My seeds came!

My seeds came in the mail! I don't think the rain is going to let up long enough for me to get everything set up outside, so I'll probably set up the boxes inside and then carry them out. The tomatoes and the tomatillos can't be direct seeded, which sucks because I'm starting them waaay late, but I have huge bright windows at my office now. I'm thinking I'll put the pots on my windowsills there, and then bring them home when they're big enough to go outside!

Strawberries a'bloomin!

There a ton of buds on my strawberry plants, and I even have a flower! My dream of fresh strawberries may actually come true!

No more annuals!

I love flowers, I really do. But after whining publicly about not being able to grow veggies until I move into a house, I was bombarded with info from friends about growing veggies in containers.

The thing is, I don't have room on my balcony for any more big pots unless I get rid of some clematis, and I'm totally not ready to do that. I've been dreaming of having balcony rails covered in vines and blooms too long to give up on it now.

However...

I plant annuals in my flower boxes every year, but didn't really get into it last year. My heart wasn't in it... it didn't feel fun to care for them, it just felt like a PITA.

My friend Kristi showed me that she had done veggies in a bunch of window boxes last year, and I got inspired.

After a (very minimal) amount of research, I settled on the following things to try out (scroll down for detail and pictures of each specimen):

• Purple Tomatillos
• Gold Nugget Tomatoes
• Oregon Sugar Pod Peas
• Little Fingers Carrots
• Minnesota Midget Melons (LMAO!)
• Plum Granny Melons (also known as Queen Anne's Pocket Melons)
• Arikara Watermelons

If I get ANYTHING out of any of them I'll be thrilled, but I'm particularly excited about the tomatillos and tomatoes.

I purposefully made sure to only get heirloom seeds, so if I do well it'll be easy to grow the same things over and over again.

I also made sure to choose varieties that don't get very big. I'm hoping that small fruit size equates to small roots, since they'll be in such small containers.

We shall see... if nothing else, I should have some interesting foliage in each box!

Purple Tomatillos:

"A uniquely colored tomatillo that is enjoyed for the sweet yet tart flavor it gives Mexican dishes. These small fruit form inside papery husks and begin as pale green, then ripen to a rich, deep purple. Vigorous and productive plants."

Gold Nugget Tomatoes:

"An early golden cherry tomato (the earliest in our test garden). Gold Nugget produces prolifically on a compact determinate bus plant. Its fruit is sweet, flavorful and crack resistant. A colorful addition to salads and relish trays. Harvest regularly for continuing harvest. This has been the first tomato to ripen in our test garden every year that we've grown it."

Oregon Sugar Pod Peas:

"This edible-pod snow pea in not only extra sweet, but an extremely heavy yielder. Pea pods are 4-5", thick and tasty."

Little Fingers Carrots (ewww, they really do look like fingers!):

Little Fingers baby gourmet carrot has tiny tender 3- 5" roots; 1/2 inch thick; golden orange, sweet and crisp. A perfect nantes type carrot for munching or salads. Little Fingers slices easily and is also perfect whole in stir fries. Little Fingers is a wonderful carrot is so small it will work in large pots out on the patio. A perfect carrot for those with small spaces.

Minnesota Midget Melons (I have no idea why, but this name totally cracks me up):

"This very small, very early heirloom was introduced in Minnesota in 1948. Measuring just 4" across, they have sweet, orange flesh and are perfect miniature versions of the "Classic Muskmelon". Compact, 3'-4' vines, produce good yields. I fondly remember these as the only melons our family could get to ripen in Charlo, Montana, about 20 years ago."

Plum Granny Melons (oops... guess these are grown more for their fragrance than their flavor, although they are definitely edible):

"Beautiful, ornamental fruit are yellow with deep orange stripes, and only 2”-3" long! They are grown for their wonderful fragrance! These melons were very popular in Victorian gardens, and have been our most requested melon."

Arikara Watermelons:

"The earliest watermelon. A sure and prolific producer of small melons running from 7 to 12 inches in diameter with almost black skin. The pink flesh is sweet and pleasant, somewhat coarse and of fair quality. If you have trouble raising ripe watermelons, try this one."

