Forcing Amaryllis to bloom for Christmas

I have a very large amaryllis bulb from last year so I was determined to make it bloom for Christmas in 2013. I chopped the leaves back in August, lifted the bulb and stored it in a closet until new leaves started to poke through. This happened around November 1st so I potted the bulb around that time. Just in time for Christmas blooms!

I have a few more bulbs which I didn't force into dormancy by cutting the leaves. They are still sitting in pots with no blooms in sight.

2014 Garden Plans

This fall was too long and too warm so the bitter cold of December caught me by surprise. The temperature today didn't get above freezing all day long; we had  -6°C shortly after sunset.
It's a good time to curl up inside with a cat on my laps, dreaming about next year garden.



I have a rule of no seed purchases until January. Why? Because plans can change a lot between now and spring. I already allocated one place three times over. I dreamed about sunflowers there in October, artichokes in November and now I crave dahlias. Oh, and irises too.

Pumpkins and Watermelons. Why?

I'm endlessly fascinated by turning store-bought food into seed material and then into food again.
I have never bought seed garlic, all of my garlic for planting came either from grocery store or a farmer's market. The results are great by the way.
It's often cheaper that way too. For instance, a packet of Red Kuri squash costs 3.95 at Johnny's while the same squash is $1.50 per pound at the store. I got a small 2-lb fruit so the seeds were cheaper with the squash attached. I may even have a surprise hybrid if I plant those!




_{Figure 1: several hundreds of seeds. There is no way I can plant them all. Maybe I will squeeze in just a couple of plants on top of tulips after they finish blooming}

On Thanksgiving I was cleaning the said squash when I thought about why such fruit exists. I mean, from evolutionary standpoint.

I'm not aware of wild pumpkins but I've heard about wild watermelons; they even grow like weeds in some places. Apparently they thrive in their home Africa. But which evolutionary forces shaped them into their present form? What kind of animal or natural process facilitate seed dispersal?

This Australian website mentions that wild melon's seeds are easily spread by irrigation water. I also noticed that my pumpkin seeds can float. If that is true for all the melons then it makes perfect sense.
Watermelons seem to be adapted to semi-arid areas with heavy rainfalls in spring. The flood waters may pick the seeds from previous year's rotten fruit and re-deposit it along waterways. So these fruit don't need animals for seed dispersal. Humans picked up from there. They used artificial selection to make fruit more "meaty" and sweet to get watermelons and pumpkins as we know them.

Breck's Photoshops its Catalogue

Today I saw Breck's Gifts catalogue and was quite surprised by the image on the back. It just didn't look right. I know that amaryllis flowers can be gorgeous but there is never THAT many at the same time. Also something was wrong with lighting. Apparently, they just copied a few flowers and pasted it around.
Just look at it! I marked identical areas with boxes.



It's not the first time I see a grossly retouched image in a garden catalogue. My friend caught DirectGardening/Burgess doing this. Even Mr. Subjunctive mentioned their gross photoshopping of Angel Trumpet flowers. They still didn't take down that image!
Did anybody see more examples of image retouching in a garden catalogue? I would love to hear about that! Update: Ahahahaha! The joy continues! Breck's guys say "In a world filled with faux, we've always been true to nature" and display photoshopped flowers on the same page.


They even make a mirror image of one to conceal retouching. Way to go guys!

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - November 2013

After 1 and 1/2 year break I'm starting to write again. Thankfully, there is enough time because I quit My Terrible Job.

Today's bloom day is indoors-only. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm happy to announce that I can consider myself a True Orchid Grower.
One of my Cattleyas (which is not an easy kind of plant, let me tell you) is blooming! Weeeee!!




Next will be my Oncidium orchids. While I'm fairly used to seeing Sharry Baby's flowers (red ones), the Gower Ramsey guy blooms for the first time in 2 years. This plant is also known in my house as "Bloom, dammit!"




Also, Christmas Cactus. Also known as Thanksgiving Cactus. This guy out-did itself this year. It's blooming non-stop for a month now, starting around Columbus Day . There are still some un-opened buds left.



The secret to all of this? I removed blinds from my window completely. My first floor apartment window looks like a florist shop but the result is worth it. Light levels top around 3,000 foot-candles which is around the lower limit for Cattleyas to bloom.

Bloom Day - Greetings from Europe!

Today I report from my mother's garden in Europe. No, I won't tell you the country but you can pretty much tell by the soil color. Interestingly, we both are in USDA zone 5 but our frost-free dates differ by a month. She already has knee-high potatoes, for goodness sake!
I put so much work in that garden over 12 years so I feel the right to share some blooms.
It's still the 15th in my time zone so I hope I won't be the last one for the party. There is so much going on in my mom's garden it's hard to start.

