They're watching me!

These are my monitor plants. The planter contains holly seeds, which can take three years to sprout, if they don't die in the mean time. So to monitor soil conditions while we wait, I planted some of the Insanity seeds I harvested from the Wall of Insanity last year.

As of yesterday, all the vines were leaning towards the window, but I noticed one of them had begun twining around another, so they're at the age where they need a stake. But as you can see, I put the stake behind the vines. Insofar that a plant has a front and a back. And as of this morning, as you can see, not only one vine has reached the stake already, but several are leaning away from the light and towards the stake.

What in the world?

Theoretically, plants have no eyes, brain, mouths or ears. Yet evidently, they were quickly able to detect the presence of the stake and redirect to take advantage of it, so they must have something about them that can see what I'm doing, strategise, and communicate.

That's disturbing.

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.

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.

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)

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.

Perhaps I should have planned this better

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.

Er... What's up, Doc?

It occurs to me that I shouldn't have planted all my morning glories together, because:


What is this, exactly? Scarlet O'Hara? Crimson Rambler? The pink thing from the mix?

I'm calling it Scarlet O'Hara, but your guess is as good as mine.

Also:


The colour didn't work out all that well, on account of it being white. In reality it was more ivory with a pink aura around the centre. I have never seen a photo or read a description of any such thing. It's not Pearly Gates and it's certainly not a moonflower. In this photo you can see faintly some streaks of colour on the bottom right petal, so I'm calling it part of the Carnival mix, which also produced this:


The autofocus doesn't like it, but it's really pretty.

I've been trying to find an authoritative treatise on morning glories, but no luck so far. Maybe I'll have to write my own some day... if I can ever figure out all the different cultivars. I'm still not sure whether Star of Yelta, Feringa and Grandpa Ott are all the same or all different, and I have several colours that came from mixes and don't have any particular name.

Then once I know everything about morning glories, I'll have to do the same with pansies.

More nemophilas

These are the Baby Blue Eyes nemophilas, which are currently looking quite awesome. Too bad they didn't do this a week earlier for the Yards in Bloom people.


And these are Penny Black. They're smaller than the other two, but they're black. Ooooooh... black flower!


Also, the Wall of Insanity is trying to take over the window box.

Next year I'm gonna do something neater with these. They come by the thousands in a seed packet, so I could have them in every planter if I wanted. So I haven't quite decided where to put them, but I sure won't plant all 4000 together like that.

High-maintenance gardening

I've been reading gardening books lately and they seem each more worthless than the last. And one thing they all advocate is "low-maintenance gardening".

Really?

I love doing maintenance in my garden. Otherwise I wouldn't garden at all. In fact I'd like to be doing more maintenance right now.

Today I'm angry, bored and out of sorts. So, I messed with my garden. First of all, Insanity Plant was leaning more and more, and after this afternoon's fit of wind I couldn't get it back to normal. I cut off the top, thinking it was top-heavy, but that didn't help. I tried to rotate it so I could tether it from a different angle, but it was strangely immovable. So I investigated and found it had wound itself around everything it could: the pumpkin vine on the floor, the hollyhock in the Jungle, which it broke, the poppies, the balcony railing, the old chunk of cable, everything. And it was tight, too. I had to cut off some stems of various things to get it to rotate to a better angle, and now it's upright and stable with I think one guy line left and all the rest of the work done by its own vines. I think I'm gonna change its name to Codependence Plant.

The other thing with morning glories is that they make lots of yellow leaves. This doesn't seem to bother them much, and in any case, it's fall, leaves should be turning yellow. You just pull the yellow leaves and move on, but there are always more you can pull if you're angry, bored and out of sorts. Also I've been harvesting its seeds, and that takes a lot of looking through the foliage. I feel like one monkey grooming another, but then again, gardening makes me feel like a monkey in a weird behavioural experiment anyway. And besides, I'm in a bad mood and it suits me to think angry thoughts about monkeys.

Once I got things tidied up around Insanity Plant, that gave me access to parts of the Jungle that I hadn't even seen in weeks, which needed lots of tidying too. Then I swept up the debris and tried to move the pumpkin vine out of the way, and cracked it again. The current pumpkin candidate seems in good health so far, but its vine is cracked in at least three places now, so I don't know if it's going to die or if that doesn't bother it. I relocated it out of the way of traffic, more or less, but I'm pretty much resigned to having no pumpkins again this year.

After that I picked the yellow leaves out of the Wall of Insanity, and then I looked at the geraniums.

Ha. They look like death on toast.

