Kitchen garden. What's ready? What's getting started?

Radishes are ready in the barrel containers. Perfect timing! When they are gone, it will be time to plant the peppers. Greens as well - taking both to work tomorrow for lunch salad.

I couldn't be happier with how the barrels turned out this year. After 9 years of trying, I finally know how to grow radishes here! It's about time, they are supposed to be the easiest vegetable to grow!

The mesclun and scallions in the barrels are also growing like gangbusters. Also, spinach and lettuce. This is great!

Tomato plants had their first outdoor excursion today. The already seem a little more stocky. Probably my imagination. Getting off to a fast start this year.

Peppers among the tomatoes. Growing nicely, but stems are a bit lanky and weak. I hope they improve with more time outside. Probably started too early, then with dreary days, not enough light in the South windowsills.

Most of the seedlings. Will set outside again tomorrow, if the temp is mild. Not in full sun, since I'll be at work.

What else -
First potato barrel with potato plants sticking their noses through the medium.
Scallions, lots of them from starts off from the Egyptian Walking onion. Growing them in the barrels was perfect! I debated keeping them, now glad I did.
Apples blooming - including Golden delicious, which is in its first year of significant blooming. Cool!

Chives too - this is the 5th or 6th batch of garlic chives. Great chopped and scrambled with eggs, too?

In the front yard, those Yellow Potato Onions that I planted in, what, December? are growing nicely to. I didn't kill them after all. Peas are groing, but most didn't germinate.

Cattleya walkeriana alba

After promising myself that I would not add additional orchids after the last mentioned order, and especially from the grocery store, I walked past the orchid display at Trader Joes yesterday at lunch, saw the usual suspects, nothing jumped out at me. Then this one. Very nice in the store. I lost skepticism for about 15 minutes and bought it. Based on multiple web pics, it's Cattleya walkeriana alba, a Brazilian species, not a hybrid. Small size, wanders across the pot rather than being vertical. Likes the dry side.

Immediately on getting home, I unpotted. What a mess. There were actually 2 plants, but one with tiny pseudobulbs, and one small broken leaf. The other with the flower. There was a small vestige of original bark medium, but mostly soggy sphagnum, and about half of the roots were rotted.

I removed the old bark and sphagnum, trimmed off the rotted roots. I dipped the roots in a diluted solution of Dip'n'grow, a plant hormone that is used for rooting cuttings. That is a practice that some growers use for plants that need stimulation of rooting. I don't know if it will help. Then repotted in the same commercial medium that I've been using.

Then I noticed this leaf. I hope this is just an old leaf, and bad growing practices. And I hope it's not a sign of virus infestation. I looked at many web pictures of virus infestation, and most don't look like this.

I sprayed with neem, and this morning sprayed with a foliar feeding of dilute orchid food, same as the weakly weekly food. We'll see how they do, and I'll avoid using tools or containers for other plants, which is a good practice anyway

It's a nice little plant, and the flower is very nice as well, white with a pale green center. Interesting citrus fragrance. I hope it survives, grows, reblooms, and doesn't turn out to have virus. And it will be nice if the 2nd tiny plant grows, so I have one to share (You know who you are!).

Orchid blogging

It's been chilly and rainy all week. Not much to do outdoors - today I did mow the lawn, such as it is, for the first time.

The orchids came via UPS on Friday. See prior posting. The plants were in great shape, I'm very impressed with the appearance of the plants and with the care given to the packing. Hausermann orchids.

The link displays this Brassolaeliocattleya

The variety is "Ports of Paradise" Emerald Isle. Fragrant. May bloom twice a year.

I do not have room for more orchids, but I placed an order for a small one of this variety. I don't know how it will do here, so better not to spend too much. Something might have to go, to make room for it.

I repotted one Potinara and the Vaughnara. They were well potted. The Vaughnara was spilling out of its pot, and looks like it has some active growth, so it seems like a good moment to do so. The Potinara probably didn't need repotting, but I wanted to have it in a container with openings in the sides for better drying between waterings.

I also repotted the cymbidium - this had tough, healthy appearing roots encircling the medium in the container, difficult to separate. I also repotted a Phalaenopsis and a Paphiopedilum. In both cases, I realized that I should have repotted them on purchase. They had been grown in excessively moisture-retentive medium, then potted up in bark mix, then wrapped in spagnum. As a result, there were rotted roots. I cleaned them up, removed all old medium that I could, and potted into the new bark mix. We'll see.

Peppers, Tomatoes, and Eggplants

Yesterday I started another wave of seeds. This time:

Pepper, "Big Red hybrid" - medium hot cayenne-type, 70 days"
Eggplant, "Millionairre" - Japanese-type, 55 days
Pepper, "Bulgarian Carrot" (seeds packed for 2008) - hot pepper
Pepper, "Red Popper" - 1 1/2 inch fruits, sweet, 55 days.
Eggplant, "Fairy Tale" - purple striped white fruits, 50 days

Of the seeds that I started last week a few eggplants and peppers have sprouted, and all of the tomatoes sprouted.

Most of the seedlings had just been watered and were still in the sink, but this is the general appearance of the seed starting system now. The foil does seem to make the light brighter directly under the lights. All are growing nicely, some tomatoes have their first true leaves now. Soon, I'll need to plant them individually in slightly larger containers. The towel covers the containers with unsprouted seeds, on the heating mat.

Cayenne peppers in the window sill now, from the original seed-sprouting experiment. I hated to throw them away. I did not really mean to start them for the garden, but here they are. On sunny days, I think the sindow is brighter than the fluorescent fixture, and the light is more "natural", anyway.

Backyard orchard culture. Trees in Bloom

We're now in the "second wave" of blossoms in our backyard-orchard-culture "orchard". The apricots have finished blooming - I don't know, the frost may have killed branches and prevented fruit set, we'll see. If the trees die, that's it - no more attempts at apricots. They are not well suited for this climate.

The peaches have a few blossoms now, but are leafing out. Soon, I'll want to dig up the peach seedling and find a better location for it to grow into a tree. As a nongrafted, seedling, genetic dwarf, it's a complete gamble. If nothing else, they have beautiful flowers.

The plums are done as well. It's too soon to see if fruit set - with some of the cold nights in the past month, it's possible they didn't. This is only their second leaf, so any fruit would be a surprise.

Asian Pear, 3-way graft. Oh, it will be so great if a few fruits set. Not too many - it's only in its second leaf. The flowers are lovely.

The 5-way European pear. This year we'll thin more. It's developing a nice spur structure, repeat clusters of blossoms. Responding very well to the backyard culture method of summer pruning to hold to size, which means no standing on ladders is needed.

Awesome clusters of cherry blossoms. Some are in full bloom, others not quite there yet. Again, the sweet cherries are responding very well to the pruning philosophy. I really didn't know if it would work. It's working great for these trees. This tree was allowed to grow a bit too tall for backyard orchard culture, but before it got out of hand I pruned it back. It's a 3-way graft, so pollinates itself. I usually play the bee and travel among blossoms with a paintbrush, but it's too rainy for that. I hope the real bees do the job.

More sweet cherries.


Another experiment, this one in its infancy. These are seedlings, from wild cherries collected last fall. The wild cherries grow very tall, too tall to be practical in a yard. Why not see if they can be kept compact by severe pruning? I don't know if it's possible, but if it is, we would have wild cherries within reach, and fruiting at a time when other cherries are done. These are just beginning life - who knows how many years this will take.