Foiled again!!!!

Well, the experiment with the sand-perlite-manure mixture was a complete failure. Whereas soil retains too much moisture, this mix retains too little, so all my seeds dried out. That would be my last four apricot seeds, which I had religiously stratified for the whole duration; my remaining baobab seeds; and my lychees. Fortunately, one of the lychees was not yet germinating when I moved them to the sand planter, so now it has a root that looks like it might still be alive. I'm not 100% on that, but it might still be alive. So I moved it to yet another baobab nursery planter, with the new baobab seeds that I recently received from my supplier. This time I'm doing one seed at a time (one from each species, I mean), and the mix is mostly soil with some perlite in it. Perlite improves drainage, so, we shall see.

No chance of more apricots or lychees until next year, though. What a nuisance. I hope that one lychee is still alive, but I'm not optimistic. Also, I was gonna get some catalpa seeds, but my supplier of rare seeds doesn't have them right now, and I can't find them anywhere else online. So if you know anyone who sells catalpa seeds, let me know.

Meanwhile, I brought in the Guerilla Planter, with Deng Xiao Ping, the chief aster, and, as it turns out, four pear trees that have survived being completely ignored all summer. In fact, maybe complete ignorage is better for trees than constant fussing. In any case, all four look wide awake and full of ideas. This poses a problem as to potting. Pear trees make taproots, so I don't doubt those four little trees are down to the bottom of their planter, and I'm going to need (four) tall planters for them. On the other hand, since they have taproots, they're probably not crowding into each other, and therefore repotting is probably not urgent. So maybe I can leave them alone until somewhat later. The bigger issue is that both pears and chokecherries are seasonal trees, which is to say they need a period of dormancy. Deng has shed most of its leaves, as have Liu Shao-ch'i and Peng Dehuai. Those two are staying on the balcony for the winter; Deng and the pears are inside, and the pears are bright green and not looking at all disposed to go to sleep. Will they survive a winter in the house, or will they die from sleep deprivation?

The next day, I also repatriated Planter #9, which contains the last surviving "blue" geranium, still decidedly purple but also very much alive; my oriental lily; and the globe thistles. Again, these are hardy plants, therefore I doubt they'll be happy in the house all winter, but then again, they have disappointed me, so if they die, so be it.

But that's not all! I still have seeds in the fridge! The holly seeds moved from warm stratification to cold stratification on October 10. I also have a bunch of cherry pits that have been stratifying since September 11. According to my sources, cherries are inconsistent in their stratification habits and can start sprouting even before being warmed up; I'm thinking I'm gonna give them six weeks.

Also, I have more seeds stratifying outside! The fun never ends here. I harvested some berries off some shrubs that had nice fall colours. One is cultivated and seems to be intended for a hedge some years from now. I believe it's called Peking cotoneaster. The other grows wild all over town and is possibly a red osier dogwood. Or some other kind of dogwood. I planted both in Planter #17, formerly home of the pumpkins. They'll die, or they'll come up in the spring. Stratifying outdoors worked out perfectly for the chokecherries, so I'm taking the view that anything I harvest out of doors (rather than from fruit bought from the store) can stratify outside.

What else... Faith and Hope are doing very well, thank you. They've been inside September 11 and are both putting on some growth. And I just bought two mandarins today, which hopefully will have some seeds in them. I'm not hungry enough to eat them right now, though. I wonder whether they need stratifying or not. China is pretty cold, but I can't think of any other citrus that needs stratification. I better google it.

That's about it for plants I'm working on right now, really. Out on the balcony, there are a few things still in bloom: poppies, "Baby Blue Eyes" nemophilas, English daisies, bellflowers, which finally bloomed on September 15 and are completely underwhelming, one convolvulus, one dianthus, and pansies. The morning glories still have flower buds on them but have been unable to open for some time now because it's not warm enough. Likewise the marigolds formed buds, to my surprise, as far back as September 11, and have been progressing slowly ever since; I doubt they'll succeed in flowering. Among the morning glories, the following cultivars did not bloom: Heavenly Blue, Kniola's Black Knight, Chocolate, and Blue Star. The thunbergia vine, cypress vine, and Darth Plant also did not flower. I'll be planting Darth Plant again next year, but not thunbergia. Undecided about cypress vine.

Also undecided is what I'm gonna do with the colossal amount of seeds I've harvested off my morning glories. The obvious answer would be "plant them", but with very few exceptions, they're from Insanity Leader, and therefore all varieties I've done several times. For next year, I'm going to get all the same varieties I had this year, and any more I can find, but I'm gonna plant one variety per container, and keep them all straight and orderly; that way I'll know what seeds I have. The current collection of seeds is really of no use to me, so I could either find somewhere inconspicuous to dump them, in which case I suspect they'll run over the town, or throw them in the garbage, in which case they will colonize the dump. Or scatter them at the dump and call it "beautification."

At this time, to be honest, I'd really like to get a nasty frost to kill everything non-hardy, so I can start winterizing. It's not really fun watching plants that aren't doing anything, and if this warm fall gives way suddenly to winter, I'll be out there in nasty weather cleaning up, and I'd rather not do that.

So, now you know.