So I brought the planter inside and started by skimming off a layer of soil because it had mold. Then I snipped off all the broken stems, dead flowers and damaged leaves. Then it was still an ugly, tangled web of deceit and ugliness, and it seemed to have an awful lot of stems considering only three seeds sprouted at all. But I finally identified the three loci from which it was growing, and I decided to pull two of them.


That's the geranium roots. All that for five ugly purple flowers? What a waste. I kept one, so it can try again next year, but I'm totally displeased with them. Then I dug up my oriental lily. I didn't knock the dirt off its root to see what it looked like, as I'm not trying to kill it. I moved it to the geranium pot and then put the pot back outside. That's gonna be a novel experience since it's been inside and in full shade all its life. And I do mean "full" shade, as in no direct sunlight whatsoever. The stem is very sturdy, but since it's still windy out, I put it between two planters of the Wall of Insanity, where the vines can give it some shelter and support.

Then this allowed me to put the 14" planter out on the balcony, which frees up some room in my living room, where it was looking ugly anyway.

After that I was still angry, bored and out of sorts, but at least I had killed a lot of time. Then I killed some more by looking through the plant catalog and thinking about what I'm doing next year. Though that's really impossible to predict, as I don't even know when I'll ever have money.

I'm going to bed now.

What else is in bloom

English daisies. This was the first one, which opened August 3. There are currently four: this one, another pink one with lots more petals of which I botched the photo, and two white ones. This isn't exactly what I was after. I want the ones that make a round mass of petals so you can't see the yellow center at all. However, what I seeded is a mix and there is plenty more that haven't flowered yet, so the right ones could still be out there. And if not, there's always next year.


Asters. Yea verily, asters finally bloomed. I logged the date officially as August 4, but it took a few more days to reach this state of full openness. The strange thing is that I seeded a mix and yet only these bright pink ones are flowering. Oh well... I don't mind them. As much as they've aggravated me in the past, they're good flowers, and they did have my back when the judges came through, so maybe I'll plant them again next year after all.


Convolvuli. I'm still perplexed that only dark blue ones came up when I know I seeded a mix, but oh well. I like the dark blue ones.


Forget-me-not. They're making quite a good show, actually. I'm definitely getting them again next year.


Star of Yelta in the Wall of Insanity. This one is blooming very profusely, whereas the one at the other hand is blooming very little. Yet the difference in sunlight is less than two hours between the two. Then again... two hours is 25% less sun, so maybe it is indeed a question of sunlight. Or, maybe I just got a particularly vigorous one by chance.

Also, poppies are blooming profusely now, but mostly they're outside the railing and we don't see much of each other. There are some nemophilas and California bluebells left, not enough to make a decent photo. The geranium not only never turned blue, but also got trampled by the raven. The new plant hasn't come in the mail yet and I'm not really antsy about it.

There's a raven eating my morning glories

All winter, I was feeding the ravens. More accurately, I was feeding A raven, because he established my balcony as his territory and kept all the other ravens away, except his girlfriend. Then in spring I cut him off, because he can get his own food when it's nice out. But he must be running out of food out there for some reason, because he's back on my balcony. He expressed some displeasure with all the vegetation that didn't use to be there, but once I put some bread and peanut butter out, he soon found his way around.

The thing with ravens is that they're not like dogs, they don't learn your schedule. Or they just don't care. So even though I've only ever fed the raven once a day, he keeps coming back and asking for more. And if I don't feed him, he yells at me. So today, having eaten his peanut butter, he's determined to get more. So he sits on the railing where he can look into the living room and yell at me, and he gives me these big long rants, and then from time to time he bites my morning glories.

Hmmmmm...

I don't really care, insofar that I have more morning glories than I know what to do with and they're indestructible, but the thing is, their seeds are psychedelic; I don't know about the rest of the plant, but I'm sure nothing good can come of having a bunch of stoner ravens hanging out on my balcony. Hopefully he's just shredding them, not eating them.

Also, he trampled all the nemophilas and the geraniums. Maybe that's my excuse for getting rid of the geranium?

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.

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!

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.

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.

Meanwhile...

The poppies are still not open. The first bud appeared nine days ago, and I'm still waiting for it to open. Let's go, you plant! You're a weed, you should be moving a lot faster than this. Sheesh... There must be about two dozen buds now, but it hardly matters how many buds you have if you don't open them.

Other than that, the pansies and geraniums have buds. And that's it for now. Except of course Insanity Plant, which is now resigned to its new situation and flowering handsomely. On Sunday I counted 26 flowers open at the same time, which is the most I've ever seen it do. That's the great thing with Insanity, you can be sure it will never fail you.

