Sweet peas and first flowers from seed

Saw a sweet pea finally come up. They are very fragrant; i can only imagine next season when i have a ton of them. Noticed that the stems are different from the snow pea as well - snow peas have a rounded stem while the sweet peas have a more rectangular stem. In any case, it's very pretty. I'm going to plant them in mass and really enjoy them next time. They have so many different shades to them in just a single flower, they would be great to paint. maybe it'll be the next painting project i start during the summer...

Noticed that the leaves have some sort of white spots on them that i'm assuming is because of the moisture we've been getting and the lack of full sun at the back portion of the wall. I already knew the bed wasn't getting enough light so it probably wont happen next round.






Oh, and transplanted the rose i propagated from a wood cutting into a SIP planter yesterday. Used that Miracle gro mix that is "moisture control". The mix isn't as loamy as normal mix so i dont know how well it's going to work. they seem to have put bits of wood in there i guess trying to help retain water/moisture, which is not what i needed in my mix. Wish i would have known before i bought it... oh well. hopefully the water will still have the capillary action like i need for it to function correctly.









Also got my first flower from seed. yes, from little granules of nothing to full blown flowering plants. All that DNA jam packed into seeds that are smaller than the head of a pin, amazing. Pretty happy about that as i've heard many people try and fail repeatedly to grow anything from seed. It's a columbine plant with little pink flowers. its not as showy as i anticipated but they are several in a cluster so it's very cute. Its a bit too dark now but i'll post a pic of it tomorrow morning. : )



oh and thank you michael for helping me tweak the rose color for the side! looks much less washed out. I hate to reflect and repeat it tho, i'll have to get another pic and clone and fade them together so i can do them right side up instead of reflecting.

Bunny pics

Cleaning out the buns cage today and couldn't help but take some pictures. Bun is so photogenic, i'm a bit jealous. 

SIP planting experimentation

Of all the angel trumpet i planted only one seemed to actually do anything. i had the soul survivor in a separate container full of this semi-inferior potting mix that i'm not sure if i'll ever use again. so i decided that i would give him a try in the SIP planters that i found online. first, i wanted him to do well b/c he was the lonely only and with working and school i haven't been the best about watering lately and its starting to get into the hotter months. it seems to be taking very well to the planter and i'm very pleased with the results.

left to right: sweet 100 cherry tomato, datura vine (double golden) and angel trumpet

Which leads to a whole other story... 

You read things and it says not to over fertilize and watch out for "burning" the plants and all that good stuff right? well me, i look at that and scoff at it. over fertilize? get out with that stuff. 

So i make the planters and it comes time to put the water in the bottom of it and i decide to get all smart right? so i decide to put like 5 drops of liquid feed miracle gro in there (normal ratio is like 10 to 20 drops/quart), and i go outside all proud of myself thinking this will get them going! Ha ha horrible idea. first off, the datura vine was very small when i first planted it, only having 2 true leaves. When i looked i initially thought it was the angel trumpet b/c it had about 4+ leaves on it. It grew that much. But then i looked right next to it and saw the other one and realized my mistake. So alright, cool right? At this point i'm thinkin' i seriously need to buy some stock in miracle gro and write those guys a letter. But then i go out the next day and the leaves are pink. Not green, not a pale yellow, pink. So i pull off the cover and in just that small movement - dink, dink, both of the pink leaves fell off, grrrrreat. Not to mention the little tomato sprout has totally killed over. poor guy. so i dump out the water reservoirs and put in fresh water (without liquid feed this time!) and replaced the tomato sprout that died with another. i go check on them 2 days later and the tomato sprout died again. He was all frail and yellow and just horrible looking. So today i emptied out all the soil from the planter and rinsed it with water, getting all the extra miracle gro out of the soil. i'm guessing too much of it was still retained in the soil. I replaced the tomato plant again and hopefully this time he'll be alright. third time is the charm. 

