Dirt Gently's Horticultural Adventures

Troubleshooting

2013-04-14T16:00:00.005-04:00

I was pretty excited to see many developing flower buds on one of my potted Pulsatillas at the end of March and I was hoping for a spectacular display.

Over the last several days, though, the fronds on the clump in the back of the pot started flopping over, almost as if the plant hadn't been watered and the flowers buds stopped developing. But the plant at the front of the pot continued to grow. This is how the pot looks today (the clump in question has now been rotated to the front):

The leaves are all crispy, the buds are all brown. I wonder what happened? Pretty disappointing.

Beginnings

2013-03-14T14:55:00.002-04:00

Guess what's blooming again?

2012-08-30T12:45:00.003-04:00

One blossom in July, and another at the end of August! What a weirdo Pulsatilla I have.

Tomatoes!

2012-07-21T14:08:00.001-04:00

I was away all last week. This is the harvest that awaited me on the 19th when I returned.

Mid-July Tomatoes

2012-07-09T14:39:00.001-04:00

Hahms Gelbe Topftomate

Cosmonaut Volkov

Gregori Altai

Haley's Purple Comet

Black Sea Man

Beefsteak

Happy June Bloomsday!

2012-06-15T17:06:00.000-04:00

Oenothera tetragone 'Fireworks'

Wordless Wednesday

2012-05-16T09:00:00.000-04:00

Signs of life

2012-03-17T18:09:00.000-04:00

It's an unusually temperate 12°C today so I went out on the balcony for a look-see. There are already signs of life out there. The chives being able to overwinter was a given, but I was doubtful about the rest of the perennials. Glad at least some of them appear to have made it, and pleasantly surprised that the Violacea pallida is making an appearance for the second year in a row.

Happy (Belated) Bloomsday

2012-03-16T14:48:00.000-04:00

Way back in January, one of my mystery wintersown pulsatillas bloomed. Last winter I had wintersown pulsatilla pratensis subsp. nigricans, p. patens, and p. campanella but I had lost track of which pot contained what species. This certainly isn't p. pratensis, but I'm still not sure if it is campanella or patens.

Yesterday, another one of the mystery pulsatillas bloomed. It has an ever-so-slightly purple tinge.

Neither is obviously p. pratensis. I am guessing the white one is prairie crocus (p. patens), and the purple one is p. campanella.

Lest we forget

2011-11-11T11:00:00.026-05:00

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

Jaune du Doubs Carrots!

2011-10-21T16:11:00.001-04:00

Pulled my first real harvest of carrots today and I was pleased to see that they're long and lovely! I can't wait to enjoy them. They were grown from Jaune du Doubs carrot seeds generously given to me by Linda at Tree and Twig Farm last year.

A couple of weeks ago, I pulled the first carrot of the season up experimentally, and was disappointed to see that it was all stubby and round. Some Googling around revealed that this was either due to medium that is too wet, too rich, or too dense. In my case, I think it had to do with the carrot living next to a rather aggressive chicory plant that had a huge, fat taproot and a dense network of roots. These carrots from further away seemed to benefit from more breathing room.

Garlic tucked in

2011-10-08T14:52:00.000-04:00

Or, "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." :)

Last spring I potted up some garlic cloves that had sprouted, which grew up nicely inside my apartment and then yielded these lovely little marble-sized garlic bulblets after the leaves had died. I wasn't sure what I would do with them.

I thought vaguely of planting them outside, but a previous attempt at planting sprouting garlic cloves outside last fall yielded nothing but rotten cloves in the spring. Not encouraging.

But hope springs eternal and all of that, so after my bulblets started sprouting this week, I stuck 'em in the ground. Let's hope good things happen!

By the way, Eating Niagara also has an interesting four-part video series on attempting to grow garlic indoors.

Growing Pains: Growing Garlic Indoors part 1
Growing Pains: Growing Garlic Indoors part 2
Growing Pains: Growing Garlic Indoors part 3
Growing Pains: Growing Garlic Indoors part 4

Fall garden update

2011-10-06T16:13:00.000-04:00

Thinking of closing this blog and posting exclusively to circles in Google+ now. There's more control over who gets to see what you publish, and comment management and interaction in general seems better over there. The first is important to me since I discovered several sites stealing content that I had created in my other life and making money from it. Infuriating, and I can't afford a lawyer to go after them. So far I haven't found any Dirt Gently content similarly stolen, but you never know.

There was an overnight frost warning issued last night, but my balcony stays pretty warm because it's attached to a large brick wall. The only plant I took inside before bedtime was my pepper. It's generated lots of beautiful fruit, but for some strange reason they're all orange. They were grown from the seeds of Hungarian chili pepper that I bought last year; the peppers were all yellow then. Guess it was a hybrid. I hope these orange ones are tasty.

Hungarian chili peppers of unknown heritage

The chicory plants I grew from seed are thriving a little too well in the big cedar planters. They're well over four feet tall each, with abundant foliage and flowering stems. The roots are huge and gnarly. I was originally inspired to grow them because I saw them growing in abandoned lots, weedy backyards, and on the side of the mountain, but they were much smaller because of grazing and lawnmowers I guess. As much as I love the flowers, I'm worried that they will take over the planters, and I don't know if pulling them will solve the problem because they can regrow easily from root fragments.

Huge-ass chicory

Big gnarly chicory roots

Also doing a little too well are the violets I transplanted from the common backyard of my apartment. I found dozens of these violet seed husks all over the planter, all the product of a single plant.

Beets! There's a big juicy one, but so far the other roots look a little scrawny. They've been catching up this week and putting on some size, though.

Most of the spinach I started around the beginning of August had bolted and so I had to compost them. The remaining seedlings were pretty scrawny, but I planted them out anyway in September. They haven't done much, and when I looked today, flower buds!

Lavender and rosemary continue to bloom, and so does a solitary sacred basil plant that I somehow missed when I harvested all of my basil. I love the clove scent of sacred basil. Aren't the rosemary flowers cool?

Lavender

Rosemary

Tulsi basil

Seeds of the blackberry lily continue to ripen. Can't wait to see the pods pop open to reveal little black beady seeds. It's why I grew these.

Belamcanda chinensis seed pods

The black pasque flowers and Caucasian bellflowers I potted up are going gangbusters. The foliage of each plant is a handspan in size, and they're putting out new leaves all of the time. They ones I transplanted are still small, though, and those bellflowers are showing yellow leaves. I'm not sure what the problem is.

Wintersown Pulsatilla pratensis ssp. nigricans and a dime in a pot

And a sibling plant in my recently-built cedar planter.

Campanula bellidifolia in a pot ...

... and looking sad in a planter.

Next to the bellflowers are Liatris spicata. They didn't flower in this, their first year, but they did develop some caudexy-looking above ground bulbs.

Here are some velvetleaf seed pods.

And some nasturtium blooms.

Harebells!

Harebells

On the back balcony, kale is going crazy. I can't give enough of it away. I think a soup with lots of kale in it is in order once it's time to chop those beasts down. The squirrels seem to love it too. They made a nice salad with kale and the collard and bok choy seedlings I transplanted in August.

Monster kale

The squirrels have been freeloading ...

... and making buckwheat, clover, and kale salads.

And finally (for today), a sweet potato that's sprouted. Wondering what I should do with it.

I'm still alive

2011-10-01T15:50:00.000-04:00

And the moonflowers have been blooming steadily through the month of September. For some reason, they aren't very fragrant, but I think that it has something to do with the low-ish temperatures we've been having.

Also, there have been giant radishes.

Almost there ...

2011-09-05T17:54:00.000-04:00

It is cold, rainy and miserable and the first moonflower bud looks just about ready to open up. Will it be tonight?

Wordless Wednesday

2011-08-31T09:07:00.001-04:00

A Mystery for Wordless Wednesday

2011-08-24T09:52:00.001-04:00

Three guesses as to what it is. Answer next week!

Radis!

