much nattering about plants
Dec. 18th, 2011 07:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daidoji_giseiMy toilet overflowed Saturday afternoon, leaving water laced with fecal matter all over my bathroom floor. Needless to say, this wrecked my plans to spend the rest of Saturday washing dishes and generally doing kitchen stuff. It was the perfect end to the week, which seemed to be designed to make me feel incompetent and generally without value.
Friday afternoon I made myself come up with a list of good things that had happened during the week. That helped. Later I discovered that my paperwhites had started blooming and my bedroom was full of delicious perfume. That helped more!
Then on Saturday afternoon, while taking out trash from the Toilet Incident, I discovered that I had a couple of Red Russian kale plants growing in my lawn. This was not as strange as it could be, because two years ago I had planted one in a corner of my garden and then instead of pulling it out at the end of the season I just let it be. It spent the summer as an untidy flowering heap that marked the northern end of the garden. What was surprising to me was that I had a second generation sprouting in the fall, and not the spring. I was also surprised that it was clearly a Red Russian kale seedling, given that I'd made no attempt to preserve seed purity. On the other hand, I am pretty sure that RR is B. rapa and most of the rest of my Brassicas are oleracea so the chance of crossbreeding is slight. Also, I appear to be the only person for blocks around that has a vegetable garden. I don't understand this.
This afternoon I gathered a few large pots and a trowel together and then I went and dug up the lawn volunteers. (#occupylawngrass?) Then I potted them up, watered them well, and set them in cool room with some sun. If all goes as to my plan they'll recover from the transplanting and I'll be enjoying fresh kale in January.
Also today I did some propogating of my indoor plants. I have a spider plant in the bathroom that is throwing off babies quite enthusiastically, so I stuffed some potting soil into some yogurt cups and nestled a plantlet into the soil. In a week or two they will have put down enough root that I can cut them off from the mother plant. I also trimmed down a dragonwing begonia that had gotten top-heavy and weirdly shaped. Having nothing to lose, I popped the trimmings into more yogurt cups and put them in my improvised propogation dome. The "dome" is actually two clear plastic boxes that salad mix had come in, and it's only purpose is to keep the humidity high(er) while the plants try to grow roots. (Dry winter air can be really tough on houseplants, so I try to help my cuttings out a bit.)
The other residents of the dome are a fuschia twig that was accidently snapped off when I was hanging it's planter from the ceiling and an african violet leaf I'm trying to coax into making new plants. The leaf thing is really supposed to work, though I've never managed it before. I'd really like to have more plants of this variety, though, as it has put up with a lot of abuse for the 8 or so years I've had it and I figure the more copies I have the less the chance I'll lose it entirely.
Friday afternoon I made myself come up with a list of good things that had happened during the week. That helped. Later I discovered that my paperwhites had started blooming and my bedroom was full of delicious perfume. That helped more!
Then on Saturday afternoon, while taking out trash from the Toilet Incident, I discovered that I had a couple of Red Russian kale plants growing in my lawn. This was not as strange as it could be, because two years ago I had planted one in a corner of my garden and then instead of pulling it out at the end of the season I just let it be. It spent the summer as an untidy flowering heap that marked the northern end of the garden. What was surprising to me was that I had a second generation sprouting in the fall, and not the spring. I was also surprised that it was clearly a Red Russian kale seedling, given that I'd made no attempt to preserve seed purity. On the other hand, I am pretty sure that RR is B. rapa and most of the rest of my Brassicas are oleracea so the chance of crossbreeding is slight. Also, I appear to be the only person for blocks around that has a vegetable garden. I don't understand this.
This afternoon I gathered a few large pots and a trowel together and then I went and dug up the lawn volunteers. (#occupylawngrass?) Then I potted them up, watered them well, and set them in cool room with some sun. If all goes as to my plan they'll recover from the transplanting and I'll be enjoying fresh kale in January.
Also today I did some propogating of my indoor plants. I have a spider plant in the bathroom that is throwing off babies quite enthusiastically, so I stuffed some potting soil into some yogurt cups and nestled a plantlet into the soil. In a week or two they will have put down enough root that I can cut them off from the mother plant. I also trimmed down a dragonwing begonia that had gotten top-heavy and weirdly shaped. Having nothing to lose, I popped the trimmings into more yogurt cups and put them in my improvised propogation dome. The "dome" is actually two clear plastic boxes that salad mix had come in, and it's only purpose is to keep the humidity high(er) while the plants try to grow roots. (Dry winter air can be really tough on houseplants, so I try to help my cuttings out a bit.)
The other residents of the dome are a fuschia twig that was accidently snapped off when I was hanging it's planter from the ceiling and an african violet leaf I'm trying to coax into making new plants. The leaf thing is really supposed to work, though I've never managed it before. I'd really like to have more plants of this variety, though, as it has put up with a lot of abuse for the 8 or so years I've had it and I figure the more copies I have the less the chance I'll lose it entirely.
