Ann's Air Gardens

Mandevilla splendens is a Good Name for this Splendid Plant

My neighbor brought me cuttings from her Mandevilla and yes I know I should cut the flower heads off to give strength to the roots, but not until they finish blooming. These blossoms are just too pretty to waste.  If you have read or seen the play called The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, then you may know that a common name for the red Mandevilla is Scarlet Pimpernel, but this one is a striking pink.

The lemongrass plantlets the same neighbor grew for me are looking wonderful in my yard already:

It is so nice to finally have a little yard and neighbors who enjoy plants as much as I do.  Living and working in the city was exciting for a while, but it gets old!  Still, city living forced me to learn something about hydroponics and that was an enriching experience to be sure. 

Kalanchoe

These gorgeous live plants were at the dollar store today:

They had some nice pots, too, and together with a pot one of these plants was still   cheaper than a greeting card so I got one of each for myself and a couple more to give to friends.  

I did not know the common name for  Kalanchoe blossfeldiana  and had to look it up:  Flaming Katy!  Some people call it Christmas Kalanchoe as it has habits something like the Christmas Cactus.  

According to some the flowers will continue to bloom for several months, but to get the plant blossoming again it requires 14 hours of night over approximately a 2 month period.   But others say that all it needs to get blooming again is exposure to bright light.  Which is true?  I guess I will have to find that out for myself.

But the foliage is lovely in its own right, a bit like its cousin the Jade Plant (Crassula ovata).

Almost Ready

I am waiting for the seedling plants I started with the AeroGrow kit to get big enough to be put outside, since the weather has started getting nice down here in the Inland Empire. These are beets, which I intend to grow for the greens, along with Swiss Chard.  When the weather gets too warm for these, then I will switch over to heat-tolerant romaine, amaranth, and the like.

I stuck a few of these little seedlings out in my new raised planter already, just to see how they might do, and they seem to like it so far.  I am just hoping the good weather pattern holds.

  The greens are barely visible in the photo, but you can see my pretty daisy from the 99 cent store, and a bit of purple stock (Matthiola Incana) from WalMart.  The black structure with skinny legs is a dedicated spaghetti planter designed to grow basil in   the top and tomatoes and/or peppers hanging upside down through holes in the bottom.  I did put some basil in the top, but am starting out with peas and beans while the weather is still cool. 

Between now and Saturday, I need to get some kind of trellis set up in the middle of the box so that I can put something protective over the whole thing in case of a storm.

  Beets and peas      Basil and Fenugreek      Swiss Chard
 
 
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A Correction

When I am out working in my miniature garden, time just whizzes by, but I had to rush in to make corrections to some remarks I made about Swedish Ivy.   Relying on information posted by quite a few sources, including one university publication, I mistakenly, I now believe, called my Swedish Ivy Plectranthus australis, when it is actually Plectranthus verticillatus.   So I have corrected it in my glossary.  

Whenever I grow a new plant or an old one in a new way, or learn something interesting about a plant I intend to grow, I try to put the information in my glossary, which is the top right link on every page.  I caught this one myself, but if anyone else finds a mistake in my glossary, grow logs, or posts, please leave a comment letting me know. 

Lemon Grass Babies

Just when I thought I'd done all my digging for the day, a neighbor stopped by with a wonderful  gift in hand.  She brought two lemon grass plantlets -- babies from the clump in her yard.   I got my shovel back out of the shed and planted them right away.  When I find the charger for my camera, I will take a picture to put here.

Now for a Bay Laurel tree to put near them :-)

My other neighbor gave me babies from her Aloe Vera plant last night.  I have been buying the Visvita brand of aloe drink because it has chunks of the aloe floating around in it.  But it is way too sweet.  I love the chunks, though, and like to add strips of fresh gel from my own plant.  My favorite flavors are pineapple and coconut.

Recycled Shower Doors

A couple  of 40" x 40" raised planter kits were on sale cheap at a local store, but I wanted 3 more things that their design did not offer:

1) More height

2) Toe room underneath the planter

3) Ledge to lay tools down, etc.

So here is what I came up with:

Those are 12" square brick "pavers" with 4 standard bricks as spacers.  This brings the height up to 28" and I inset the pavers, so that I can stand right next to the planter without stubbing my toes.   The glass ledge is made from two tempered glass shower doors that my good neighbor was going haul away as trash after remodeling a bathroom.   I took the frames off, expecting sharp edges on the glass that would have to be sanded down, but this glass was nice and smooth on all sides.  This gives me 5" of ledge spare all the way around.