Weekly garden update

Actually, it's been 11 days. I'm sure you're desperately yearning for garden news, yes?

Let's start with pumpkins.


The pumpkins are taking over the world. They're huge. And this year they have very tough sturdy stems, which look promising. But now they've reached down to the concrete, so I really need to get them some rigid insulation to sit on, otherwise the concrete will burn them yet again. Other than that, I was worried that they'd be damaged when the dog and I rub against them in our comings and goings. I was wrong. Turns out pumpkins have nasty little pointy hairs on the underside of their leaves which scratch you when you walk by. The dog doesn't care. I, of course, get a skin reaction. I have skin reactions to pretty much everything under the sun anyway. In any case, I have great hopes for the pumpkins this time around.


The asters. I found out why it takes so long for asters to bloom: because normally they're a fall-flowering plant. I guess they don't realize that up here fall is RIGHT NOW and they need to get their butts in gear if they're planning to flower at all. But since you can't talk sense into a plant, I guess I'll bring them inside in the fall.


The pansies. I haven't thinned them yet because they're not complaining. Being that they're perennials, I don't know if they even plan to flower this year at all, but they're making pleasant verdure at any rate.


English daisies (left) and geraniums (right). Again, English daisies are perennials, so they might not bloom this year at all. Maybe now is the time to thin them; some of them seem to be getting a bit stretchy.

The geraniums have picked themselves up quite a bit since the last update, but they're still nowhere near blooming. I'm now puzzled as to their lifecycle. The Veseys growing guide says they're annuals, the supplier says perennials. Maybe because Veseys is in Canada and the supplier is in the US, they might be hardy to their climate but not to ours. Oh well. I'll bring them inside in the fall regardless, and we'll see what they do for next year. But I do wish they would bloom though. I was so looking forward to them.


The Wall of Insanity is finally understanding how things work. I tricked them with strings, as you can see. At first they were like "meh", but then they grabbed on to the strings with a vengeance, and now they've reached the railing. Madness will now ensue... I hope. That being said, they still have at least another month until they bloom. Sigh... At least now I know how long it takes them to start climbing, so next year I will start them inside about five weeks early. Darth Plant is still in there somewhere, but making no progress at all. It's too late in the year now to do any more seeding, so I'll have to try it again next year. You can see also that some of the maydays have been migrated to the gaps in the Wall, but that will have to change yet again as the Wall starts to shut out the light.


Nemophilas and California bluebells. You can see the bluebells on the outside with the different leaves. They're just starting to bud. I'm expecting them to bloom in about a week to ten days, and the nemophilas about ten days later, based on their performance in 2009.


The lemons. Not much change there. They seem to like it on the balcony, but being trees, they have their fast growth in the spring and slow growth in the summer, so there isn't much to see right now. As long as they're green and have leaves, that's satisfactory.


Same with the maydays, slow summer growth. Here you can see Deng Xiaoping in front and Liu Shao-ch'i in back. To the right of Deng Xiaoping is its aster roommate. They're now the same height. Spooky!

And now here is a bigger problem:


Remember those pear seeds I got tired of stratifying and threw out there to rot?

Oops...

So now I have five pear trees. The first to sprout is still with Peng Dehuai and is doing fine, but I can never get a decent photo of it. The second one died. I checked on it because it wasn't progressing, and its root was gone. I don't know why, but sometimes plants' roots disappear and they die. So I put more seeds into the CryoVat... but meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, these four sprouted in Deng Xiaoping's planter.

Uh-oh.

I'm going to end up with a veritable army of pear trees now. Then I'll have to cull them down to two. I hate culling trees.


The Jungle. You can't really see anything, but that's pretty much how it goes with the Jungle. The gigantic thing on the right, with its many branches, is the Head Zombie.


This is a very-close-up of the Head Zombie. First of all you can see it looks like it's all coated in coarse salt, or ice, or something, but it's not. That's just the way it looks. Second, do these look like petunia buds to you? I have no photos at all from last year's petunias. Also, they can't be petunias, because on closer inspection of my logs, it wasn't the petunias I dumped into the Jungle, it was the lavateras. And I have photos of lavateras and their leaves look nothing like that. In fact I have no photos of anything at all that looks like this. Also, it's now two feet tall. I think I'd have noticed a forest of two-foot-tall psycho plants taking over my balcony last year. I can't find anything like it in my book, either.

