petunias

I gave up on keeping these Petunia cuttings going. They continue to look peaky, the color pale compared to the outdoor plants- and when I look close there are aphids all over.

I threw them away. The planter box still makes a few flowers, so I've left it be for now but will soon dump the soil and plants out into sealed trash bag- want to keep the infestation from spreading or (hopefully) coming back next year.

petunia cuttings

All failed but one. I forgot to put them in the plastic greenhouse. O well.

petunias!

I was pleasantly surprised upon returning home to find pink flowers blooming in my kitchen windowsill! This is the Petunia cutting I started end of july. I wasn't expecting such good results.

The outdoor planter is still lush. Encouraged, I took a handful of cuttings

washed them thorougly to get rid of the bugs (I don't want to bring those indoors)

stripped off the lower leaves and potted them all up. Hoping for more!

dismay

Guess what this post is announcing?

More death on the balcony garden. I threw out the Mums, the last Mint plant, and my kids' sick plants. Also dumped out the bag of Potatoes, that plant was looking awful. I got a tiny harvest of nice-looking but very miniscule potatoes, just enough to fill the palm of one hand. Not sure what I'll do with them. I recently cut down the swiss chard to eat it, cut down the Basil plants to dry their leaves, and today the Green Onions and Chives to put in enchilada recipe, so there is quite a bit of space opened up now.

Sprayed garlic/dishsoap concoction on the Petunias and other plants that have aphids. There was also what appears to be whiteflies. The next day I inspected the Petunias and most of the bugs had stopped crawling, but it looked all nasty covered with their still bodies. So I took the entire planter into the bathtub, tipped it on its side and rinsed water forcefully through the foliage, which knocked off most of the bugs and spent flowers as well. Looks better; not sure if it actually is better. I've trimmed more bad foliage out of the Nasturtiums (the remaining leaves look surprisingly healthy), cleaned all the Dogwood leaves by hand, and cut down most of the Echinacea (swarming with tiny caterpillars). Done more sleuthing online and finally figured out what has been ailing my beautiful little Mimosa tree. It appears to have fusarium wilt. Fits the symptoms perfectly, afflicts a wide variety of plants and does not affect Ferns.

Not treatable. The solution is to remove and destroy the diseased plants. It comes through a soilborn fungus and I'm afraid my poor-quality potting soil might be to blame, or the leaves I collected from a friend's yard to use for mulch. I've scoured more pots with bleach, swept all corners of collected dust and litter, thrown out bags of old potting soil and leaves. It is looking very clean now, and rather barren.

And all this just when I am able to enjoy sitting outside on the balcony again. In the summer it's too hot, too noisy from the A/C units running in all the buildings around me, too bothersome with bugs. But now that it's a bit cooler and quieter, my plants are succumbing to more ills. I almost feel like I'm being a hypochondriac on their behalf.

more death

Yeah, the toll goes on. Whatever this disease is that's killing off my balcony plants, it is still spreading. I thought it was aphids, but now am wondering if it's some kind of air-borne virus. Definitely the Petunias are smothered in aphids; but many of the other plants have pale, mottled scraped-looking leaves and no actual bugs on them when I look close.

Affected plants now include: Petunias (the worst), Echinacea, Nasturtium, Potato, Celery, Mint, Swiss Chard, Miniature Rose, Dogwood sapling in a pot, Mums and my daughter's plant (I forget its identity). Even the Sage, Rosemary and my Mimosa tree, which I thought impervious to harm, are starting to show signs of ill. Quite a few of those are my favorites. I am very unhappy and discouraged by this.

I should just throw them all out before everything dies, but can't quite bring myself to do so. There are still pretty pink flowers on the Petunias, and I even have one Nasturtium bloom...

The good news is a few plant groups seem untouched: the Hibiscus, Green Onion, Chives, Ginger, all the Ferns, and the Basil plants. Oh, and that odd Resurrection Plant, which is still closing and unfolding again according to water supply! It even has green color, so I do think it's alive, wacky thing. The Basil is showing signs of being affected by cooler nights; soon it will end its season. I had hung some to dry in my kitchen but the humidity is too high and the herb leaves simply aren't drying out. I might have to try drying them in the oven again...

My Ferns seem to be doing quite well, most of them are growing new bright green uncurling shoots.

The indoor plants are, for the most part, in good condition- including the young cuttings of Petunia and Stevia which I've brought inside to occupy a windowsill. So I will someday soon here write a happy post about all those.
~
Oh, and I've actually eaten potatoes! Out of my potato bag! Lovely little delicious red things. I am sitting on eager hands waiting for the plant to flower so I can upend the bag and get the rest out. They were tiny things, and I want to let them mature a bit more. Also cut the entirety of the Swiss Chard plant down the other day and put it into a lasagna. There wasn't enough chard so I bulked up the recipe with store-bought spinach, but it was quite good and I think the kids liked it better that way anyhow. So I am still eating a bit of my diminishing garden!

a few things of note

My Croton is growing vigorously, and the rooted piece in water has a new tiny baby leaf! Toddler says of its multiplying root growth: "plant have feetsies now! two feets like me!"