After the storm

Last week we had a storm of wind and rain that lasted three days. Some of the rain looked suspiciously large and white. I thought the garden would be done for, especially the pumpkin. After the storm the temperature dropped to 5 C (41 F).

And then, it went back up to 20 C (68 F) and sunny.

Of course.

Even though first frost is statistically September 15, there is actually plenty of time left. Last year I still had many things blooming by the time I left for Calgary on October 21. In 2009 there were still things blooming when I left for Yellowknife on October 19. So, I should still have at least a month and a half of flowers.

Sadly, this doesn't apply to my pumpkin, as pumpkins allegedly need 20 C to grow, and don't take kindly to frost. But at least it still leaves plenty of time for the things that have not flowered yet, including but not limited to:

• hollyhocks,


• marigolds,


• flax (still alive, though growing upside-down because of the crowding),


• Darth Plant,


• and the following varieties of morning glories:
  
  • Heavenly Blue
  
  
  • Kniola's Black Knight
  
  
  • Chocolate
  
  
  • Flying Saucers
  
  
  • Crimson Rambler
  
  
  • Double Sunrise Serenade
  
  
  • Pearly Gates

There are a few that I don't expect until next year, and a few I don't expect at all, but over all, it's been a rather successful season in terms of the percentage of stuff that flowered.

Also, the new Adansonia za is almost through the surface, and the first lychee has a root. I boiled one of the seeds that hadn't cracked yet, but it doesn't seem to be any faster for it. And the pear trees are still numerous and healthy. Holly and apricot seeds are still in stratification. And I'm thinking of getting some catalpa seeds, but I don't have a supplier for them right now.

The lemons are still outside. They have not been watered since August 1 and are much better for it. The dieback stopped almost immediately when I stopped watering, and they have not expressed any desire for water ever since. They are still short on nitrogen, so I gave them some manure, but without water to mix with it, I don't think the nutrients are spreading through the soil all that much. I'm not planning on watering them again until they come inside, that way they'll be easier to move. It should only be another two weeks at most anyway. I think they've been quite happy on the balcony all summer, insofar that it's possible for a plant to be "happy".

What else... the chokecherries are still alive. They're not doing much, which is normal as they put on their growth in the spring. I've said that already. The passiflora vines didn't do well in the storm, I had forgotten about them and left them outside. There are still a few alive, but they don't seem to be getting bigger. Oh well. I wasn't really attached to them anyway.

And that's about it. I'm really looking forward to next year already. I have big plans. (In fact my shopping list for next year is up to $290 so far. Hmmmmmm...)

Oh no you di'n't!

I went to the grocery store on Sunday, according to plan, to get some more apricots. They've gone way up in price and are in mediocre condition and rather watery, but that's to be expected. What I didn't anticipate is that the grocery store also had... lychees.

Oh dear.

Lychees are tasty, though I wasn't particularly interested in eating those as they had mold on them. But also, they have big seeds in them.

Seeds.

Mmmmm... Seeds.

So, I bought some lychees. Even though they had mold, they were incorrectly labelled, and the cashiers don't know what they're doing so they charged me for a different product.

Lychees are sub-tropical, so they don't need stratification. And the skin is hard and scaly, so the mold hadn't reached into the fruit.

Now I have four lychees seeds waiting to hatch... plus five apricot seeds in cold stratification and 35 holly seeds in warm stratification.

I really need to go to work. And stay out of the produce section.

Garden Ninja is getting aggravated

I got concerned about my apricots again, partly because of something I read that suggested I planted them way too deep, and partly because the soil just wasn't drying out at all. Even the surface remained wet. Not moist, wet.

So, I dug. And I dug. And I dug.

Finally I got to the apricot seeds and...

they...

had...

liquefied.

I kid you not. They were liquid. Vile, gelatinous, foul-smelling white liquid. All five of them. It was disgusting.

So I cracked some other pits that I had saved just in case, but they had been sitting too long and were all dry and useless.

Fine. FINE!

I'll buy more tomorrow, assuming the grocery store still has any. I don't care if I have to eat a thousand apricots, I will grow a tree. The more they thwart me, the less I'm letting them get away with it.

Shows how much you know

I really need to know my hardiness zone. Of course the situation is different on my balcony, because it's a balcony, but still, I really need to know my hardiness zone. Now you might think I'm in zone 0a, seeing as I already said that, but it's nonsense. Almost nothing grows in zone 0a, and clearly that's not the case here. So where exactly are we?

Hmmmm...

Well, I know the chokecherry, Prunus virginiana, does very well here, though maybe it doesn't get as tall as in other places. Therefore whatever P. virginiana is rated for, that's what I'll call my zone. And according to my sources, it's zone 2. Ha! In your face!

Of course you need to know whether that's a USDA or Canadian zone rating, but since I find the same rating from US sources and from the University of Manitoba, I'll just say I'm in zone 2.

Now the thing is, how are my other trees rated?

• Chokecherry: zone 2-6


• Apricot: zone 4-9


• Holly: zone 5-9


• Pear: zone 5-9


• Lemon: zone 8-11


• Baobab: zone 10

Is that all I have for trees?

