Ann's Air Gardens

Oops, This is not a fig.

Suddenly I am "mom" to a grapevine!

My sweet cousin tried to dig up some fig tree suckers for me over at my late uncle's backyard.  I am trying an experiment to see if I can clone some fig trees from what we used to call "slips" back on the farm, but wanted backup in case that didn't work.  So there were all these roots near the little fig trees, as the parent plant although laden with fruit had not gotten much care for about ten years.   He got some of the gnarly straggly root stuff up out of the ground and I happily took it home and stuck it in the ground, watered it well and waited.  Some of the dried out stem stuff was sticking out of the dirt and when a neighbor came by, she ran her hands over it and pronounced it dead.  She did not say it was NOT a fig.  She just said that no way was it going to grow. 

Well, it grew, but it was not a fig:

I haVe very little experience in dirt gardening and never grew any kind of tree before except for a ficus benjamina we had rescued from the dumpster. Everybody thought it was dead, and to tell you the truth we were just intending to recycle the dirt from that plant, as we thought it was a goner, too.  This was in autumn, and then we got busy with other things and  set it aside where it was forgotten until spring.  When I finally picked up the pot to take it back to the dumpster, surprise, by then there were two tiny leaves peaking out from the base of the stem.  It grew like wildfire and after a few years, when it got too tall to stay on the porch, we put it out near our carport, The following spring we saw a couple birds building a nest in it and before long it was home to cheeping babies, a scenario which repeated itself every year for a couple decades thereafter. 

That tree was like a  treasure to us until the new management of our apartment complex got the brilliant idea of disallowing any live plants in the carports.   We moved and tried to take the ficus with us, but it did not like its new home and soon expired at the new location.   Died of sadness, I think.

I don't know what kind of grape that is in the picture above, nor how to care for a grape, but as it is "family" I will learn and do my best to keep it alive and flourishing in my new plant-friendly community.   

No Bees in my Home Please

I brought some cuttings from a friend's white morning glory indoors to root and they are so pretty that I decided to leave them indoors and grow them hydroponically.  Initially I was concerned about whether they would cross-pollinate with the gorgeous blue ones that are flowering in abundance next door.  Like laundry, I wanted the whites to stay white and the colors to stay bright...and the bees to stay outdoors.
 
Ah, but these are moonflowers!  They get up late, like me, so I can watch them open.  It does not take long either, as they can  go from being as pictured at the left to being like the one at the right in just one minute.

The leaves are heart-shaped, whereas the leaves on my blue morning glory have triple indentations. 

Update on the moonflowers:

I saw a seed packet of the Ipomoea alba  at WalMart for 99 cents and decided to see how fast they would sprout.   After nicking a few of the seeds on the side with a nail clipper, I soaked them overnight, and put them in the Sproutman's Hemp Sprouting Bag.  Two days later they were ready to plant.  Yes, in the dirt!  This is something new for me as I normally only grow things in water. My rules were these:

1)  It has to grow in water, and

2)  It has to be edible.

The genus Ipomoea is neither! (except for water spinach, more on which later...)

Blame it on the fig tree.  That, and my recent move to Southern California, to a place with a yard.  Yes, it is the size of a postage stamp, but big enough to grow a fig...in a pot, as those guys send roots out forever, and probably the gophers would come and gnaw through them.   

Thai Basil--Sweet and Holy

I've been wanting to grow some Thai Basil for a long time, but put it off for one reason or another until our local WalMart recently added it to their live plant offerings.  I came to a screeching halt and plopped one in my cart before you could say "Cheaper than a Seed-Pack!"

Naturally, the first thing I did was to snip off some slips to root:

Here, in the 10 ml glass vial to the right of the Million Bells blossom, is the smallest cutting I ever rooted.  The detail of the healthy roots is a bit blurred through the glass, but I will replace it with a better picture as soon as I get a chance.  This is Ocimum basilicum, or Sweet Thai Basil, not to be confused with Holy Basil aka Tulsi, which Dr. Mercola and others tout as a prevention against Swine Flu.  Tulsi is Ocimum tenuiflorum.