Category: Gardening (Page 1 of 189)

It’s been really hot here the last couple of days, and is supposed to continue to be for a few days more. That makes watering my back yard more important than ever, because almost everything is in pots.

Saturdays are my usual watering days, and yesterday was no exception. In spite of the heat, the plants are looking pretty good. The succulents handle the heat the best.

One of them was even blooming!

My outside collection of things that are houseplants in other climate zones is in full shade, so they’re doing pretty well. One of my current favorites is an earth star (cryptanthus) I got on a whim last year.

It has continued to look beautiful. So beautiful that I want more. But the garden center I got it from hasn’t had them since I started looking again. It’s fun to have a quest, even if I’m kind of lazy about it and only look at the one place.

The new shell-less sunflower seeds that I got in August are a smashing success. The birds (and squirrels) like them, and the only thing that gets left behind are some papery seed coatings. In the picture below, it’s the stuff in front of the hose.

It’s SO much better than the shells that were all over the place previously. My bag is over half empty now, so the seeds are going pretty quickly, but it’s a small price to pay for a cleaner back yard, and a happy Bruno, who can continue to watch his backyard window “TV”.

We have a garden area at school, with plots for each grade. They’re mostly full of tomato plants, because so many volunteers keep sprouting up, and tomato plants do very well here in the warm weather.

But the last time I went to DC, I got some seeds from the Mount Vernon gift shop. They are Four O’Clock seeds that were harvested from the gardens there. I don’t think they’re plants descended from flowers that George Washington grew, because the history of the house and gardens doesn’t suggest that. But I still think it’s cool that we’re growing plants that came from seeds of plants from actual Mount Vernon, even if they are modern.

In the picture below, the plant in the lower middle is the first sprout. Hopefully more are on their way.

I stayed after school last night, because we had an organizational meeting for the fundraising for our eighth grade DC trip. Whew. That was kind of a messy sentence.

Anyway, I went out to get dinner at IHOP, and on my way back to school, I stopped at Home Depot to walk the garden center. It was really pleasant.

I should stop there more often. The Home Depot garden center was one of my happy places on Maui.

I saw a new nursery while I was browsing online, and decided to go yesterday.

It’s a succulent place that sells imported plants. I didn’t know what that meant until I got there and saw them unpacking boxes full of cuttings and bare-root pants. Everything was absolutely gorgeous, but none (or very few) of the plants were actually rooted into the pots they were in. They are grown elsewhere (I think Korea), and then shipped without soil, which makes customs easier. The people at the nursery unpack them, and then pot them up.

If I were a more experienced succulent plantsman, I would maybe have braved taking one home, but I haven’t quite figured out sun exposure. Once I get that down, I’ll be ready to take on such a tricky project.

Til then, I’ll just look: