Category: Gardening (Page 2 of 147)

My doritaenopsis orchid is sending up a new bloom spike! It’s been blooming since before April 18, when I first posted about it, and now it will have new flowers on it, perhaps into October? More than six months of flowers? That’s amazing!

My picture doesn’t show it very well, because it was backlit. But at least I have it recorded in the memory archive, so I can refer back to it in future years. What’s going to happen with this orchid? I’m so excited to find out!

I started the day yesterday by going to the farmer’s market I’ve been to before.

I got many delicious fruits – most notably a very flavorful plum… The variety was called “emerald” something. It is so good! There were plant booths there, and I looked at all of them. One of them had a passion flower blooming. So pretty!

Back at home, I worked in my back yard a little. I’m excited to report that my medusa euphorbia is blooming. And it’s growing so fast!

My cucumber plants are also growing quickly.

There are so many cucumbers on them now, but they are kind of weird… stubby and fat.

The internet says it could be a problem of not enough water. I decided to try a new watering system that could be more easily done. I got a soaker hose. We’ll see how it goes…

My little potted fig tree had some ripe figs on it. They were super-soft. I was a little worried they were rotten. As it turns out, they were really sweet and delicious. I compared them to a farmer’s market fig. No contest. The home grown figs were much better. In the picture below, my home figs are in the middle and on the right. The right one isn’t as ripe. Now I know to wait until they’re squishy-soft.

I went out to my back yard yesterday morning, and one of my moss rose plants was blooming like crazy. I planted what must have been thousands of seeds this summer, but I have only about six plants to show for it. All of them are struggling except for this one:

So pretty!

After some breakfast, I decided to go on an adventure and drive to IKEA in Costa Mesa. It was about a 40 minute drive. I like this IKEA, because it’s laid out like the Baltimore IKEA, and felt very familiar.

After some good indoor walking exercise, I headed back out to my truck, wondering if there might be an Armstrong Garden Center near there. There was!

It was fun to browse yet another one of these amazing establishments. And I was so excited to see that they were selling ‘ihi plants! It’s one of the native Hawaiian plants featured in “Plant Corner with Brad”! I got one! Woo hoo! It was on sale! Woo hoo!

And I think I have a new gardening goal: I’m going to try to get native Hawaiian plants growing at my house. How fun!

The Latin name for ‘ihi is portulaca, just like moss rose! They’re cousins! Ha! I started and ended this post with portulaca pictures.

Yesterday, ice cream sounded good, so I went to a place I drive by all the time called Busters. There were multiple things I wanted to try: a blend of orange sherbet and vanilla ice cream called dreamsicle, a strawberry shortcake sundae thing, a butterscotch sundae, a blenderized shake with Nestle crunch in it (this used to be my favorite Blizzard flavor before Dairy Queen discontinued it). But when I had started thinking about ice cream, I was thinking hot fudge brownie sundae. And that’s what I got:

Mmm… it was good. I didn’t end up eating the whole thing, because I was feeling guilty about it, but before that guilt set in, I really enjoyed it.

My other indulgence was from Saturday. I got another plant. I’m afraid my collection of potted plants is getting out of control. They make me so happy though. So… happy…

I got a schefflera plant with triangular leaves. Triangular leaves! It’s called “schefflera triangularis”. The internet has info about it of course, but not much, compared to other kinds of houseplants. I find that to be incredibly exciting, because that means it’s kind of uncommon.

I haven’t decided where to put it. It will grow kind of big. In nature, scheffleras are trees. Many houseplants survive the winter outside here, so it could just be in a pot by my front door or something. I love it!