2011-08-23T16:09:00.002-04:00

Couldn't wait. Pulled this enormous (to me) sucker this afternoon.

Bolting Radish

2011-08-23T13:58:00.000-04:00

One of the radishes I planted earlier this month decided to be naughty and bolt!

Jack and the radish stalk ... It was 2 feet tall!

Decided to pull it to give neighbours more room rather than wait for the buds to flower.

The root looks nothing like it should, and didn't taste very good either.

A "regular" purple plum radish.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - August 2011

2011-08-15T19:53:00.001-04:00

No new blooms this GBBD except for this lone harebell that I noticed just in time.

Sad Trombone: Sick Tomatoes

2011-08-14T12:55:00.000-04:00

It's been pretty cloudy and rainy since the end of July, and with the tomato plants already a bit stressed from bearing fruit, some nasty surprises have shown up: I have early blight on my White Queen and Red Pear tomatoes, and a fungal disease and possibly an unidentified something else on my Beefsteak plant.

Early blight on White Queen and Red Pear tomatoes.

Something fungal & something else on Beefsteak tomato.

White, fuzzy spots that you can rub off = fungal to me.

Not sure if this is the end result of fungus, or something else.

Since I think the plants have set all the fruit that's going to appear, and most of them have only to ripen before I harvest, I've been pruning aggressively and hoping that the remaining leaves are enough to sustain the plants until all the fruit is good. With early blight, there's nothing that can be done anyway. Still, the plants look silly with 80% of their foliage gone.

I think that having the three plants so closely spaced together contributed to how quickly they got sick. I definitely could have pruned more aggressively before they became diseased to increase air circulation as well.

I am very pleased with how prolific the Beefsteak plant was, and the tomatoes it produce were definitely the right blend of acidity, sweetness, and sliceability for me. Even though I still have seed that I have saved last year, I will definitely be saving seeds from this year's harvest to add to my stash.

I wasn't expecting such small tomatoes from the Red Pear; they're cherry-sized and Roma-shaped. I was expecting full-sized Roma-style tomatoes. Still, the taste and texture was definitely that of a paste tomato. Despite how prolific it was, I won't be planting these again as cherry-sized paste tomatoes is kind of weird to me.

White Queen was a big disappointment. Tomatoes were a very pale yellow, although they showed a little pink and even red wherever there was a stress point on the fruit (i.e., a lesion or split). They are slicer-type tomatoes, with very weak acidity and sweetness. The plant did not produce very well at all, and the tomatoes tended to split easily. Wimpy taste plus wimpy production equals a plant unsuitable for a balcony.

Red Pears at 1 o'clock, with the rest Beefsteak and White Queens.

First tomato!

2011-08-02T12:14:00.000-04:00

Hard to believe that my beefsteak tomato plant looked like this four short months ago.

And started yielding fruit three months later

That swelled and blushed in the sweet July sunshine

And today yielded lunch!

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - July 2011

2011-07-15T11:17:00.001-04:00

Not only are the wintersown velvetleaf and wild carrot blooming on my balcony, but so are the ever-reliable marigold and bacopa.

Marigolds

Bacopa

The heat is causing the sacred and Thai basils to bolt. The cinnamon-candy smell of the Thai variety when you brush your hand over the plants is heavenly. I'm not sure, though, whether to let them bloom or to clip off the flowering stalk.

Sacred (Tulsi) basil

Thai basil

'Alaska' and 'Tom Thumb' (or is that 'Empress of India'?) nasturtiums are blooming for the first time this season.

Nasturtium 'Tom Thumb' or 'Empress of India'

Nasturtium 'Alaska'

The bumblebees love the lavender, but are a little camera-shy.

Bee and lavender

And this bug apparently likes chomping off the Shasta daisy buds :(

Bug on Shasta daisy

Shasta daisy with amputated flower bud. The guilty party lurks in the background.

All is not lost though, as some of the buds were spared, giving the first flowers of the season. What a pleasant surprise; I was told that Shasta daisies don't bloom until their second year.

