Ann's Air Gardens

Still Standing

My raised garden experiment is a month old today, and has withstood about five heavy rains so far, but it is still standing.  

The sun came out for a few seconds this morning so I ran out to take this photo:

If you wonder why the salad greens are smaller than before, I did snip off a few leaves from the romaine lettuce and Swiss Chard yesterday for munching.  Better me than the rabbits.  

The seedlings indoors in the AeroGardens are bigger, of course, but when the shadows of winter retreat perhaps these will catch up. 

I think this is going to be a Lipstick Pepper, but only time will tell:

This is why they say we should label our experiments.  Oh, well!  Surprises can be fun, too.  

Here are some flower seeds and herbs from a mixed packet.  Nature will sort out which are which:

The tomato on the left doesn't look too happy.  Usually I grow them in hydroton rocks, but this one is in perlite.  If it doesn't look better in a few days, I will cut the tops off and let them root and start over with the clay pellets. 

I bought the perlite to see if it would work better than water for rooting the plumbago, rosemary, and gardenia cuttings.

Here is the contraption I rigged up for this experiment:

My Grey Mulch Experiment:

I call Air Conditioning foam that I use to support cuttings my Grey Mulch.  It is open-celled foam, cut into whatever shape is needed to block out light, seal in moisture, and support the stem. 

I got a package of little see-through cups from Smart & Final to use in place of the AG domes.  When they get ratty looking, instead of throwing them away, I use them to start cuttings.   The little cup is filled with a an equal mix of spaghnum moss and perlite.  I cut the stem at an angle and stripped some of the "bark" off at the bottom. Then I inserted the cutting into my grey mulch, and dipped it in Shultz rooting powder before snugging it into the cup.  

My next step will be to invert a larger plastic cup over the whole thing.  The bottom cut off a water or juice bottle works well, too.    

 

More Moonflowers

Moonflowers are among the most fascinating plants to grow from seed.  Although they tend not to say this on the seed packets, they sprout faster if you nick the seeds and then soak them in water for a few hours before expecting them to germinate. 

I use a nail clipper to cut a small chunk out of the side of each seed and then after soaking I sprout them in the SproutMan's hemp bag.  Of course, any sprouter would work. 

These seedlings are just a couple days old and the photo on the left was taken eleven hours before the photo on the right, illustrating how fast these grow.  Less than 24 hours ago, they were wrinkly yellow balls that had not yet burst through the tough skin around the seeds. 

There may be faster growing plants in the universe, but I have yet to encounter one.  Even Kudzu does not start out this fast.

Another Photo of These Babies

Some Weeds are Not Edible

I stopped pulling weeds out of the sidewalk long enough to take a picture of my color changing solar light:

It has been raining too much to leave it out, so I put it on the porch for the time being.  It doesn't get enough sunlight there to charge, so I have it switched off until the sun comes out again.   Spiderettes from my huge spider plant are rooting in the tray and to the left are a handful of weeds.  Everyone around here uses Round-Up but me, but I have the advantage of no dirt on the ground.  Before I moved in, the manager of our complex put a thick plastic weed barrier on top of the soil and then brought crushed rock in to spread over that.   So all but two of my plants are either in raised planters or in ground pot-in-pot.

So far, that little handful of weeds I tossed on the table in the top photo was about all there were.

Here is one of two plumbago clones that I rooted from cuttings in July and decided to put in the ground:

I was going to put a blue lantana here, but the plumbago leaves are not as prickly, and the flowers are just as pretty. 
 

 

A Comparison of Lettuce Grown Indoors and Outdoors

Both of the lettuce plants in this photo were started in an AeroGarden Deluxe indoor planter about the same time.  They were grown from the same packet of seeds.

The one on the left was put out into the garden soil as soon as it had secondary leaves.  The one on the right was left inside for a couple weeks longer.  

Clearly being kept indoors in the AeroGarden gave the second plant a distinct advantage. 

This is pelleted Green Forest Cos from Johnny's Selected Seeds.  Romaine is my favorite lettuce to grow.  It is a heat tolerant cut-and-come-again green that can be used for salads or wraps. 

I tried a packet of one of their red Cos varieties, but for some reason it would not sprout for me in the AeroGarden.  I tried four different plantings, then returned the packet and they replaced it with this tried and true variety.  

I am a big fan of pelleted seeds, although it is said that their shelf life is not as long as that of regular seeds. 

Whenever I see pelleted seeds, I think of the ancient technique of preserving seeds in dried balls of clay and compost.  There are quite a few posts online about seed balls, but so far this one is my favorite:

How to Make Seedballs

Before and After

As you may recall, I did not soak the medium in the AeroGrow Starter Tray long enough and some of the plugs slid down the holes:

That turned out not to be a problem, though, as everything grew just fine.  In fact, I had expected last year's seeds to have a lower germination rate after having been left all summer in my Arizona garage.

Probably it would be best to snip some of the plants away with a tiny scissors in order to give the others space to grow, but on the other hand, if some must die anyway, I'll probably try to gently break the plugs apart and replant them all.  

It ever amazes me to see the magic of life happening indoors and up close. 

UPDATE on the ads:  Looks like I got the Infolink stuff coded right because there are now little green ads all over the place!  I hope my readers are not too annoyed by them.  If you hate them, let me know!

I do think the green coloring fits with the theme of my blog, and  I promise to buy gardening stuff with any earnings the ads generate :-)
 

Gardening Can Get Expensive!

So I need at some point to think about monetizing this blog in the most tasteful way possible.  I earn a little from Pay Per Post ads on my other blog but did not want to clutter up this one with wordy diversions, so I am going to try InfoLinks.

I have not figured out how to add the script yet, but when it is running, they suggested I tell you the following, so I figured why wait:

Why do I see double underlined links?

These links are part of a pay per click advertising program called Infolinks. Infolinks is an In Text advertising service: they take my text and create links within it. If you hover your mouse over these double underlined links, you will see a small dialog box containing advertisement related to the text marked. You can choose to either move the mouse away and go on with your browsing, or to press on the box and go to the ad which is relevant to our text. To learn more about Double Underline Link Ads – Click Here.

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.