                                                                                          
                          











    The jasmine plant i was trying to root actually ended in success. I haven't checked on the ones from cuttings in a while but the last time i checked them they showed no resistance when i tried to tug them up, making me think that there were no roots forming to give me resistance. But i got the sample from where i tried to air layer them and i cut open the bag to find actual roots! Thats 3 successes with propagation so far. nice. so i took the rooted portion and put it into another SIP planter with only one drop of liquid feed. That's probably still a lot, but i figured the datura could handle the soil not being washed out so this one should be alright. he's a little crammed in there, but i'll see how it fares.

sidenote: found out that the butterfly i saw (the black one with the blue wings) is called a "red spotted purple" common name or limenitis arthemis scientific name (and not the white admiral one it's grouped with). And it's mimic of another, what i think is poisonous, butterfly. Evolution is sometimes such a smart fluke. Oh, and it's fond of rotted fruit, which explains why he was in the vegetable garden. i never let anything decompose enough, i'm so impatient.

Garden update

Ok, my computer has been um, sick, for the last month or so. and by "sick" i mean overheating and melting power cords. No joke. i've had to use it over a boxfan. notice 1)the boxfan 2) the bootleg powerplug adapter that was spliced together. so yeah, that's been the main cause of my lack of posting anything. it's just too much of a hassle. and no, that is not harry potter on my screen fyi, haha.




but believe it or not i finally upgraded. Say hello to the new Vaio from Sony. I'm pretty pleased with it. the Ariel sticker got replaced too later :) webcam, i3 processor, DDR3 ram all that good junk. i'm still getting acclimated from the XP to windows 7 jump tho. thank god for the Vista bypass... note the lack of boxfan!!!


Ok, we'll start with the vegtables. The lettuce is crazy big. we've been eating it but we've noticed that the older it gets that the more bitter tasting it becomes. note for next season: eat while less mature. the bowl is from when they were a bit younger. it was pretty neat to eat something i grew for the first time.





The spinach did well also, i've been hitting them from time to time and filling my belly with them. Dad noticed one of them has formed a head of some sort on it. when i get my gardening book back from my neighbor i'll look it up. harvesting seeds would be neat to do, even though they are crazy cheap. i need to make sure i'm harvesting them at the right time and just freeze or store them if i have too much. i haven't had the time to weed recently. :(


The broccoli still isn't doing much. i'll have to look into it when i have more time. i dont know if i should worry or if it's normal yet.

Ah the asparagus. Poor miserable looking little guys. It's only the first year for them so its to be expected but they are so frail and funny looking for asparagus. they're like little tiny furry trees. its kinda cute.

the peas though are just coming through like man-men. my dad told me he just randomly goes up there in the morning and takes him off a hefty helping. he said he's taken like a pound or 2 off already, but that's a lot of peas... i donno. anyway, they're awful pretty.

this one on the right was taken before they actually started producing peas. i dont know why i like the macro function making the forground all out of focus but i do.

that whole vegetable bed needs to be turned 90 degrees so they get more light. i can tell by the gradual change in growth rate from the front to the back that the back ones get much less light. 

the tomatoes are really letting me down though so far. seeing everything else going makes me want to see huge red globes hanging everywhere. they're trying tho, bless their little tomato hearts (or lack of at the moment). this one shown is the determinate but the sweet 100's i planted are showing even less growth. they are only showing 2 small leaves and are still in small sprout mode. i'm thinking i need to move them to a more spacious area with better soil. i noticed that with the annuals when i took them out of the shallow seed-starting trays and into their own paper pots i made, they just took off like crazy.

Have to get ready for work but next post i'll do the flowers and some nice results with the SIP planters (i think its gonna be a mainstay now) and one of my interesting screw-ups resulting in pink falling leaves. sigh, yeah. and i dont mean raising poinsettias unfortunately :( oh and all the little buggies crawling around in my veggies - both the goodies and the baddies (baddies: like it's some saturday morning cartoon or something? ha)