Whatever it is, I'm going to kill it. It's way too aggressive for my garden. But I want it to flower first, so I'll know what it was. In the meantime, it's making itself useful as a climbing pole for the "non-climbing" convolvulus. Non-climbing, my foot. It's climbing all over the place. Not as fast as a morning glory, maybe, but it's definitely climbing. And it's budding, too. At first I thought the four o'clocks were budding, but no, it's a convolvulus vine that's wrapped itself around a four o'clock stem and is making buds.

Meanwhile, the "short" poppies are also making buds. Several buds. They'll flower soon. It's too bad that the "short"poppies which were seeded close to the edge grew so much faster than the "tall" poppies close to the center, because now the tall poppies are in the shade and getting nowhere. Tying the "short" poppies to the railing seems to have helped, but I doubt the tall poppies will catch up now.

The flax is still healthy. It's not supposed to bloom this year, but I'm hoping to get lots of stalks to give it a better chance next year.

What else is in there... Globe thistles: still growing, but they're shadowed by... something or other. They're perennials anyway, so I suppose they don't plan to flower until next year.

Bellflowers: growing, but were shadowed by the poppies for the longest time, so they're very late, and they're also perennials.

Shastas... Er... What is with the shastas anyway? Let me have a look. Ok: the shastas have lots of leaves, but nothing that looks like a stem that might some day turn into a flower. Crud... You know what? Next year I could dig some from the library's flower beds, that would be way easier.

Four o'clocks are prospering, but again, they're planted in front of supposedly taller plants that happen to grow much slower and are now in their shadow, so I'm not pleased. Had I known how fast some things grow and others don't, I'd have planned this better. Or... not. The Jungle isn't exactly a paragon of planning. Anyway, I chopped another one down today. I don't even care about them, they're just something I grabbed at the store in passing. I don't even know if I'm gonna like them. I killed most of the zombie that was making those strange pseudo-flowers I posted the other day. I left one stem because it's leaning far out of the pot and not really shading the others. Now there is room for the middle plants to get some light; hopefully they'll put some growth on yet before it's too late.

Hollyhocks are looking good, they made big leaves fast enough that they're not starved for light. Lupins and... well, I don't know about delphiniums, but the lupins are definitely prospering. But again, all these are perennials and might not flower this year. But at least this time I know that a lot of my flowers won't flower this year. I didn't know that the last two years. You live, you learn.

The ornamental grass is still there. All one stalk of it, as far as I can tell.

Other than that, it's all a bunch of stuff I threw in there for no apparent reason, and I have no idea what's what. It will be a surprise if/when anything blooms, I guess.


Ensemble. You can see Insanity Plant at the back. It's no longer trying to get taller, and is finally starting to bloom fairly regularly again. I hadn't seen a Star of Yelta on it in some time, but now there are two ready to flower tomorrow. Insanity Plant is indestructible.

The lawn is doing fine, clearly. The oriental poppy is still inside and according to my googling, it only flowers once a year, so there won't be anything to report until next spring. And the roses are having fun in the fun gel. And I suppose it's just as well that they're roses and not peonies, because according to my reading, roses are really easy to root, whereas peonies are anything but.

So, that was the garden for this week.

Insanity zombies!

One resourceful vine in the Wall of Insanity got a hold of the string that holds Peng Dehuai to its stake. So it climbed up the string until it got a hold of the stake. Instead of climbing up the railing like I asked. Maybe I should put some strings on the railing and they'll get the idea.


Meanwhile, in Liu Shao-ch'i's planter, which was formerly occupied by morning glories, there are zombie morning glories sprouting. Not surprising, but somehow I hadn't expected it. I better uproot it before it takes over the world. No good comes from zombies.

Garden update

The Jungle is thriving, as you can see. I've thinned out the poppies (top left) quite a bit, but we could still lose at least half of them.

The huge thing going up into the top right corner is one of the zombie plants. I removed all but two, because I'm more and more convinced they're petunias. Petunias are nearly indestructible, as far as I can tell, which would be an awesome quality if I liked them. As it turns out, however, I'm only moderately fond of them, so two is about as many as I want to keep.

The thing trying to crawl out of frame in the bottom left corner is a convolvulus. A convolvulus is "like" a morning glory in shape, but comes in different colours, and according to the seed packet, it "does not have a climbing habit" and grows to about a foot tall. I wish they had mentioned that it crawls quite agressively, and in particular, it keeps trying to crawl all over my globe thistles, which I don't appreciate. So I keep relocating it, but it always finds a way to crawl over something important, such as my poor little flax sprouts. I've never managed to make flax flower yet and I don't want it ruined by a convolvulus. If this trend continues, I might have to get rid of the convolvulus.

Other than that, the globe thistles are doing fine. Nothing particularly interesting happening with them. Likewise with the flax, the ones that sprouted are carrying on, nothing much to say about them.

