Portulaca in bloom

The portulaca is in bloom and it looks very pretty. gave a friend a pot of them also since i had so many and i'm wondering if her's has bloomed yet as well. i put some bloom booster fertilizer on them a few days ago (high P) so maybe they're a bit earlier than hers will be. Neat thing i heard about this plant is that you can get multiple blooms from the same stem, meaning the same seed. i'll have to look at one of mine just to make sure it's true. pretty amazing tho if it's true.

Transplanted some of the recently planted seedlings into paper pots to give them more room since they are showing sets of true leaves. I found from last time that when i transplanted them and they got pretty established in there they just took off growing. don't know if that was just a correlation with with season or the pots or the soil in the pots yet. next time i'll have to try to experiment with it...

when these guys were in the seed starting troths i made we got a really heavy rain that took out a large section and washed away a lot of seed so i guess i'm happy that i had this many so far. i have the worst luck sometimes. i may not get any astilbe or balloon flower since they were at the end and were most likely to be washed away...

stork's bill - 5 pots
Verbascum - 7 pots
bergenia red - 1 pot   : (

i noticed for some time now that the plants growing in the sip containers haven't been faring very well. both the angel trumpet (right) and the datura metel (left) have had their leaves turn yellow and fall off. they're similar families, but still. plus the rose stem (center) from propagation has not grown at all since i put it in the planter. because of this i put them all old-school and put them in containers with miracle gro garden soil that i put slow release fertilizer in. hopefully this will help them out a bit b/c i dont know what else to do. when i took them out of the planters and broke up the soil, it had an unpleasant smell like of something that's been sitting in something too long. i'm thinking it's either the fact that they always had water available at the bottom reservoir or the algae growing at the bottom since i didn't paint my containers or a combo of both. the gardenia seeds i planted have taken well in one of the sip planters (5 or 6 healthy sprouts!) and i think that next time i'm going to prepare the sip planters properly by painting the outside of the container to prevent algae and put the gardenia in them.

Tomato blossoms, seed collecting and snail vengance

I have blossoms finally on 2 of my tomato plants. Hopefully all goes well and they don't act silly and fall off or anything. but if i ever get any problems i can match it up with nice pictures here at the A&M website to try to remedy them.

i went ahead and mulched around them and took off the bottom few stems that were coming off the main shoot. it's said that all the stems beneath the first set of blooms should be removed, but i did the majority of them instead of all b/c it just seemed like the blossoms were so high up. they say doing so will promote a thicker basal stem to support heavy tomato growth.

I should also probably fertilize them sometime in the very near future. I looked up the N-P-K values and what is good for what and this is what i get out of it...
     N (nitrogen) is good for leafy growth
     P (phosphorus) is good for flower and fruit development
     K (potassium) is good for strong root development
so i'm thinking i'm gonna get something high in P and K value when i buy some new fertilizer. I think i'm gonna go granual or powder soluble feed as opposed to the slow release that i have now.

As for fertilizing the roses: I saw a guy that fertilizes in early spring with a "rose fertilizer" although he didn't give the values of it but just said that it's better to have a higher number in P and K values. Says to fertilize 3 times: first early spring, flowering time, then again in mid summer. Mg is supposed to encourage basal breaks (vigirous growth from the bottom of the stem) and can be found in Epsom salt that you can buy in drug stores. He applied both fertilizer and the salt (about 1/2 cup of each for a large bush) in the early spring and then mulched. Since i used that miracle grow garden soil i don't know if i should fertilize this time.

Collected some seeds from one of the columbine plants, a pink one. i was always worried about when to take seeds from a plant but this one was unmistakeable. the long, bean-like pods were already brown and lightly crispy and starting to split themselves. i simply rubbed them around a bit and they all fell delicatly into my hand. i read it's best to use a regular brown paper bag and store them in a dry, dark place, but i used an envelope instead and labeled it with the plant, color of bloom and date. Just one plant yielded what seems like a lot of seed! i wish i knew someone who would want some, as i'll have a bunch of access.



I found another culprit eating my plants today, well evidence of i should say. Snail shells. Those slimy little punks. I have a solution to them though...inebriation. I told my dad to bring me a beer on his way home from his friend's house. I don't see how snails like it, that stuff is disgusting to me. There will be slug and snail carcasses floating in barley and hops by tomorrow. drink up you slimy plant eating devils! : )

New Rose Bushes

one thing i learned about roses: they hate to be in waterlogged soil. My thick, clay soil is just not the best thing for roses...at all. i learned this little tidbit with the first batch of roses i ever tried to plant. i planted a purple "frost" rose, a red "chamberlain" rose and a pink "aromatherapy" rose - all from Jackson Perkins, bought at my houston gardening center. put them in the ground and within a month they looked horrible. i pulled them back out and into containers with good soil and the only one that made it is the red one, which is now safely and happily growing with the others.

i completely loved those aromatherapy roses. they were very fragrant when they just bloomed. i told myself i had to get some more, so when i saw that HGC was selling them half off for 3 days only i took my lunch break and looked for them. I looked and looked and looked for more than half an hour with the help of a worker there and finally I found not one but 2 of them. I was so happy i was clapping, no joke. So i snatched up the 2 of them and one white one that is called "moondance" that is supposed to have a raspberry like scent.


< moondance

aromatherapy >

from jackson perkins

they are all planted happily in the garden now. I plan on either getting some other miniature roses to go in front or maybe throw some shallow rooted perennials in there that will accent the roses. the pink ones are on either side and the white is in the middle. i wasn't too happy with the condition of the pink ones, as some of the main stems coming from the union were dying but they were the only 2 i could find so i suppose beggars can't be choosers. i dug out the bed again and replaced the soil with 3 one cu. ft. bags of miracle grow garden soil and did a topdressing of mulch about 2" thick. used the garden weasel and loosened up the dirt i didn't replace as well. i'll probably work in some fertilizer too but i wasn't sure which to use. all the ones that said "rose fertilizer" on them had drastically different N-P-K values. they all have fresh buds on them and should bloom anytime. yea!

I put the original ones that were planted there that i didn't like in a large container but i have no clue what to do with them yet...

daisy and new sprouts

the only daisy to produce any flower buds, after the whole damping off affair, has started to flower. i'm still waiting for the others to follow suit. the daisies look very pretty in a hanging pot btw. they drape over the sides like some sort of ivy flowing out and then do a u-turn and 180 and come back up. you get multiple buds on a single stem too. if i would have taken better care when i planted them i'm sure they would look stunning now (and i'm not a huge daisy fan either). and really they went from seed to bloom in all of like 2 1/2 months so i could probably fit in another pot before the growing season for them is over... i might have to try that out.

and there are few things more beautiful than a rose starting to open. maybe i'm a bit strange but i find them much more pretty when they are just partly open than fully in bloom. this is one of the miniture roses from last year that i purchased. the other tiny bush is a creme pinkish color and is starting to open again as well.

the warm weather must love to germinate seeds b/c the ones i planted on the 11th are already starting to come up. its only been how long, 3 days?!? crazy. most seeds i looked at were something around 7-10 days. it's phenomenal. now i'm not 100% but i'm pretty sure they're the stork's bill that i planted that are the front runners. at first i thought my dad was playing tricks with me. he recently sunk a piece of store bought broccoli into the soil next to the broccoli sprouts for me to happen upon. i admit it was cute. so i was thinking he pulled some sprout out he found somewhere in the yard, but no. these are totally legit. i'm still totally amazed. there were 4 when i checked this morning.

seeds, sprouts and progress

planted a bunch of seeds yesterday. they're flagged as to what they are: astilbe, bergonia redstart, bergonia rose, balloon flower, foxglove, stork's bill and verbascum. i'm super paranoid about them not getting enough water and drying out in this heat. sad too b/c i wasn't home this morning and i called home to make sure someone watered them. i'm pretty excited that they all go well. it's very late to be planting them and i dont expect them to flower this season obviously, but i do hope for them to have a nice root system in time for winter so they'll overwinter well in protection.


if you squint really really hard you can see the little sprouts that have come up in the soil. in this one i planted poppy oase, more bellflower and an exotic aqua sapphire tower. dont ask me which this is, i have no clue b/c like the smart person i am i forgot to mark them. i started the oase and the bellflower already so i should be able to recognize them and use process of elimination on the other. they have suprisingly all started to come up at the same time. the pic timestamp says they were planted 2/27 but it's hard to believe it's been over a month... and of course i was very lazy and didn't write it down.

notice the odd planters? they are actually very thick cardboard that i had to saw through that came off some retail store display we had at work. i sawed into the ends and folded them in a bit and cut 2 drainage holes in the bottoms. they seem to be working great so long as you fill them entirely with dirt (the more shallow the more rapidly they dry out - which is what happened to the first round of astilbe seed).

