Ah, but the blossoms hardly last a day. This view shows a few of the leaves so that it is more easily identifiable as a cactus:
And here is one with a bee in its bonnet:
« March 2009 | Main | May 2009 »
These Came Out Unexpectedly on our First Really Hot Day of Spring
We had been waiting to see what color they would turn out to be, as it is our first spring at this location. What a nice surprise! The plant has between 50 and 60 buds in addition to four flowers that opened today.
Azadirachta Indica, an Antimicrobial Miracle Plant.
Yep, that is the Neem Plant, from which we get Neem Oil, and Neem Oil did in fact prevent the whiteflies from decimating the eggplant featured in my previous post. It was not possible to save the petunias, however, as when they left the eggplant, that is where they settled next. That is what I get for opening the patio door, inside of which we had an AeroGarden 3 ("Mini") loaded with gorgeous wave petunias, from the same bargain plants we bought before Thanksgiving, and featured on my art blog:
A Pretty Picture from our Indoor Garden
I uprooted them and boiled the leaves and stems to get rid of the whitefly larvae, and then disinfected the AG before starting a new planting of various gfast growing edible greens which we hope to harvest before we head back to California in a month or so.
A few of the whiteflies escaped, though, and eventually migrated over to my beloved currant tomato, more on which later.
I don't yet know whether the Neem oil can save the tomato plant, which as you can see from the photo below, is full of soon to be ripe and delicious little fruit-ems:
I started this plant from a cutting in October and it is about 25 feet long on one vine which I just wrapped around and around on a little pole held in place by the hydroton grow rocks in a quart food container, with my "blue mulch" lid over the opening. I fed it General Hydroponics nutes as described in a previous post, and occasionally sprayed it with Green Light Tomato Bloom Spray.
Here is an informative link about the Neem plant: