed. Or maybe they're all right-handed. I'm pretty sure they're left-handed, but the point is, they all twist the same way, so it's quite easy to unwind them from a support. If they grew in random directions, it would be quite impossible. So if I grow a mix around one stake, when it flowers, I can untwist it, sort out the vines by colour, and re-twist it around individual stakes. Clever, eh?
2. No planting in the shade.
This year, I had put my most valuable cultivars at the sunny end of the wall, being Insanity Leader and Insanity 1, and the least valuable at the shady end, in Insanity 4. Predictably, the sunny end produced abundantly; less predictably, Insanity 4 hardly flowered at all. I thought that being jungle flowers, they'd be fine in part shade, but no, they really want sun. So for next year, everyone goes to the sunny side, where they will also act as a windbreak for my other plants, and as a privacy screen to keep my stalker from looking at me.
3. Less nitrogen.
This was my first Insanity Plant, pictured here on September 26, 2009. Notice it has hardly any leaves. It's also very short and tiny, but more importantly, it has hardly any leaves, and therefore you can see the flowers. This year I fed all my garden religiously with a 10-15-10 fertilizer, with the result that I had massive greenery, and Ipomoea vines growing more than 8' long, but not too many blooms, and mostly hidden in the foliage. So next year, less nitrogen, more potassium.
4. Start way earlier.
This year, I managed to have a Star of Yelta flower in 45 days from seeding. Impressive, but not something you can count on. The Flying Saucers flowered in 109 days, and the moonflowers in 167 days. Some cultivars, such as Heavenly Blue, take a long time to flower. I think I need to allow five months from seeding to flowers, which is to say I ought to start them by April 1 if I want flowers by September, but if I want them ready for the Yards in Bloom judging, I probably need to start them in February. (That being said, I'm not sure I want to enter the Yards in Bloom next year, but more in a later post.)
So these are the Four Commandments of Insanity. Shouldn't be too hard, really, even given my tendency to say one thing and do the very opposite when it comes to the garden.
Meanwhile, I still have no idea what to do with my tens of thousands of seeds.
A huge mass of somewhat poisonous vines on my kitchen floor. Hmmmmm...
In my imagination, I would harvest the seeds off the vines at the end of the season, and then, I'm not sure how I figured that would happen, but somehow the vines would disappear from the balcony railing and I'd have a blank slate for next year.
Hm.
First of all, these things take a long, long time to die, and they don't look pretty doing it. And it's also unclear to me why after weeks of waiting, I suddenly ran out of patience after dark on a freezing Friday night. That's a very dumb time to be going medieval with the pruners, even considering that I don't drink. Luckily, I was at least aware of the stupidity of what I was doing, and therefore very cautious about where the shears were relative to my fingers. So other than the vines, nobody got hurt.
For all that these are supposed to be tropical plants from the jungles of South America, most of them were very much alive when I chopped them, which is too bad because they're much more allergenic alive than dead. Not only did I have an allergic reaction to them, which I expected, so did my dog, which I didn't expect and which made me feel quite bad because she had no part in this whole insanity project, and also I have no allergy medication for her, so she had to just live with it. I'm sorry, puppykins.
Why did I drag all the dead vines into the kitchen anyway? Because I was still after the seeds. So it took about an hour to inspect all the vines for mature seeds, harvest them, and then clean up the mess. And herein I discovered some "traditional knowledge" that I didn't magically inherit from my Neolithic ancestors, namely, that the ability for a huge field of plants to produce seeds that mature all at the same time for ease of harvesting is something we've bred for, not a natural trait of plants in general. So whereas wheat can be all chopped down by a combine, morning glories all bloom and produce their seeds at different rates. Insanity Leader bloomed continuously from March 27 to the end of September, which is quite amazing. Six months of blooms is not usual, especially in a place where winter lasts eight months. On the other hand, Insanity 4 hardly flowered at all, and the cultivar "Flying Saucers" in Insanity 2 bloomed for the first and last time on September 25. After the first frost, mind you. Again, pretty amazing for a tropical plant.
So the result of these variations is that I have a massive amount of seeds from Insanity Leader, which is mostly Feringa / Star of Yelta (I still can't tell them apart) and a mix from McKenzie Seeds which they used to call "Early Call mix" and now just call "mix". It has five colours and I don't mind it, but I don't really need this much of it:
Hmmm... Well, you, the reader, can't get an idea of how many there are from this photo, but my preliminary estimate is that we're looking at tens of thousands. And if I know me at all, I'm pretty sure I will take the time to count them all. Not only that, most of them are probably viable. Scary thought, if you consider that I planted "only" 1100 this year and they completely covered my railing. Tens of thousands could wipe the town of the map. And that reminds me, I still have no idea what to do with those seeds, but one thing is fairly certain, namely, I don't want to plant them. Not just because there are too many, but because as I was saying, the vast majority come from Insanity Leader, not from the many other interesting cultivars I had planted. For example, we can be quite sure none are from "Flying Saucers", and equally certain that there are no "Heavenly Blue", partly because it failed to flower yet again, and partly because its seeds have a distinctive shape and I'd have noticed if I had harvested any.
So now, it's time to make like my Neolithic ancestors and reflect on what I could do better next year. Because yes, the Wall of Insanity is definitely coming back next year, with some modifications.
1. Keep cultivars segragated.
Segregation may be bad for people, but it's good for plants, if you want to know what seeds you're harvesting. So for next year, each cultivar gets its own little container, with one stake on which to grow; no more colonizing the railing and getting all tangled together. Where this will get slightly complicated is when I can only get a cultivar as part of a mix. However, morning glories have the huge advantage of being all left-handed. Or maybe they're all right-handed. I'm pretty sure they're left-handed, but the point is, they all twist the same way, so it's quite easy to unwind them from a support. If they grew in random directions, it would be quite impossible. So if I grow a mix around one stake, when it flowers, I can untwist it, sort out the vines by colour, and re-twist it around individual stakes. Clever, eh?
2. No planting in the shade.
This year, I had put my most valuable cultivars at the sunny end of the wall, being Insanity Leader and Insanity 1, and the least valuable at the shady end, in Insanity 4. Predictably, the sunny end produced abundantly; less predictably, Insanity 4 hardly flowered at all. I thought that being jungle flowers, they'd be fine in part shade, but no, they really want sun. So for next year, everyone goes to the sunny side, where they will also act as a windbreak for my other plants, and as a privacy screen to keep my stalker from looking at me.
3. Less nitrogen.
This was my first Insanity Plant, pictured here on September 26, 2009. Notice it has hardly any leaves. It's also very short and tiny, but more importantly, it has hardly any leaves, and therefore you can see the flowers. This year I fed all my garden religiously with a 10-15-10 fertilizer, with the result that I had massive greenery, and Ipomoea vines growing more than 8' long, but not too many blooms, and mostly hidden in the foliage. So next year, less nitrogen, more potassium.
4. Start way earlier.
This year, I managed to have a Star of Yelta flower in 45 days from seeding. Impressive, but not something you can count on. The Flying Saucers flowered in 109 days, and the moonflowers in 167 days. Some cultivars, such as Heavenly Blue, take a long time to flower. I think I need to allow five months from seeding to flowers, which is to say I ought to start them by April 1 if I want flowers by September, but if I want them ready for the Yards in Bloom judging, I probably need to start them in February. (That being said, I'm not sure I want to enter the Yards in Bloom next year, but more in a later post.)
So these are the Four Commandments of Insanity. Shouldn't be too hard, really, even given my tendency to say one thing and do the very opposite when it comes to the garden.
Meanwhile, I still have no idea what to do with my tens of thousands of seeds.
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