i was very scared for both this guy (my angel trumpet) and the datura vine i planted, as the leaves were turning yellow (which i believe was b/c they were waterlogged). i changed out the potting mix to the slightly more chunky miracle grow moisture control mix and it seems to be doing better. he's now starting to produce more leaflets from the main stem which is super encouraging. i would really love to have this one produce those lovely droopy flowers. i saw them in my boyfriend's mother's neighborhood and decided i had to have one of my own. i love very showy flowers. next will be a fuchsia plant i've tentatively decided.

one thing i've noticed about the SIP planters is that they're getting algae or something of the sort on the bottom of the containers (where the water reservoir is) and along the sides of the inner container. i'll have to poke around to find out what that is. NOTE: looked it up and algae grows in them b/c the containers are clear. if you paint the outside it should stop the growth of the algae. leave a little vertical strip though (mark off w/ tape as you paint) so that you can see where the water line is! : )

and the tomatoes are coming along ok i suppose. it was a little bit discouraging when i went to my mom's and saw her neighbor's plant was much larger than mine. dad said that he saw it was bearing fruit already. i'm sure they planted much earlier or used grow lights to start things off quicker. i still have time for them to do something tho.

and this one on the right is the fastest thing i've ever seen grow. i planted this okra clemson spineless  about i donno, 4 or 5 days ago, if that, and it just burst right out of the soil. the package said to plant them about 2 or 3 to a planting hole in case some failed to germinate but as you can see, they all came up - almost in every spot i put them. my encyclopedia said it was best to soak them first too, but i bypassed all that and they came up more than fine.

odd plant problems

there's 2 things very odd that i've noticed about the 2 annuals i planted in hanging containers.

the african daisy i planted is thinning and drying out at the stem at the bottom where the stem meets the soil. it's especially odd b/c i have other plants around them in the same exact growing conditions that are doing just fine. in fact i have one that's producing multiple buds. i read that overwatering can lead to weak basal stems that fall over, but these are dry and not flimsy. i posted on daves garden about it and those guys are pretty darn quick about responses so i'm sure i'll know soon. one thing about people that like to garden is that they love to be helpful and see others succeed. ah, if only everyone i worked with could be gardeners too.
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man, i love knowledgable people on forums. it's damping off (quote from howstuffworks)

Damping Off: Probably the worst enemy of successful seed starting is a problem known as "damping off." It strikes within two weeks of germination when seedlings are very young. When it hits, the plants simply lay down and die, usually in less than a day's time.

Damping off is a fungus infection that can best be avoided by making certain that both the soil and containers in which seeds are planted are sterile. The seeds themselves can be lightly dusted with fungicide powder prior to planting as an additional precaution. Young seedlings should be looked at morning and evening to check for any sign of a problem. Even if only two or three plants have lain down, take the precaution of immediately spraying the plants with a fungicide or, if none is available, try a mild vinegar solution.

wonderful info here from tom clotheir lower pH is a good thing. i sprinkled a bit of cinnamon i had over the top of the containers, but it's probably a bit too late. lesson learned.
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secondly, i have the nasturtium all growing in the same pot and yet i'm getting 2 different colored flowers. the orange ones turn out just fine, pretty and healthy looking while the ones that come up red look a little like they didn't develop properly and lack color in some spots. very strange. you can see the nice healthy new one compared to the washed out looking red ones on 2 different stems.

i have no clue what happened. maybe there were bad seeds? maybe it was a watering issue? poor soil? i don't think i over fertilized at all... there are several more buds tho, and i'll see how they come out. 

oh yeah, happy mommie's day. i'll have to find a nice flower that blooms around early spring for next year to plant and give to my mom. she's the type that always says "don't buy me anything, make me something, you're creative" does starting something from seed count? haha, yeah. on the phone with her and it does. told her i was gonna bring her over some carnations i planted a while back and she goes "oh that's great, as long as you planted them yourself" mom said grandma really loves carnations so i really planted them initially for her (but they live together so they can both enjoy them).

Veggie planting made simple!

for Texans or anyone growing in the 8b area i found 2 great links for veggie planing while i was checking the Pineapple Palace Horticultural Research Center website for updates (which looks all of dead now).


this site here will take you to a very detailed list, both my month and by veggie, on what to plant when. it's Travis county, which is Austin but its so close to Houston it might as well say Harris county on it : )


and a .pdf file here provided by Texas A&M that gives a very easy graphical format timeline. since they're widely known for their agriculture program i would trust it's probably one of the best guidelines to follow for when to plant vegetables. i was thinking of creating one just like this before i found it, nice. finally no more having to refer to books everytime i need to know when to plant something!