Oh good. Only six species. There is a limit to this insanity after all. Ok, so the thing is, the least hardy ones are actually the easiest ones for me, because they don't require frost, therefore they can just spend the winter inside. Not ideal, but good enough. So that takes care of the lemons and baobabs. The chokecherries, being very cold-hardy, can probably stay outside, as long as I find a way to insulate the pots enough. The difficulty is in the half-way trees, which can't take -40C, but need a certain amount of cold weather to get dormant. Though no one ever tells you how much "a certain amount" is.

I'm thinking the solution might be to insulate the pots and leave them out until Christmas, and then bring them in. They might not like the sudden transition from cold to hot, but December temperatures here are probably within their comfort zone, and after Christmas the light increases so it's probably ok if they come out of dormancy. In any case I can't do it the other way, as in keep them inside until April and then kick them out early, because that would obviously kill them.

Now I just need to figure out the R-values of snow and dirt so I can build adequate hot boxes for everyone, and we're all set. Or... something.

Apricot Friday

There is nothing to photograph in the CryoVat yet. I destratified it nine days ago, so I decided to check on the seeds. First observation: the soil is VERY packed and still wet. It's a cheap kind of potting soil that one hardware store sells $3 for a 17 L bag (versus $7.59 for the good kind at the other store) and maybe it's not as good. Or maybe I should have let it dry a little before putting it in the fridge. In any case, I dug around, again for the dual purpose of aerating and looking for seeds. I found some pear seeds that are rooting, and then, much deeper, I found some of my apricots. They are very much still there and have some small activity going on. Maybe they're just slow because the soil is so hard. Or maybe this is normal. My lemons took a whole month to sprout, and now they're two feet tall, so as long as the seeds don't get eaten by the fungus, there is hope.

How to grow apricots, part 2

Step 2: let the pits dry for a few days. Meh... I dried them for one day, because I'm not very patient.

Then, the instructions said to crack the pits open. I've tried it in the past and they're beastly hard, so I generally take the view that nobody goes around cracking them in nature, so they must be able to do without. This time, though, I'm sparing no effort. But since they're so hard to crack, I decided to boil them first.


Step 3: boil pits.

Number 4 is not pictured here, I used it for a trial run of the method. It worked, so now I'm boiling the other three. You just pour boiling water on them and wait for it to cool. Just like baobabs.


Step 4: crack pits.

I've never succeeded before, but this time, thanks to boiling, it worked! I was using a small locking clamp, which I think has more leverage than a nutcracker. I also don't have a nutcracker. I tried it before boiling and didn't even dent the shell, so when I applied force after boiling, I overdid it, and the shell flew into pieces which scattered all over the kitchen. The seed, though, fell on the counter right in front of me. That's not a good photo, but the seed is very pretty. I had no idea the inside of an apricot pit looked like this.

This is Number 4. Having cracked it, I boiled the other three pits, but when I tried to crack them, nothing. Don't swear, don't swear, don't swear. (I'm trying to swear less.) Ok, so I boiled them a second time, and while they were cooling, I went to walk the dog. I figured if they still wouldn't crack, I'd take the belt sander to them. I don't care what kind of crazy evolutionary strategy you've come up with, there is no way the belt sander won't get the best of you.

Luckily for everyone, after boiling a second time, the pits cracked, and in fact much more cleanly than Number 4, so they didn't spray shrapnel all over the kitchen.


Step 5: plant.

The pits are in order from most to least tasty, with Number 1 at 12 o'clock and the other three clockwise from there. Now you might argue that there seems to be five seeds, not four. That's because Number 2 was twins. Hmmmm... I wonder how common that is. On the one hand, it's pretty cool having twin apricot trees, and on the other hand, African lore says that there is only one soul per birth, so when you have twins, one has no soul, and you're better off to kill them both right away. So, maybe one of my apricot trees will turn out evil.


Step 6: cover.

That's to keep the moisture from evaporating. I didn't cover the pears and they dried out, so this time I know better. But I'm cheap and lazy, so I used the bag from the grocery store to cover them.


Step 7: stratify.

Blech... I don't have to tell you again how I feel about stratifying. My instructions say that apricots need four to six weeks. But the pears said 60 to 100 days and I sprouted them in only 30, so maybe the apricots will sprout in two weeks. Barring that, they should be ready by about August 1.

I'd be lying if I said waiting is my favourite part of gardening.

How to grow apricots

Step 1: eat apricots.

Good. I do really well on that step. In fact, I now have a good excuse to eat apricots despite their exorbitant price. I need them to reduce my carbon footprint, you see.

Apricots allegedly breed fairly true, so the fruits of the daughter tree should be similar to those of the mother tree. So in this photo, the pits are sorted from tastiest on the left, to least tasty on the right.

Step 3: profit.

(I actually used to watch South Park a lot. Really.)

No, seriously, I have absolutely no idea how to grow apricots. I've tried it several times and they never sprout. So I googled it yet again, and this time it recommends stratifying them.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

I hate stratifying. But there are two more steps between eating and stratifying, so for now I'm on step 2: dry pits. For a few days.

Hm.

Growing apricots is about half as exciting as growing baobabs.