Now it's just a matter of waiting for the seeds I ordered to arrive, and hoping I'm not planting too late in the season to get any yield.

One last thing - I noticed yesterday that my strawberry plants are setting buds! I'm actually going to have fresh strawberries that I grew on my very own! I'm so excited! Will take pics after the blossoms open.

First bloom on the hydroton African Violet

One of the three African Violets that I have in my office growing in hydroton under a plant light has a bloom. All of them are getting kind of ridiculously huge, actually. I've been asked to move, and the new office gets a lot more natural light. I'm thinking I might have to separate out these bad boys into three separate pots. They've done far better than I ever thought they would.




I decided to propagate the one that's currently blooming, since it's so pretty and I don't have one at home of that variety. I stuck a leaf in some hydroton in a tiny plastic fishbowl (available incredibly cheap online - I think I bought 12 for $6 a few years ago) and it rooted almost immediately. Just goes to show that hydroton seriously does the trick for houseplants. Big thanks to the lady who writes http://waterroots.com/aboutwaterroots.htm - without that site I doubt I'd ever have bothered trying it. (Incidentally, all my succulents seriously love hydroton, too.)



Huh. Now that I'm looking at these photos I'm unsure about whether I want to separate the plants into separate pots or not. I kind of like how they look all crammed together like they are now!

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

I just started reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and I am totally motivated to start growing more of my own food and better supporting my local food growers. Buying locally grown food isn't hard to do around here - farmer's markets abound. Growing more of my own food is impossible until I move into a house, though, and it makes me really sad. The weather is beautiful here and I'm wanting to spend my time with my hands in the dirt.

Ok, the seedlings didn't completely die. They aren't looking very happy, but I'm hoping I'll be able to nurse them back to health. Augh, that was just so stupid of me!

AUGH so mad at myself!

Tom gave me some tomato seeds. Not just any tomato seeds - these seeds are from tomatoes that his family has been growing for many, many years. One of his ancestors brought seeds with him from Italy when he came to the U.S., and his family has been saving seeds every fall and growing tomatoes every summer using the "children" of those original seeds.

So I got seeds from Tom and reserved some space in Whitney's yard for tomatoes (Whitney's yard is kind of a communal garden... but I'm the only one of her friends who gets excited about growing anything!).

I started the seeds inside under the African Violets' grow lights a month or so ago. And wouldn't you know it, I wound up with 25 seedlings in a little 4" pot.

Kevin suggested hardening them off BEFORE transplanting them into other pots. Makes total sense, right? Much easier to bring one pot outside and inside over multiple days than to have to do that with a ton of little pots.

I got home yesterday at around 5-ish and the sun was out, so I put the seedlings outside for a little bit.

And about an hour ago, realized that I never took them back inside.

How much do you want to bet that I'm going to go home to find a bunch of cold, sad, shriveled tomato seedlings on my balcony?

I'm so sad and mad at myself! I'm sure Tom has extra seedlings, so I can still try my hand at growing the tomatoes, but I wanted to grow them myself from seed so badly!

In slightly better news, my little baby cherry tree that I started from seed in mid-summer of 2007 survived its first winter outside. It's still teeny weeny and adorable, but it's covered in spring leaves!

One more update...

I mentioned in yesterday's African Violet Update an AV that is growing in hydroton in my office. It's actually not one but three plants in one pot. Two of them are LLG Sea Drift, and the third is an unnamed variety.

I first put them in together in July of 2008. Here what they looked like when I first combined them (the smallest of the four wound up dying):


They did really well in the hydroton. Here they are four months later, in November of 2008:


And here's a couple pictures of them I just took a moment ago, three months after the last picture:




Here's a view from above, so you can see the three separate crowns:


Conclusion: Damn, African Violets sure do like growing in hydroton! Look at the size of those bad boys compared to the ones I have at home growing in soil!

None of them have bloomed yet, but I'm looking forward to seeing the blooms on Sea Drift. According to the LLG website, the "superb, vivid blue semidouble stars are irresistible," with "shimmering white edges." Who can deny a sales pitch like that?