Outside of the garden there is an abandoned lot which she turned into a flax meadow.



Inside we've got a whole Iris Festival.
Dutch Irises are simply amazing


Bearded irises are great too!










I never liked clematis but I may need to reconsider. That blue one is simply gorgeous.




White peonies.... oh, the joy!


I've never seen such a plain garden flower (pansy) looking so gordeous

These perennial poppies are 6 inches across!

Also we started harvesting strawberries yesterday. I guess this is what happiness looks like (minus the jetlag).


Cheers, Lucy

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - April 2012

May came early this year, what a joy! I've got red, yellow and orange tulips




Blue scilla


White hyacinths


And even alpine strawberry flowers.

Things I wish I figured out sooner

1. Many perennials don't bloom from seed the first year. Sounds easy enough, isn't it? But I didn't know that when I planted coneflowers at the back of a carefully designed flower bed. And waited. And waited.
2.  Four O'Clocks are perennials. When you hear the loud "thump" digging in flower bed it's not a shovel that broke, it's a taproot of Mirabilis.
3. Don't step in blooming flower bed in sandals. Ever. Bee stings HURT.
4. Flowers are not veggies, they don't look good in rows!
5. Alpine strawberry plants can get as big as regular strawberries. Those teeny-tiny leaves in the woods are small because they lack sunlight and nutrients.
6. Plant labels can be messed up. The probability of getting all white blooms from a 12-pack of mixed hyacinth bulbs is 1 in 200 millions. I have better chances winning a lottery jackpot. Labeling error at a nursery is far more likely.
7. Cucumbers don't transplant well. The attempts to fill the gaps in rows by moving cucumber plants are futile.
8. Yes, mint spreads like crazy. No, several cups of mint tea aren't worth the trouble of pulling runners from strawberry patch, between thorny raspberry canes, from the lawn and even neighbor's garden plot.
9. A single zucchini plant can take 9 square feet of space and is a powdery mildew magnet.
10. Voles love beets. I didn't harvest a single beet in two years. Wish I didn't chase that snake out of my garden.
11. Peat pots plus unheated greenhouse in early May equals stressed tomato seedlings. Water evaporates freely from a peat pot surface lowering root zone temperature quite a bit. Two people out of 30 used peat pots in our community garden and we both ended up with purplish seedlings and delayed growth.
12.  99-cent tomato cages not only break, they bend under the weight of tomatoes.
13. Mulching tomato plants with straw significantly cuts on early blight.
14. Osmocote slow-release pellets are too slow for me. It seems like they don't dissolve at all.
15. Putting 80 lb of bagged soil in a wheelbarrow and going downhill can be spectacular, especially if you own weight is 110 lb. Not quite the "barrel of bricks" fallacy but a capsized cart nonetheless.

Why I'm not planting blue tomatoes

 I noticed that breeders usually improve on one plant trait at a time disregarding the rest. Take Caroline raspberry I planted last year. It's productive, has huge berries, up to an inch long, but the taste is somewhat bland. Giant strawberries are tasteless too. A beautiful Romanesco broccoli has strange texture making it inedible both raw and cooked for me. People keep complaining about the taste and the long season requirements of yellow watermelons. That's why I'm not jumping on a blue tomato bandwagon just yet.

There are several varieties on the market including the famous Indigo Rose tomato from Jim Myers at OSU or the whole "blue tomato" family" from Tom Wagner but they are all quite new. People worked hard to achieve the color goal so I feel a great taste is just too much to ask. I would patiently wait for them to introduce Brandywine or Sungold traits into the fruit even if it takes decades to accomplish.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - March 2012

 Weeeee! Crocuses!
After a week of 60-degrees temperatures I ventured into my garden hoping to see something, anything in bloom and was handsomely rewarded by the sight yellow crocuses:



These bulbs were planted back in 2010. Last year they bloomed in the middle of April. I heard that the established crocuses come earlier in the following years but it's totally unexpected. Yellow crocuses bloomed last in 2011 but now they are the first. Hmmm...

Also, I planted peas today in my zone 5b garden (please don't laugh!). If they freeze - so be it, these were the seeds from 2010 that had to be used somehow.
 
One of my phalaenopsis orchids has finally opened its blooms. Its full name is Doritaenopsis 'I-Hsin Sesame'. It was a hand-me-down from a friend and apparently I don't like the flowers, for some reason they creep me out. The plant will probably go back to the previous owner, at least until it's done blooming.



The spotting pattern on each tepal looks pretty unique. I wonder if it is formed in the (fetal?) development process in the same way as zebra stripes and human fingerprints. Forensic botany, anyone?