Baobab-less Friday

I'm pretty sure my first baobab is dead now, and the new ones I seeded haven't come up yet.

Poop... And to think it looked so green and majestic just three weeks ago.

I have other stories to tell you, but my schedule has rearranged itself recently and I haven't bothered to fit blogging into it. What's the point of blogging when your baobab is dead anyway?

First frost

Last night it was so cold I decided the lemon trees couldn't stay outside, frost or no frost. And just in case, I also brought in the English daisies and covered up the Last Pumpkin.

I was right. There was frost in the night. Yay me!

So far, nothing outside seems affected. Most of what's out there is supposed to handle a fair amount of cold and like I said before, some of them will bloom until late October. As for the Insane Ones, they may be tropical vines, but they don't care. They're invincible.

Still, it's the beginning of the end for the 2011 garden. It's been a good one. Thank you, plants.

What is wrong with you?

I thought writing a blog about my garden would be nice and peaceful and no one would feel compelled to leave absurd or aggravating comments. I mean, it's a blog about my garden. Nothing in my garden is illegal, controversial, dangerous, anti-social, or in anyway a possible concern to anyone, so why would anyone take the time to annoy me on my garden blog?

Right. That's not counting without the power of the Intertubes. Someone felt the need to leave a bunch of anonymous comments about my mental health.

WTF?

It's a blog about my garden. It's got nothing to do with my mental health. Also, no one asked you, and do you really think anyone is gonna listen to anonymous opinions about their mental health?

People just can't pass up an opportunity to annoy somebody.

Baobab Friday

This is not good. The new Adansonia za died before it even finished sprouting, and now Adansonia digitata is turning brown. I suppose it could be normal, since baobabs are deciduous and normally have leaves only three months a year, but I'm not optimistic. Also, is it supposed to be so pale?

So, I repotted A. digitata in a different medium. I had planted the seeds in regular potting soil, but my instructions (the ones that suggested boiling the seeds) recommended a mixture of sand, perlite and compost. I did that, except with manure instead of compost. That makes sense, really. The regular soil holds water way too long, then seeds rot. This mix drains much better, which not only should delay rotting, but will allow me to water, and therefore feed more often.

That being said, the tree is looking even less happy now. Sigh... I boiled all the remaining seeds and planted them with it, and also all the lychee seeds that were starting to sprout. What's good for baobabs could be good for lychees too.

Then I ordered more baobab seeds, as this is not going so well.

And that was Baobab Friday.

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...)

More reasons I'm single

Today I spent more time covering my fragile plants than doing my hair.

I stayed up until nine PM on a Friday night waiting for the sun to go down so I could cover my plants without depriving them of daylight.

I name my pumpkins.

There is a dead pumpkin hanging from my candelabra.

My lemon trees have the same birthday as Gandhi.

This causes me to wonder what famous person(s) share a birthday with my baobab.

I look it up and find amongst others: Ignaz Pleyel (the one with the pianos), Edouard Daladier, Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicolaievna Romanova, Thabo Mbeki, Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, and Uday Hussein (Saddam's son).

I recognize most of the political figures on the list and only two entertainers. The youngest person I've even heard of was born in 1964.

I have a blog about my garden.

Baobab Friday

Adansonia digitata at 11 weeks old. It hasn't put on any height this week, but I think the leaves have gotten bigger as it's now wider. That's ok. As long as it's healthy, I don't care how tall or short it is.

Meanwhile, the new seed of Adansonia za which I planted on August 19 has a root. Like I've said before, I don't call it "sprouted" until it breaks the soil surface, but progress is encouraging so far.

Aaaaaaaaaand... Blogger is having behavioural issues again, hence the sideways photo. Sigh.

Anyway, that was Baobab Friday.

The last pumpkin

My final pumpkin is already bigger than its ill-fated predecessor and looking healthy, but the nights are getting cold. Actually, the days are getting cold too. By pumpkin standards, that is, not compared to winter temperatures. So, I don't know how much more growth I'll get out of this little dude.

For next year, I'm hatching a new strategy. I can think of three options.

1) No pumpkins.
2) Atlantic Giant pumpkins. If I can grow a 2" pumpkin from a regular variety, maybe I'll get a full-size pumpkin out of the giant variety.
3) Early-maturing regular-size pumpkins. That's probably the smarter thing to do, right? This variety, Small Sugar, is 100 days, but some fast pumpkins mature in as little as 60 days.

Something to think about over the long dark winter, anyway.

This stuff will ruin your mind!

Gardening messes with your head.

Consider this. I cook for my dog. I've done so for the last four years. Each batch of dog food requires a dozen eggs. Then I throw out the shells.

But... I read somewhere that eggshell is good for plants.

Really?

Ok, whatever.

So first I cooked dog food. Then I painstakingly crushed all the eggshells into tiny bits, measured it out (it yielded 4 oz of eggshell), split it evenly between my two lemon trees, and carefully raked it into the dirt.

Good grief... I think even cat ladies laugh at me.

Baobab Friday

Adansonia digitata, now three inches tall. As you can see (or at least I can), the baby leaves have fallen away and now it's just a tree with adult leaves. Banzai!

As for Adansonia za, it entered immortality... some time this week. It's hard to tell with a tree, exactly when it dies. But it's not only merely dead, it's really most sincerely dead. So I boiled another seed and put it in with Adansonia digitata. It should sprout in about two weeks.

And that was Baobab Friday... on Saturday.

Baobab yesterday and baobab tomorrow

It seems I forgot to download the latest baobab photo onto my laptop this morning, so no baobab today.

I know. I'm sad too.

More on this tomorrow.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!

I SLEW MY HEAD PUMPKIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!

.

.

.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!!!!!

I slew my head pumpkin.

The candidate on the north vine had died, it was in my way, and its leaves were tattered and brown from being in the way of traffic all the time. I decided to cut it off. But I made a mistake while trying to trace the vine to its origin, and cut off the east vine instead.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!

He was a prince among pumpkins. The Jack Layton of pumpkins: a true leader, dead before his time.

On the other hand, it appears on closer inspection that there were brown spots on the bottom, so maybe it was gonna rot and die anyway.

I still have one left, on the south vine, which was the healthiest vine anyway. This candidate is sitting on the lawn, where I had also recently relocated the late Great Pumpkin. Maybe the lawn is too humid for them. So, I put a chunk of rigid insulation under the Last Pumpkin. But even if that one makes it, it's eleven days behind the late Great Pumpkin, and that matters this late in the season. But maybe with only one vine instead of three, it will grow faster.

Well, it was only a pumpkin. I know a guy who ran over and killed his own daughter while drunk-driving. All I did was kill my pumpkin.

Pumpy-umpy-umpkin

This is my lead pumpkin. It's firm and firmly attached to its stem, and shows no sign of wanting to let itself die. On the other hand, if you read my interview in the local newspaper, where it says the pumpkin is "the size of a baseball", that's not true, nor did I say such a thing. This here pumpkin is a total of two (2) inches in diameter. World's smallest baseball... but it's the biggest pumpkin I've ever grown yet. I hope it doesn't die soon.

There are two more candidates, one on the north vine, pollinated August 19, looks like it's gonna die, and one on the south vine, pollinated yesterday, no idea yet whether it will live or die. And I've been saying the boss pumpkin is on the "south" vine but it's really on the east vine. So now I have one candidate on each vine. But really I'm gonna chop two off pretty soon. It's only three weeks to first frost, there's no point keeping these late-blooming pumpkins around.

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.

Sweet Enola Gay!

That pink bud that I was pretty sure was a dianthus opened, and it's this:


A lavatera. Good thing I didn't put money on the dianthus hypothesis.

Why is there a lavatera in the Jungle?

Because last year I had lavateras in Planter #2, which I then dumped into the Jungle at the beginning of this year. Actually, I'm surprised there hasn't been more surprise stuff coming up in the Jungle from previous years.

