Happy Halloween

This year my mother hosted a pumpkin carving party. It was a huge hit, though I'm kind of unimpressed by my pumpkin. I was also rather annoyed by the 3 inches of snow we got that night, and the 6 hours of no electricity.

Snow, already...

Snow before November is not a good sign for the winter to come. I have two big plastic tents in my backyard right now trying to keep the lettuce, peas and one leftover tomato plant alive.

Waiting for Frost

The weather is making it look like I'll be seeing frost sometime this week or weekend. The above photo is from December 2010.

Preying Mantis

We just keep avoiding a frost, so the preying mantis keep popping up. Mom watched this one for almost two hours yesterday waiting for me to get home to take pictures. At least seeing them multiple times ups the chances of finding egg cases some time.

Frost maybe

It certainly feels late for a frost. I watched the forecast drop drop 41 F projected low to 34 F. So I just went out and hauled the plastic over stuff. That tomato plant is still going strong, maybe I should just build a greenhouse around it and let it go along.

Random notes: I finished the shed doors, but still have a large rotten patch of wall to deal with in addition to the large hole where the doors used to be located. I want to put a set of windows there, but think i'd have to support the whole wall temporarily to do that. So at the moment it will get covered in plastic for the winter.

Shed Doors

My project of the day, involved finally covering over the giant hole I made in the shed sometime in the summer. There used to be a rotten window here, and I carved out the wall, put in new studs and cut the existing doors to fit the new space. We used to have two large doors, but realistically the doors only need to be large enough to get the wheelbarrow and lawnmower out and back. I ended up with one large door, and on the left of it a 9" wide extra door. I considered making them equal widths, but that would have involved cutting two 62 1/2" pieces of plywood straight with a jigsaw. Since my jigsaw prefers to cut a little wavy I nixed that idea.

The shed looks all nicely buttoned up, but there is technically an even larger hole on the other side of it where I removed the doors to hopefully replace them with windows. I want to make it into a giant cold frame, so I can use it to extend the harvest, and possibly start some seedlings. However before I can do that I have to figure out what to do about structure. Termites have eaten out all the support on that wall so I need to figure out how to support my windows, without jacking up the building and starting over.

Crested Gecko

This is my no-name crested gecko. He just hit 7 years in my house. Too bad he still isn't a fan of being handled, and cleaning his cage sometimes gets you bitten. You'd think with being only a few inches long he wouldn't be so pugnacious. At least he's cute.

Missing Summer

Here's a waterlily to make up for the cold rainy weather. Well it made me feel better anyway. This year none of my water lilies bloomed. We had lots of bouts of cold rainy weather they didn't appreciate since they are in partial shade.

Squirrel

Here's one of the digging fiends. I have to chicken wire cage all the pots of bulbs or these guys dig in them to bury acorns. The like the garden beds too, especially right after I plant some seeds.

Late Gardening

Back in August I planted some peas (and some other stuff, but only peas and lettuce came up well). We'll see if anything survives long enough to harvest. It's getting cold out there. I've also actually dumped these pea seeds already since half the plants came up looking weird. I think it might have been the seeds as I've never had peas look like that before.

Pondhawk

The rain made me want to look back at warmer sunnier days. Here's a female pondhawk.

Black Jewel Orchid - Ludisia discolor - Propagation

Way back in 2005 or 2006 I picked up a black jewel orchid at a big box retailer. I've never seen another one. A while later it picked up spider mites from a neighboring plant and I couldn't get rid of them. I saved two shoots and started over. I always thought they were on the verge of dying, but one finally started branching and looking more like my old plant. The plant survived my massive plant cull of last year and soldiered on. A few months ago one of the dogs got into it and broke off lots of branches. Having no better idea I stuck the branches with leaves on top of potting soil and kept them moist. All rooted. I had tried a few web searches, but didn't get anything definitive on how to root them.

I also had a bunch of non leafed stems. This plant has fleshy stems and crawls across the ground. I took the stems and laid them on top of damp potting soil (in a container with a broken chunk from a christmas cactus oddly enough). I stuck them under some fluorescent lights and kept them damp. Now some weeks later (I need to start dating things again) all of the segments are growing leaves. The leaves seem to come before the roots, as roots are just starting. Now I have too many of the things.