African Violet Update

It's been a while since I posted anything, mostly because there wasn't anything to say. Last summer was awful for my clematis because of the painting fiasco, and my African Violets were just little struggling babies.

Of the 13 varieties that I started from leaves in October of 2007, only a few survived. However, the ones that have lasted have grown nice and strong, and now I have more plants than I know what to do with!

Here's what I originally was trying to grow. I've crossed out the ones that didn't make it. Note that these blooms are NOT from my plants. I found pictures on the internet. Pictures from my collection are below. A lot of these are pictures of award-winning plants. I can only hope that mine will be this nice someday!

Outer Limits 12/17/2005 (Lyndon Lyon Greenhouses/D. Herringshaw) Single-semidouble blue large frilled pansy/pink and white fantasy. Dark green, plain/red back. Large


Dazzling Fantasyland (9521) 12/17/2005 (Lyndon Lyon Greenhouses/P. Sorano) Single-semidouble light pink pansy/blue fantasy, violet-red edge. Dark green, plain/red back. Large


Sinister Shadow (Lyndon Lyon Greenhouses) Deep, dark purple, single and semi-double pansies. This variety is more like the older type of violets. The standard, dark green foliage, is variegated in beige on the leaf edge.Standard.


Sora Zachariah (B. Werness) Light blue semidouble blossoms edged in white and green, over variegated foliage of dark green and white. (User Database)


Sheer Romance (6752) 11/02/1987 (S. Sorano) Double pink star/white edge. Medium green, ovate. Large


Rum Punch (S. Sorano) Semi-double double medium pink star/mauve tips. Dark green. Standard


Sweet Lady Love (LLG)Medium pink, semidouble pansies, with a dainty frilled, thin white edge. Occasionally, green shows up on the top petals. A profuse bloomer! Well shaping, standard foliage of medium green, slightly quilted. Standard.


Silver Smoke (LLG)Clusters upon clusters of the palest shade of lavender, semidouble, pansy shaped blossoms are marked strongly in green on the petal edges, and are produced above medium green, quilted and pointed, lightly wavy show foliage, sporting a silver reverse. Standard.


Alison's Laughter (LLG)Very large, double stars of medium purple, with a thin white outline on very frilled edges. Raspberry fantasy flecks playfully decorate the flower face, and occasionally, blue streaks also join in. The standard foliage is large growing, dark green, with a red reverse, and quilted. Awarded "2nd BEST NEW CULTIVAR", at the 2006 AVSA convention.


Wrangler's Jealous Heart (6225) 05/20/1986 (W. Smith) Double pansy, ruffled/light pink and green edge. Variegated dark green and pink, ruffled, hairy. Large


Harlequin (Holtkamp) 6947 - Single fringed white with purplish red edges. Medium green foliage.


Chanticleer (1386) 08/05/1963 (Eyerdom) Double light pink. Dark green, ovate, pointed, quilted

So, here's what we've got on the shelves now. Almost all of the babies are out of the 1 oz. plastic solo cups and are in "big girl" pots (2" plastic square pots) now. A couple have graduated to bigger Oyama planters, but not many.

Dazzling Fantasyland. I have 2 or 3, but only one is this big and blooming.

Sweet Lady Love. This one propagated ridiculously well - I have about 6 of them. None have bloomed yet, but there are buds forming. I love the ruffly leaves on it.

Sinister Shadow. Only have 1, and one more that I'm not sure is going to make it. I just noticed buds on the healthy one today. The variegation on the leaves is so nice; I'm hoping the baby survives so I can have 2 healthy ones.

Rob's Vanilla Trail. Not one of the babies I grew from leaves, but so cute that I wanted to share.

This one doesn't have a variety name, but it is one that I grew from a leaf off a momma plant. Unfortunately the momma plant died recently, so I'm doubly glad that the baby did so well. I have another of this kind in my office growing in hydroton.

Silver Smoke. This is another that propagated like mad. I have four and they'll all doing really well, although this one was the first to bloom.