Well, now we know. Never bet on what's in the Jungle.

BOOYA!

Wow. I never even won anything before, except in Pony Club but that was more the pony's doing than mine.

The judges had mentioned a "small cash prize" and I figured if I won (which I didn't think I would) I could use it to buy fall bulbs, since it's not committed elsewhere. Turns out the cash prize is about three times what I expected. Mmmmm... Bulbs...

And the baobabs did get mentioned, by the way, though the presenter forgot what they're called. See, it pays to have your own baobab!

Baobab Friday

This is Adansonia digitata. I'm sure you all recognize it by now. You'd see it walking on the street and you'd be like "OMG, you're Adansonia digitata!!!! Can I get a picture?" It has shot up another 2/3 of an inch this week to the towering height of 2 13/16. Inches. Majestic, isn't it?

What you probably don't realize from this photo is that it's sitting right in the picture window. Not "on" as in on a sill, since there is none, but right in the window frame. Because I've been keeping the baobabs inside at night as it's getting colder, and on rainy days, and instead of moving it out this morning to get the sun, I simply set it in the window like that.

As you can imagine, moments after this photo was taken, I knocked it over with my knee while entering from the balcony. It fell right upside down and all the dirt spilled. "Oh no!" I thought, "I've slain my mighty baobab!"

Not even. When I righted the pot, two thirds of the dirt had fallen out, but the baobab was sitting right there, completely unfazed, with all its dirt right in place. Like James Bond, coming through crazy adventures looking fresh out of an Oscar de la Renta ad. Which tells us one important thing: this baobab has a sturdy root system. And another thing I learned while scooping the displaced dirt back into place is that, as I suspected long ago, the other two seeds have vanished. I figured the Magic Fungus must have eaten them. In theory, seeds can lie in soil for months and sprout when the time is right, but in my garden, that doesn't happen. If you don't start growing fast, the fungus eats you. I'm thinking I should get some fungicide for next spring.

Meanwhile, Adansonia za is definitely knocking on heaven's door, and I'm sure the other two seeds are long gone too. So, I just boiled one of the two reserve seeds, and I'm gonna change out the soil in that planter. Maybe I should sterilize some soil, but it's a touchy thing.

Anyway, that's Baobab Friday.

Two views of the Jungle

Here you can see the poppies, convolvulus, forget-me-not, a morning glory that's worked its way over from Insanity Plant, and if you have really good eyes, a Five Spot nemophila. In the bottom right corner you can see the top of the asters, and in the bottom left, the huge green leaves are the hollyhocks. And of course that tower of green on the left side is Insanity Plant.

One thing you can't see is that there is also a big and healthy clump of California bluebells, whereas the ones in the window boxes are long gone. But it's leaning outside the railing and impossible to get pictures of.


And these are obviously my poppies. You can see one Iceland one (the yellow spot on the left). There is also an orange one but you probably can't see that one. The Iceland poppies have been holding their own, but most of this is Flanders. I don't mind, and for next year I want them to lean out over the street like this again, but next year I'm gonna plant fancier varieties that don't come by the thousands. Or maybe I'll seed fancy varieties early in the spring, and once they've got a good headstart, I'll seed a pinch of Flanders, for volume.

Asters, pansies and English daisies

Asters are at the top, and as you can see, they're thriving, and they're all pink. Either the other colours take longer to flower, or this "mix" is not very well mixed.

Pansies are at the bottom, obviously, and looking more jungleicious all the time.

And on the right are the English daisies. Half of the English daisies. The other half, that I repotted a while back, is looking like this:


Hmmmmmm...

What I seeded are two mixes and one non-mix. All three packs had pink, the two mixes also had white. So why are all the pink flowers in one planter and all the white ones in the other? Is this another case of colour being dependent on sunlight? If so that's a rip-off. If I buy a mix of pink and white I expect to get pink and white, not pink if I put it in the sun and white if I put in in part shade.

Well, there is time yet. Four more weeks until first frost.

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.