So here are my ideas for propagation black jewel orchids from cuttings. If possible use stems with leaves, but stems without will eventually produce leaves. They appreciate humidity, so can be left in a sealed damp container for a long time without rotting. I lost one segment of one stem and it wasn't rotting so much as drying out. I'd try to keep the cuttings at least 3 segments long, longer for leaves. I used standard potting mix as a medium.

For cuttings with leaves fill a small pot with potting soil and press the stem on to the top of the soil. You can use clips to hold it there, but you want good soil contact. I had one I covered with sand after it fell over too many times and it rooted fine as well. Tent the cutting if you want, I can't remember if I did put the leafed cuttings in bags but likely I did.

The cuttings without leaves should be pressed halfway down into damp potting soil. They should lie horizontally across the medium, not vertically. These ones should be covered. Leaves and roots will appear at the stem joints. Both sets should be kept in a bright place, I stuck them under lights, but a bright windowsill might work. They don't like direct sunlight.

Once the cutting has leaves and roots it can be potted up and slowly acclimated to room humidity again. These plants mostly sprawl across a pot and slowly turn into rangy piled of stems. Each leaf that dies leaves a stem segment behind. I rarely have shoots with more then 6 leaves on them at a given time. I also have not tried to grow any of the other jewel orchids, mostly due to outlandish price every time I see them ($10 bucks for a tiny plant on eBay, $8-$10 for an even tinier plant at reptile shows I think they're banking on the word orchid).

Dad's Cat

I would say my parent's cat, but really she is Dad's cat.

Open Colchicum Waterlily

This bulb just keeps getting better. There are 3 or 4 flowers now all in a clump.

Tomato Plant Hanging On

It has survived the first frost warning, maybe I'll figure out a better protection strategy before the next one. This plant appeared a few weeks ago in the old compost bin and I moved it to a better location. it took off. now about 3 feet tall, it just keeps going. I'm hoping to get tomatoes from it before the frost kills it off, but it is going to be mighty close. both my other tomato plants were dug up last week, they just looked too awful to keep watching.

Bulbs are Planted

And the colchicum planted a few weeks ago is already up. I planted the hyacinth and garlic this afternoon, even though I can't find my good trowel. (It was sitting on the pond rim in plain sight)

Seeds

I'm still doing some fall cleanup, and just chopped all the hosta seed stalks. I labeled them with little sticky notes, and just need to put them in bags. I found a leather fern frond with ripening spores to bring inside, and the garlic chive seeds are just about ready (see above), and I had to cut a few down to move the plant indoors so I'll see how they ripen. I spent a few hours yesterday making little packets to store my saved seeds in so I can get them in airtight jars too. Now I have to make a few more.

Garden Note: Yesterday was the first frost warning and the tomato plant did fine with a blanket over it. The next week has night temps in the high 50's with daytime in the 70's, so hopefully that will help it along. The peas (blooming) and lettuce survived fine under plastic. I dug up some of both kinds of chives and need to decide if trimming the normal chives is worth it. At the moment they're very long and floppy. The chives came in as my mother discovered my failure to make cream cheese results in a cottage cheese she likes, and she prefers chives in cottage cheese. I also swiped a coleus cutting from a big planter outside at the mall and put it in water. I don't feel that guilty since winter will kill the whole plant in a few weeks anyway. There were two red dragonflies circling the yard this afternoon as well.

Not So Red-Backed Salamander

At first I mistook this guy for a worm, all gray and twitching. He did use the characteristic salamander twitch however so I looked again. A quick search proves my standard red-backed salamanders come in a few colors. I did find this one first but a red colored one wasn't far away. They liked the rotting wood I had left out as a winter nest.

Red-Backed Salamander

I did some fall clean-up yesterday, trying to work down my to do list. This included trashing the bits I'd pulled off one of the planting beds to check for termites. While I found no new termites I did find two salamanders. the one above was the standard red-backed variety. The other was not. You'll see that one tomorrow. I brushed all the plant debris away from the house and hope the two move down where they can stay alive.