More blooms

About a week ago I did a bunch of overdue transplants. the red coreopsis was put into a rectangular pot, aster hulk, portulaca in their own pots too. the poppy and the nicotiana were transplanted a while back into the ground using potting soil and the nicotiana is now starting to bloom which is neat to see. this makes the 3rd type of plant i've raised from seed to flower. took the pics when i got home from work this evening so they're a bit horrible, i know.

the hibiscus got moved to more attractive, matching pots and line the stairway to the front porch. when i got them they were in like 3" pots and i left them in there entirely too long so they became root bound. when i put them pots the first time i failed to loosen the roots free and so this time when i put them in the matching pots i noticed that the roots were still in the shape of that tiny little 3" pot all huddled together and not going anywhere. you fail to realize how important some things are until you actually experience the effects of going against them. so sidenote: always loosen roots of rootbound plants.

the miniature roses i bought from last year came back. well 2 out of 3 at least. one is red for sure but i'm sure on the other one. i believe i got a yellow and white variety too, but i'll see with the other bud finally shows it's true colors. seeing these and how long they've been holding out makes me wish i had different rose bushes. they have the ones on sale at park (30% off) that i want but i still don't want to shell out the cash for them yet. i know i would enjoy them soooo much more than the ones i have now. they have more sentimental than aesthetic value.

i pulled up all the snow pea that i had growing in the veggie garden. it seemed like it was way past it's prime. i felt horrible about pulling up the sweet pea that was mingling in between though. even though some still had blooms the decrepit looking snow peas were killing the whole thing for me. tomorrow morning i think i'm gonna wake up early and plant some okra there where the lettuce and spinach were.  i have no hope for that broccoli, but the tomatoes seem to be picking up a bit and hopefully i'll see blooms soon. i'll have another year or so to get anything worth anything from the asparagus, but i've heard that once they start they give you a really good harvest.

we have almost everything for the patio we're doing. we had to buy something around 107 foot bricks to lay out in the shady area underneath a mulberry tree. i spent about 4 hours a few days ago out there with a pickaxe trying to bring the dirt down about 2 or 3" so that the stones wouldn't stand up dramatically higher than the concrete walkway. i was so sore the next day it was sad. the dirt is super compact, which is probably why, even after slightly altering the soil, the new hostas are not doing well (they will be put into pots w/ good soil soon). and as expected, nothing else has been done leveling wise since i did about half the job. so as of right now we still (and by we i mean probably me) have to level about 50 more sq. ft. and then drop in sand and then the stones. after my last exam i'll be constantly annoying everyone until it's finished.

Nasturtium and more seed buying

Woke up this morning and saw that my first nasturtium was in bloom. I gave my brother a pot of them as well but although he has flower heads, he has no blooms yet. i was surprised that they looked kind like a scythe in profile, an odd little guy.

we're supposed to do work outside building a patio-ish type area by the shade section i have the hosta in so of course i have plans of sprucing it up with some plantlife action. so i was on park seed for a while looking at some perennials i could put in there. i dont want to bother with annuals b/c i dont plan on being in there maintaining and planting unless it involves dividing a huge hosta or something. besides, what annuals are shade anyhow? so of course i saw too many sunny ones i wanted to i had to get some of them too... i have no restraint. most if not all are heat tolerant, so i'll be cool there.

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shade perennials:  these will go along with several hostas eventually. i need to add a "pop" of another color tho
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Sunny Perennials :   i have no idea where to put these but i have to have them, especially the stork's bill
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the nice thing about the shade ones is that if i can get them all going they will bloom at different times of the year. plus i plan on trying to propogate the begonia i already have to add in there.

Bergenia Redstart - late winter to early spring
Bergenia rose - early/mid spring
Begonia - late spring - early summer
Astilbe - mid/late summer
Toad lilly - fall

i have no idea what happened to the Lily of the Valley and the Astilbe roots. i think the soil in there is much too poor. i think i'll start them in pots and then transplant them next time. i'm going to have to seriously alter the soil there or transplant a different soil all together. the lily is a spring bloomer too. i forget when the hosta puts out it's purple flowers tho.
we'll see how many seeds i actually get to start and how many do well. with the weather the way it is, germination should be easy i would think, but i would be concerned about enough strong root development to survive the next winter... we'll see i suppose. have to remember to water them and not let them dry out. maybe i'll find something to make a SIP planter out of that has enough surface area and is shallow enough to start seeds in...