The Me Blog!

The Garden Project! Update.

vashanti — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 19:09:52 +0000

So, so far I have many successful sunflower plants and currently I am drying a couple, and waiting for the rest to be ready for drying. Probably by the end of the month I will be enjoying my seeds. I have already some more growing, so I am thinking sunflowers all the time .

Today I prepared and planted some lettuce, tomato and cucumber seeds. In a few days I am hoping to post a few pics of these germinated seeds. Have you seen the price of lettuce in the town? Well maybe not, but it’s a bit expensive. Of course the smart thing to do is properly grow my own so hence the reason. Here’s hoping these will be more successful than my attempt a couple years ago. Then I was leaving in a third floor apartment and not much room to grow lettuce and tomato.

My Cypress Vines are still alive, but not producing seeds. I figured the area I transplanted them have a lot of slugs, so the growth is not as expected. I retrieved a morning glory plant which had all it’s leaves eaten by slugs
So I will see you guys in a couple days with an update.

Bee in the garden

vashanti — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 22:01:54 +0000

Lately, thanks to my lovely sunflowers, I’ve been seeing a lot of bees and hummingbirds appear in my garden. YAH!!!

This afternoon I decided to get a photo of one of the bees. I gotta say it was harder to do. This busy little bee was just jumping from flower to flower making it difficult for me to capture it at work.

The busy bee

Bee Surrounded in Yellow

The Ants are not missing out

That lonely caterpillar.

vashanti — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 11:01:54 +0000

The Lonely Caterpillar

I saw this guy this morning just sitting there on one of the branches of my Cypress Vine. I was really curious as to how it got there so fast. Yesterday I patrolled the vines and saw nothing. Seeing as how the plants are not on the ground but up 4 feet it must have taken it whole night to get there. [Probably]

I didn’t want to kill it, so I just relocated it.

The Garden Project! Part 5

vashanti — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:39:35 +0000

Why do I have these posts in parts?

Well anyway, FINALLY!!!! a sign that something’s going on with these plants other than the sunflower. And in more areas than one.

First of the rose propagation. Now I’ve never tried this before, I’ve always heard stories that it is extremely difficult when it comes to roses. Though the rose tree that I have is not what I’d like to say ‘high breed’ [the flowers are not large with defined petals] it did take me a while to get a cutting to actually grow roots successfully.

Well guess what, yesterday, I SAW ROOTS. And a lot of it too. I remember standing there for a while in awe. Then I transferred that one cutting to a larger pot. YEAH!!!!

Roots

More Roots

Rose cutting with roots in new pot

I have to say I was extremely excited to see that. There is another cutting, that does not have as much roots as this one, so I am hoping soon they will just pop out.

Secondly, remember the newly discovered Cypress Vines? Well Houston, we have flowers. Well just one flower, but I figured from now, the others are just going to pop out. Again yesterday I noticed red, and was extremely excited. Well stepping out today, it opened. Finally signs that it really is the vine I have been waiting for.

First REAL sign of flower

Cypress Vine Flower

From a different, more intimate angle

I gotta say I am really happy right now. I have yet to see the morning glory show signs of flowers. It’s just been getting longer, but at this point I am not really eager.

I still haven’t had time to find material for the vines to grow on yet, and I am a but upset with myself for that but hey….we got a flower.

The Garden Project! Part 4.

vashanti — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 18:40:48 +0000

Ok, so it has been a while since I’ve updated on the project. So far so good I suppose. There has been a lot of rain falling recently, and I mean a lot, every night, whole night. The grass is growing faster than I can attempt to control, but the plants seem to be taking their time. A couple days ago, I saw the head of one of the sunflower plants pop out. today it was a large as I think it could be. And it is beautiful.

Sunflower mammoth

Some time last week I planted a few more sunflower plants and they are doing well.

I recently realised that when I thought the Cypress Vine seeds didn’t catch, they did. I was going over the seed packets trying to figure out what some recent grow could be, when I found out I have, not one, but at least 7 cypress vines growing. YAH!!!

Cypress Vine

Above is what I think is a flower pod on the Cypress Vine. I have never grown this before so in a couple days we will see.

I even think they one plant is ready to flower. I gotta say it seems like forever growing plants from seeds.

Young Sunflower

Young Sunflower. In about 2 days the flower will be more noticeable, and in 4 days I am hoping to see a hummingbird and bees.