Shasta daisy

And anyway, most of the bugs (even the wasps!) in the garden have been very friendly.

Ladybug

I think that the beefsteak and red pear tomatoes have more or less done flowering for the season and are busy setting fruit, but there's still sparse fruit on the White Queen plant, but it's determinedly playing catchup. No pun intended.

White Queen tomato

And finally, a promising sign for August's bloom day.

Morning glory

Weeds of the Balcony: What's Up Dauc?

2011-07-15T10:38:00.000-04:00

One of the cedar planters has been rife with carrot-like seedlings all spring. I've been generally very relaxed about weeding, but I've been quite relentlessly pulling these guys because of their numbers.

I'm happy that I did leave one around to grow up, because for one thing I get to identify the plant, and for another, they're quite nice and the smaller pollinators love them.

Oh how I wish for Smell-o-vision. The scent is indescribable, but I love it.

It's wild carrot (Daucus carota). I guess the carrot-like appearance of the plant should have been a clue, but I like to be sure about these things. The plant is otherwise known as Queen Anne's Lace.

Apparently, they're good aphid repellents, which is fortunate since I do have a minor aphid problem.

One cool thing that I had never noticed before was that the umbrels nod and close up as the day ends, only to become erect and open up again as the sun rises. Pretty cool.

Feed me, Seymour!

Was the international biohazard symbol inspired by this?

According to some sites, young wild carrot (i.e., less than a year old) is just as edible as the cultivated kind that were derived from them, but I have also heard that it doesn't taste all that great. As with the velvetleaf, I plan on investigating.

It should be notic that a couple of deadly poisonous species of hemlock can be confused with wild carrot (here's a poison hemlock fact sheet), so if there are no more blog entries from me this fall, you'll know why :) Key differentiators: unlike hemlock, wild carrot roots smell like carrots and the stems are hairy; hemlock leaves smell musty while wild carrot leaves can smell like carrots; the central floret in the umbel of the wild carrot is often purple. The roots of the siblings of this plant that I've torn out definitely smell like carrots, the stems are very hairy, and the flower itself has a tiny purple floret, so I think I'm safe. Not sure about the carrot-scented leaf though; mine didn't smell of anything.

Hairy legs = good

Spot the purple central floret 0_o

A winner is you!

Whether or not I eat it, I quite liked Queen Anne's Lace when I was young and I like them still, especially the architectural quality of the bracts, but the plants themselves can get quite big. I'll have to keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't get out of control.

Speaking of out of control, remember that lovely Epilobium I posted about last month? A week ago, it started setting seed on the main stalk, flowering from side shoots, and generally growing like a house on fire. I had to finally tear it out before it bullied the rest of the plants into submission. The way the seed pods opened was fascinating, though.

Mystery solved

2011-07-14T12:37:00.002-04:00

Just for fun last fall, I collected a bunch of seed from various unidentified plants around the neighbourhood (here and here) and wintersowed them with the idea of eventually identifying them when they flowered.

The first ID of the season is Velvetleaf (Abutilon theophrastii), a member of the mallow family. As you might have guessed, the plant has velvety leaves, large and heart-shaped, alternate, growing from a single (velvety) stalk. They can grow very tall (up to 7 feet), but thankfully mine have remained a manageable 2½ feet. They're still completely out of proportion for the scale of my balcony, but the tactile quality of the plant means they'll be sticking around until the end of the season.

Velvety, palm-sized leaf.

Two velvetleaf plants, one bigger, one smaller.

The cool-looking "king's crown" seed pods are what motivated me to collect the seeds. I had a 20% germination rate with mine, but germination can be erratic, and the seeds can persist for a very long time in the soil.

Dried velvetleaf seed pods. By Boby Dimitrov on flickr.

According to Wikipedia, an alternate name for Velvetleaf is China Jute, hinting at the useful quality of the plant's fibres. Portions of the plant are also edible; I may give this a go later on in the season. It is, however, considered a weed in this part of the world.

Here's some more useful information about the plant from the Illinois Wildflowers site..