Ann's Air Gardens

Strawberries, Yum!

As neglected as my little backyard garden has become, it still managed to have a few surprises for me when I came down from a trip back up to the San Francisco Bay Area where I lived for over 40 years.  I took a friend who liked the Bay Area so much that we decided to stay an extra week and some of my plants did not like that.

But there were a few ripe strawberries awaiting our return, and although small, they were delicious.  The other big surprise was that the bare root from my late uncle's grape vine which I planted in 2009 was doing great and covered with clusters of flowers.  Last year the ground squirrels got that vine so I was not sure it would bloom this year, but we just may have grapes.  I have no idea what kind of grapes they will be, but if they are anything like Uncle Al's figs, they will be awesome. 

I have no idea what kind of fig tree that was either, but my clones are doing great.  So is the parent tree over in Hemet, CA.  I drove by the other day and it has filled out beautifully after my cousin pruned it last fall, and there are little green figs popping out all over again.  That reminds me that we can now eat up the ones left in the freezer from last year's harvest. 

 

Winter Anemones

Last spring I bought one package of purple anemone rhizomes.    They bloomed nicely in the spring and then again in the fall and now some of them are coming back a third time this year:      

We do not get freezes often here in the Palm Desert area, but recently, the weather did dip down to 29 degrees F for a bit while I was away on a trip and when I returned, some of my plants were dead.  I think.

Sometimes they fool me by looking dead and then coming back.  But it was nice to come back and find something blooming in the back yard.

Oddly, there was one pink anemone back there too.  A neighbor had given me a clay planter with some old dirt in it sometime back, and not having had a chance to plant anything, I put it under a drain spout before going away.  When I returned from my trip, the pot was filled with foliage and this flower was just starting to open, with several more buds coming up around it.  

 

Obviously it rained some while I was gone.

The rain brings snow to the mountain tops this time of year even when it is sunny and nice down below.  Here is a photo I took from the trail up to Hemet's intriguing Stone Maze: 

My post about the Maze is here.

 

 
 

Update on my Lemongrass: Before and After

I planted a couple of lemongrass "suckers" that my nice neighbor brought over in February and seriously I did not believe they would survive.  One has a few roots, but the other was just a stalk that was dead looking in a matter of days and stayed that way alll "winter."  But when Spring came there were a few green tips showing and look at them now:

 

There are a few dead leaves due to the fact that while I was away on a trip someone who was not aware that I had installed an automatic sprinkler system decided to water my plants for me and shut the valve off after watering.  Fortunately this was only one day before my return so nothing died.

Three of my baby figs lost all their leaves, but the root systems were strong and they all started leafing out again in a couple weeks.

I have another before and after shot posted on

The Empty Cabinets of my Mind. It shows one day's growth in my new EasyGreen Auto Sprouter.

A Pink Hydrangea

 
This plant was a gift from a sweet neighbor who liked the bulbous blue flower head when she saw it at the florist's.  It was perfectly round and as large as a grapefruit.  The first time it bloomed since then I did adjust the pH to get blue flowers, but the blooms were quite small and not perfectly shaped.

This time I let it go pink and frankly I love this color just as much as the trendy blue.  My flower head is not round like a grapefruit, but it is the size of half a melon.  I think it is just gorgeous and am hoping my dear neighbor will come over and see it soon.

New Zealand Spinach

A really neat cyberfriend sent me some New Zealand Spinach seeds (or should I call them fruits?) just before I went across country so I've been salivating over the chance to come back and plant them for some time now!

Wanting to know whether the gnarly little fellas should be soaked before planting and what their heat tolerance was going to be (it is HOT here in the Palm Desert) I tried Googling up some information and found this awesome blog:

Matron's post from March 27, 2009

Meanwhile, I've been so proud of my modular pot-in-pot system, but this morning I encountered a difficulty. Apparently due to my having set the automatic watering widgets to spray too much water, the hole in the bottom of the outer pot plugged and was not draining. I had to go out with the kitchen baster and suck up extra water from one of the holes, as the last thing we need in this neighborhood is standing water to attract more mosquitos. As usual, this sort of thing happens right after I have manicured my nails.

On the other hand, this baby fig tree seems pretty happy with my pot-in-pot system.  I lifted it out for this photo:

Cornflowers

Please click here to See a flower from my chicory plant.

What my Garden Taught me Yesterday

This is a DUH moment.  In the past I have always gone out to cut my Swiss Chard fresh just before using it.  But yesterday when I was harvesting good stuff to eat from my garden a neighbor came over and while we were chatting the intense heat wilted the chard I had just cut.   By the time I was able to get it indoors it was pathetic! 

But I got the idea to run some cool water over the leaves and then put the stems into a glass of water.  It didn't look like much at first, but this morning all of the leaves had completely revived.   Please remind me to try this experiment again but to take photos before and after.

Meanwhile, here is a cluster of red cherry tomatoes.  They took longer to ripen than the Sun Golds and are about half the size, but there sure are a lot of them.  

I noticed that a small bird who flew in to steal a tomato from my raised garden went right past the ripe orange Sun Golds and dived underneath some foliage to snag one of bright red kind instead.  I forgot what other kind of tomato seeds I planted, but there are definitely indeterminate and should keep bearing fruit for several months and then I'll just bring cuttings inside to maintain until it is warm enough to put them out again in the spring.   I planted these indoors in February.

Pictured left are some ripe sun golds and below is a red lipstick pepper.

I tasted a green lipstick pepper a bit over a month ago and it did not impress me much.  But having returned from vacation I saw that my plant had produced several pretty red ones, and so I sliced one up on a hamburger.  It was delish!  Not terribly hot, but it had a bit of a bite.  

The lipstick pepper plant is compact, prolific, and the ripe fruit are not only ornamental, but also yummy.   I think I will keep growing these. 

Home Wednesday

I just spoke by phone with neighbors who say my garden is doing great in my absence and they are eating a lot of my orange and red sweet cherry tomatoes which just starting bearing fruit a few days before I left on a month's trip.  Will be home Wednesday and cannot wait to take photos of my plants and the automatic watering system friends helped me put in before this trip. 

They said there were a few ripe strawberries, too.  My first!

New Blossom from a Mystery Cutting

I think this is a Martha Washington geranium, peeking its head out from under the moonflower foliage:

My camera is already packed for an impending trip, so I had to snap this with my Google Phone  (Samsung Moment "Ann-droid"), oh well...
 

My First Glads this Year

A while ago I found Gladiolus bulbs for sale in a dollar store and a few days ago buds appeared.  Now they are turning into flowers.  

No, they are not colossal, but what fun anyway.  Also in bloom is the Lantana plant that I rooted in water from a stem cutting taken last July:

The bedraggled Lantana below it is one of those I rescued in a hurt plant sale about a year ago and parent of two clones that I rooted from cuttings last summer.  In a few years I expect to have beautiful plumbago shrubs all across the front of my home.  The lantanas can become invasive so I intend to keep them confined in pots and well trimmed back, but when this one gets big enough I will take more cuttings and make more clones.  
 
This what the Lantana clone looked like when I first put it out on January 30 of this year (about six months after having put the twig my neighbor gave me in water to root):

Out of seven stem cuttings that I put in water  almost a year ago, two rooted.  One died when I went away for a month and left it uncared for.  The other is, as you see, flourishing.  It took almost a year to get a gallon sized plant in full bloom out of the cutting.