Sunflower close up

Beautiful no?

Morning Glory

Morning Glory leaves are getting bigger!!!!!

The Garden Project. Part 3

vashanti — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 10:51:14 +0000

So it’s been a while since I’ve ‘blogged’. I have been so busy it’s not funny, it seems like the days are shorter here, or maybe it is because I actually have things to do. This coming week I will have nothing to do, and well I guess I will see the days get longer.

So yesterday I finally realised how tall 12 feet is. I was grewing impatient at the pests eating the leaves off my sunflower plants, and figured it’s time for at least one to flower. I decided to search online to see if I could find a photo of a fully grown sunflower mammoth………

…..well I did, and like the persons standing next to the plant which is double their size, I was shocked. My sunflowers have a ways to go again.

I am having a bit of a problem finding items to have m morning glory grow on, they are getting longer and longer and need a trellis to creep on. This sure isn’t the mainland where I can drive down to Home Depot and buy a trellis or wood to make one.

What is the point of a moquitoe net

vashanti — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 03:35:40 +0000

So I am laying in bed with a mosquitoe net covering my bed and here comes this really loud, annoying mosquitoe. I look at it and smile, thinking that it’s out there and I’m in here. Well that smile didn’t last long. This mosquitoe made it’s way through one of the many supposedly tiny holes in the net. Flew directly to my arm and bit me.
………
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How rude!
Yes I am still shocked that the mosquitoe passed through the net. Contemplating making a complaint but am not sure who to complain to. Have had the net for a couple years but have only utilized it a couple knew since this is the first time in a couple years I have been back in the islands

Weight loss? What weight loss?

vashanti — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 22:01:44 +0000

So since being on the island, I haven’t found not one moment go work out. Although just being there is a workout because of the hills and constant walking, but I feel like if i actually had to walk extra, or run like a real workout, then maybe the weight loss would be fast. I have lost 7 pounds according to the scale, but I honestly can’t see where those seven pounds came from.[must be from all the sweating I do]

Speaking of sweating, IT’S REALLY HOT OUT HERE. Air conditioning is not really an option, so I am stuck with a stand fan and I gotta say when that thing is off, I sweat tons. So it’s a combination of ice cold water and being always in front of a fan.

The Garden Project! Part 2

vashanti — Fri, 28 May 2010 10:57:29 +0000

So a couple days have past since I transplanted the sunflower seedlings to the ground. Yesterday it seemed like 2 plants did not make it, but I left them, watered in the evening and woke up this morning to see them all standing tall. [yeah!!]
Because I was lacking spacing in the pots to plant some seeds I went ahead and just spread some out, not the task of spacing them as they are now taller is upon me. Last evening I placed the cosmos further apart and a couple days before that I did the morning glory. Honestly of all the seeds I’d rather see grow were the cypress vine and snow-in-summer. Unfortunately I have no idea which ones have. Both plants have small seeds and I just did not take notice of what went where when planting. I am hoping that at least one plant of each is growing now.

Garden Project! Part 1

vashanti — Mon, 24 May 2010 15:08:52 +0000

So I am finally on the island and Arther house where I will begin my garden project…..well I have already begun.

The space is a bit smaller than I thought it was and my plans have change slightly.

I have germinated some seeds includnig morning glory, snapdragon and sunflower, and all have within 24 hours sprouted roots and today I saw the first leaf of some poking through. This is great because the sooner I can get the flowers planted in the ground the better. To avoid grass growing back and having to dig I all up.

I have also cut some branches of that one rose tree. Hopefully propagation goes well. I didn’t get a chance to collect cutting of other rose trees so I am stuck with just this white on.

The front space - This is the small space that I have to deal with. The soil is very hard.

When I was growing up I was taught to germinate seeds with toilet paper, so this is what I did for the morning glory and cypress vine seeds and hey it still works

Germination Closeup - Closeup of the seeds sprouting thier rooting, less than 24 hours after I placed the seeds on the moist toilet paper they began to sprout.

Out of the ground - Now, there are many seeds that have shown thier first leaf. I transplanted most of those to soil pots so that they can get thier "soil legs"

Propogation from cuttings - this is something I am not too confident about. I followed the rules for rose cuttings and hopefully in a couple months or so I can show that these cutting are still alive and roots have formed.