Garden Note: Almost Frost

Today I did some garden cleanup and started tackling my to do list. I moved around all the potted plants getting them ready for winter, dragged all the clean empty pots to the shed, put the gas preserver stuff in the lawnmower, and cleaned out the water barrels for next year. Some of the old seeds I tried germinating proved themselves trash, though others I thought might be bad sprouted fine. I'm still waiting for the peppers to do something. Temps tonight are forecast at 39 F, here's hoping that the tomato plant doesn't die, I can't figure out a good way to cover it. I did chop down some coleus to root just in case the temps get too low.

I did take apart the two crappy tomato plants and realized I need to stick to my ideals. I dug up the roots to trash, and couldn't believe they barely filled half the pots. When I dumped the potting soil I found the culprit. I planted these with the coir pots still attached. I assume the roots were growing through the pots so I decided to keep the pots so I didn't disturb the roots, which I normally don't do. I hate coir and peat pots. They do not break down, and the coir ones obviously don't break down much. I'm kind of angry at myself for not removing them, and really mad they say on the package not to remove them at all. These plants are barely the same size as the freely rooting monster I have in the yard, yet they had a month longer to grow.

I've been browsing through my Plant Propagation book and checking when I should be splitting and moving all the plants I have to move. I looked up day lily seeds since my two just put out seeds and saw you're supposed to just sow them as soon as possible. I don't know where I looked it up before, but I thought day lily seeds needed to be stratified and needed more specialized handling, so never planted any (likely mixed them up with asiatic lilies). Turns out they're easy. The first one came up today, I have 5 or 6 more I planted a week later. I'm still waiting for some hostas to come up as well.

Colchicum Waterlily

I got this bulb and one other package from my aunt for my birthday. I've tried colchicum before and it didn't come up. This time I put it in a large pot along with some spring irises. It just started coming up yesterday. It looks like I'll have 3 or more flowers. I also got lazy and potted up most of my other bulbs, wrapping chicken wire over the pots to keep out the squirrels.

Since the yard will be getting dug up a lot next spring I wanted to avoid having to move the bulbs again. All I have left is hyacinths, (and 263 bulbs to plant for my aunt).

Local Grasshopper

This one was hanging out on my driveway for a few minutes before it disappeared. My goal is to have a yard full of grasshoppers like it was when we moved in 25 years ago. As we killed off the grass they left. Too bad they're considered a pest so I can't even buy them. I have to wait for them to reappear, from the dirt lot next door or the huge paved driveway on the other side. Getting them back has been slow going. Hopefully this one decided to stay.

Adult Mantis

This year's adult sighting decided to be tricky and picked brown as a disguise instead of green. She was hiding in the false blue indigo. I wouldn't be surprised if there is another hiding in the strawberries. I rather hope there is at least a male hiding out there so this one will lay an egg case or two.

Garden Note: Hardy Tomato

We're having weird weather, hot and muggy one day, hot and raining the next. A few months ago, whenever I transplanted the blackberry bush, I found a random tomato seedling growing out of the old compost bin area. I stuck it in with the blackberries. I do wish I knew when that was. The tomato plant has survived, and has spent the past month getting 3 feet tall and putting out tomatoes in this miserable weather. I really wish I could find my note about when I was transplanting the blackberries so I'd have some kind of time line.

I hope October stays unseasonably warm just so we can try to figure out what kind of tomato is coming. I kind of want to save seed from this plant to see if I get something like it. It is constantly putting out new suckers and seems quite happy. I did pull a sucker and potted it up inside just in case we have a sudden frost. I would like to keep it alive until next year to try again with it in spring. At the same time we have a pair of iffy super sweet 100 plants in containers that have looked to be on their last legs for a month. They likely want more root space, but they didn't ever look happy, even when freshly transplanted. At this point I'm just waiting for the few cherry tomatoes to finish ripening.

Just so I remember: I'm trying to root coleus cuttings, just potted up some hosta seeds and tried the same with day lily. For some reason the clematis is sprouting right now, which I don't remember happening last year, but it did die back a lot this summer. Most of the hosta seeds are ripe, though the scapes haven't started drying yet. I have dug through the seed I have and setup a small germination test for some of the older ones. The others have all been put in sealed glass jars in the fridge. lupine were re-potted about two weeks ago and seem quite happy, same with one of the pine trees. I got pro-mix on clearance at home depot and should have enough for starting veggies next year if I don't do too much with it now. I am also officially done with indoor worm composting after my latest attempt at a secure worm bin led to another fruit fly epidemic.