Outer Limits. This is the craziest of all of the ones I grew from leaves. Off of two leaves, I wound up with eight healthy plants. It got to the point where I had to throw away some of the babies simply because I was running out of space!

Here's a shot of the second shelf, taken from the left:

And here's one from the right:

Here's the first shelf, from the right. The pot on the lower right has lithops in it.


And finally, the first shelf from the front:

That's it for African Violet stuff. Things are progressing nicely on the balcony, but it's hardly photo-worthy out there yet. New clematis shoots are just barely starting to come out, the tulips are starting to come out of hiding, and the few crocuses I planted are blooming. I have high hopes for the clematis this year. It's their third year, which is supposedly when they really take off. Hopefully last year's set-back won't effect this year's growth!

I'm a genius!

The sun's been so intense lately that it's been frying leaves on my african violets.

Can't move the shelves to a different window... don't have any others that get any light.

Can't do anything to the window, since it's actually a sliding glass door.

What to do?

Why, tape some parchment paper across the back of the shelves, of course! Voila, the light is filtered and won't burn the plants anymore!

I'm so proud of myself for thinking of it!

House Painting is BAD

Well, it wasn't as good a summer on my balcony as I'd hoped it would be. 

I received notice on Monday, June 16th, that my building was getting painted and that my balcony would need to be cleared off by Wednesday morning. I spent all of Monday and Tuesday nights carefully unwinding the stems of my clematis from the railings on the balcony, then moving everything into my living and dining rooms.

Since most of my clematis are fairly young, they didn't have so much growth that unwinding them was all that difficult. I definitely lost a few stems to breakage, though, and any buds that had been forming died off from being inside for a week and then going back out in the sun again. Only one of my type III clematis - the Vinosa Violacea - bloomed for me after that. The others never started putting out buds again after the first set died off.

Ah well, there's always next year.

My African Violets, however, have been having a banner year. For the first time ever I've successfully grown babies - a ton of them, in fact! I've also been getting far more blooms on the adult plants than I've ever gotten before, but I've been awful about finding time to take pictures and post them. 

Pictures of the babies. They're all in little plastic solo cups until they get strong enough for bigger pots. (You can click any picture in this post to see a larger version.)

Some of the older babies are already big enough for "adult" pots. Clockwise from top left: LLG Dazzling Fantasyland, LLG Outer Orbit (LLGOO), an unknown (from the supermarket), two more LLGOO, and LLG Allison's Laughter. LLGOO has been amazing - I've gotten more babies from its leaves than from any other. I probably have 15 or so!

Rob's Boolaroo (left) and Ness' Ruffled Skies (right). Both of these have been in bloom for months with no sign of letting up anytime soon:

Other plants - avocado (left) and hoya (right). I've been waiting for over a year to see whether this hoya will survive here, so I'm pretty excited to see new growth on it. That new stem has burst out over the last couple of weeks and grows about 1/2 inch per day!

Here's the clematis update - Venosa Violacea is covered in blooms. Unbelievable that this was just a baby plant in a 2" pot when I bought it last fall. 

Here is Asao #1. It's almost reached the top of the arch and I'm hoping to get a second round of blooms from it before the fall rains hit:

Other things I'm growing outside...

A coworker brought in a bunch of baby tomato plants about a month ago that she started from seed. I took one home, punched a hole in the bottom of a hanging planter (I've run out of room on the floor of the balcony!), and decided to try my luck. There's only one stem on the plant, but there are a few blooms coming out. The weight of the tomato will likely break the stem, I'm guessing. Too bad. It would have been nice to be able to grow tomatoes this way!

I'm also trying my hand with strawberries, but I started too late to get any fruit this year. 


I went a little crazy with nasturtium seeds in early spring, and am getting a ton of blooms now:
 

Here's what I did with my window boxes this year - petunias, snapdragon, and lobelia, although most of the lobelia fried in the sun (as visible to the right of the petunias in this pic):

Finally, here are some pics showing the whole balcony. There's a lot of green and very few other colors, but I have high hopes for next year!