The Shasta daisies are mostly hidden by the zombie plant here. Now that there is a bit of volume happening, their poor sprouting performance isn't so noticeable. And as we've seen with the poppies, there is such a thing as too much success.

The lupins, delphiniums and hollyhocks are starting to look quite solid, which they'd better because at this point anyone who doesn't get a move on is going to get crushed by the zombies, poppies and convolvulus, and that would annoy me extremely.

There is one pampa's plume that I can find, it's looking nice and healthy.

The four o'clocks are now also becoming very aggressive. I've pulled one out already and might have to whack some more. I wish seed packets would tell you when a plant has a tendency to take over the world like that, then I might not plant crazy weeds with my most valuable species all the time.

Hidden behind all this on the sunny side are all the little plants: bellflower, nemophila, California bluebell, and... other stuff that I forget. They are not doing well and the poppies keep flopping over them so they're not getting the sun. Clearly, this project wasn't very well thought-out.

Oh well. Let's move on.


The window boxes. As you can see, I've relocated the one from the sunny location next to the shady one. The shady one had much better sprouting than the sunny one, but the real reason I did this is because the sunny one was casting a shadow on more important plants. In any case, they're doing fine.


Pumpkins. As I've mentioned, I've never succeeded with pumpkins yet, but I must say, these are the best pumpkin leaves I've ever grown. I'm attributing this early success to the fact I thinned them out, but then again, it could be just because they're in a shadier spot than last year. If I'm understanding things, plants make bigger leaves to grab more light, so big leaves isn't a sign of success, just a comment on the light.


Here we have asters at the top, doing fine. The English daisies in that planter, not so much, but oh well. I got lots more. Asters are really slow-moving for annuals. I tried them two years ago and they never had time to flower. If these don't make it by first frost, I'll bring them inside and hopefully get something that way.

Bottom left is the vat of English daisies, looking verdant and enthusiastic as you can see. I really like English daisies, so I'm pretty excited to see all this growth.

Bottom right are my pansies. Not much to say about them... they're growing. That's what plants do.


The Wall of Insanity is also looking lush and determined, but hasn't reached climbing mode yet. I'll make a note of when they start winding around the railing, that way next year I can start them indoors and they'll be ready to climb as soon as last frost passes.

Darth Plant is still in there somewhere, but still losing ground compared to the Ipomoea vines. Oh well. Better luck next year.

Note also that the dog's lawn, on the right, is needing a haircut.


The trees. Everyone is doing fine. The lemons don't mind being outside, but then again, it hasn't been windy yet. The maydays are fine. Liu Shao-ch'i hasn't complained about being transplanted. The pear tree I thought I damaged is actually thriving so far, though I didn't get any usable photos of it. You can barely see it as a green dot in the far right planter in the back row. The other one is still in Deng Xiaoping's planter. I'll move it later, if it doesn't die first.

The far left planter in the front row is the geraniums. Progress is slow. Some leaves have been burned by the wind. My early optimism is beginning to fade.

Not pictured are the baobabs, the plum cuttings, Insanity Plant and the oriental lily.

The oriental lily flowers are now wilted. I'm not sure what it's supposed to do next or whether I should remove the dead flowers. I'll google it tomorrow.

Insanity Plant is sulking. It doesn't like change, so it has been flowering very little since I put it out on the balcony. Also, a lot of the leaves have been eaten by the wind. It seems to have given up on reaching the next balcony. I'm sure it will pick itself up, though. It's indestructible.

The cuttings are still having tons of fun in their fun gel. They're more or less upright and clearly alive. No roots yet, but that's fine. It's supposed to take weeks for the roots to form. Weeks of fun in the fun gel!

The baobabs are thriving. A. digitata now has a leader. Next baobab photo is on Friday, unless they do something unexpected in the mean time.

And that's pretty much what's happening in the garden.

Other news

This is a Star of Yelta morning glory. It's also called Grandpa Ott and Feringa, or at least I see no difference between those three names. I love it.

What's new in the garden, though:

• A sixth globe thistle sprouted. That's now 1/3 of the seeds, which is about the usual success rate of seeds so far in my garden, so I don't expect any more.


• A pear seed sprouted, but I didn't take a picture cause you can't really see it. Great. Now I just need a second one, because I don't like having only one tree of a species, and then I can stop fighting with pear seeds. They're a pain.


• I started thinning the poppies. On the edges I have to be careful not to disturb the other things that are growing among the poppies, but in the middle, you can just grab and pull. It's cathartic, in a way.

And that's all the news for today.