More photos coming after I've gotten to the store for more potting soil and put some plants in.  Seedlings started indoors in my AeroGardens for this project and about ready to plant include Swiss Chard, Beets, Romaine lettuce, Fennugreek, Basil and Black Beans.  I bought a few flowering plants to provide color and fill some space until my crops start to fill out.  

I think this looks great and will work well and the best part is the cost of building it came in under $100.   That does not include the potting mix,  which will be $30 or $40.   But there is room in my postage stamp sized backyard for a small composting bin, so the potting mix should be a one-time expense.  

 

You Say You Built Your Grow Stuff Out of WHAT?!

Funny coincidence, but shortly after a reader of this blog introduced me to the somewhat startling idea of using a toilet tank flushing system for rinsing sprouts -- startling because in her photo it did not look the gardener was using new parts (ackkkk), I learned that a fellow named Jeff who has an online hydroponics store with lots of interesting information on his website builds "barrelponics" grow systems that are built partly with toilet parts--only I am pretty sure his are factory-new (!), using the overflow tank as a fish pond.  It is so cute. 

He also has a video on perlite systems among other interesting things:

Perlite as an option

Why Am I Not Growing Lemon Verbena?

This is a reminder to myself to procure some!  Also, I wanted to share this link from You Grow Girl:

Grow Your Own Lemongrass

I read about propagating lemongrass from a supermarket starter elsewhere, but then Googled up all the articles on that subject for some truly enjoyable reading. 

The other lemony thing is, of course, lemon basil, and more on that soon.

Then, too, there is lime basil, and Kaffir Lime, which is another must, right up there with bay laurel.  So many wonderful plants!  So much to learn!  So little time!

Another plant I had long mistakenly thought of as non-edible turns out to be the ubiquitous begonia.  Here is a recent photo from one of mine and a useful link on what it might taste like:

Yummy or Not?

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A Sweet Potato Slip

I love vines, especially edible ones. 

Leaves of the Ipomoea batatas are tender and sweet when young, but they do turn bitter if allowed to get much bigger than these.  The good news is that this vine will not only keep producing tender young edible leaves indefinitely, but pinching them back will make the plant spread out and become more attractive as well as more edible.  The edible leaves, moreover, are a rich source of lutein,  as well as Riboflavin and Vitamins A and C.

Ipomoea plants are easily propagated by stem cuttings.   

Extra nitrogen will encourage more leaves and discourage the formation of tuberous roots.  Red lines and/or yellowing leaves indicate nitrogen deficiency, unless you are dirt gardening and have tubers below the ground.  Then, of course, the yellowing leaves indicate they are ready for harvest.

As with cucumbers,  long hours of daylight interfere with the production of flowers.  That is one reason we seldom see sweet potatoes blossoming. 

Raving About the Neighbors

We have had good neighbors and bad ones over the years, but we fell into a pot of gold with the folks in our latest community.  They are just special in many ways, but in addition to lending helping hands and handing out good cheer, they are avid sharers of cuttings.  Even though they grow their plants in dirt and mine are mostly confined to water, the young cuttings do not know any difference. 

Thanks to a friend from up the street, I now have three kinds of begonias to play with and what at first glance I took it for a striking new purple portulaca:

We took the cutting after dark and I just stuck it in the glass, snapped the photo and toddled off the bed without thinking much about it.  But when the flower opened up in the morning it was clearly NOT a portulaca.  

On closer examination the leaves, although needle-like, are more triangular, and the flower looks like some kind of ice plant.  Whatever it is, the color is just brilliant and we shall soon find out if it roots in water.

I do hope it is not poisonous, whatever it turns out to be, as I put it in the same AeroGarden as my Asia Red Amaranth.   I'd like to have a rule about not growing any poisonous plants, but that would require getting rid of my beloved Pothos and that is not going to happen.   Periwinkle, too.  And all the lovely Morning Glories.  Sigh.

Speaking of what to munch and what not to, although the leaves of portulaca grandiflora are rumored to be edible,  I will stick to my favorite weed Purslane for fresh greens--that and the delicious Nasturtium greens that I munch daily.  It is rumored thought that the seeds of grandiflora are good though, and quite nutritious. 

I just harvested an armload of my pampered organic purslane today,  and is it ever scrumptious in vegetable beef soup.  The other veggies were onions, baby carrots, celery, and broccoli.  I always put rosemary in my beef soup, too. 

Here is someone else who extols the virtues of this purslane as a snack:

Au Potager 

I especially like this articulate blogger's post on "les légumes oubliés" (the forgotten vegetables.)