I finally have one Tithonia flower opening, at the very end of summer. Better late than never!

It seems like a few potatoes are growing, after all! I saw the red, curved skin of one peeking out from the soil surface and covered it up with a little heap of leaves.

Of the cuttings I started recently, one Petunia survived and is ridiculously putting out more flowers, on the end of a very small plant. There are five little Stevia plants now as well, which seem to be doing fine (the sixth one succumbed to mold).

The rex Begonia Coleus and Pothos cuttings are also growing plenty of new roots in water.

new start?

My Stevia has once again broken in the wind.

I haven't done a good job at keeping it cut down. So instead I've tried starting cuttings. Not sure how well it will work....

The two cuttings on left in blue trays are from me Petunias. I read somewhere that you can take petunia cuttings and grow them indoors and have blooms in the middle of winter! Going to try.

pinks!

Just a few weeks ago I only had one pink Petunia flowering;

now there's an entire window-box full! So lovely.

petunias

I did a little treat for myself and bought a few Petunias for my balcony. Kind of overestimated the size of my planter box; when I got home found that only two would fit in the box.

I put the other one in this pretty pot the neighbor lady gave me. She's just moved in and saw me walking up yesterday and said "are you the one I gave the pots to?"

"Yes, that's me."
"I gave you another pot, it's by your door!"
"Thanks! I can always use pots; I have about eighty plants on my balcony!" I laughed. "Do you want some?"
She smiled but said she has lots of cleaning up to do first- her balcony is stacked with moving boxes right now...

more cleanup

The pretty Petunias in my front-porch pots died. We had a week of temperatures over ninety degrees, which dried them up even though I watered every single day. Then a thunderstorm which beat them to tatters.

Now after cutting and pulling out all the dead stems, only one plant is left alive. I've potted it up on the side porch, where it will get more close attention.

My little pot of Mint is there on the brick, too, and my baby Avocado tree. Its leaves were looking very droopy so I did some research and learned that avocados don't like to have wet feet. I'd probably been watering it a bit too often. They like to dry out completely between drinks, and they like lots of sun. So I've been putting it outside in the sun during the day. Already the leaves seem to be lifting a bit.

The Peas have been looking terrible, all dried up and pale, so today I yanked most of them out. There were still some full pods on the plants, but they had a bitter taste so just got tossed.

A few shorter plants still look okay, I left them in but probably not for long.

porch pots

Petunias on the front porch have perked up nicely.

Makes the approach to the front door cheerful and bright.

petunias!

Filled the front-porch planters with Petunias.

A. said aren't they kind of shabby looking? but they'll fill out nicely in a week or so.

garden chores

More work today. First rescued some more Sunflor seedlings- a few of the second planting two came up in the same spot, so I separated them, put one in a blank spot of the row, and covered with cloches. Others that are a big larger now and getting their first true leaves took the cloches off and tried a new preventative trick- a ring of sandpaper around the base, and Fennel sprinkled about. Heard that slugs don't like fennel.

Next the kiddo helped me check under boards for slugs and pillbugs. Found a couple fat slugs- squished 'em. Then we checked out the long beds- after I looked up online what the seedlings look like when they first push out of the ground. Tomato seedlings are sprouting! And the Cucumbers- getting eaten immediately. No sign of Green Beans- but when I was working to put bricks in (more about that) found a bean seedling leaf in the soil- riddled with holes. I see small black ants everywhere there, but few slugs. Are the ants eating my seedlings? I think I'm going to try one more time, and start the plants indoors. Covered the few we found with cloches.

Then put up branchy twigs from the brush I cleared the other day to support the growing Snap Peas. Weeded their bed, too. The Garlic wall along back edge of all the long beds is coming up strong.

Next tackled the brick project. My paths made between the beds keep getting messy when it rains- the wooden edges simply float, and the bark shreds I'd put down go all over the place. I started raking them all out again (filling back in that gap by the small patio- hopefully to plant more marigolds or something there). Then found someone on craigslist was tearing up a patio and getting rid of the bricks. Yesterday I made two trips in the car to get bricks, stacked them all at the bottom of driveway, worn out for the day. Today shifted all the bricks over to the beds- in rougly equal piles at the end of each path/row. Pulled out the boards and recut the edge with straight shovel, then laid row of bricks in to make the edge. It's tedious work, but looks so much nicer, and it will stay in place! After I've got all the bricks down (I know I'm not doing it properly with sand and all underneath, but just want something to mark my path decently) I'm going to put a layer of gravel on the paths themselves- to keep out the weeds, make it easy to tell what to step on, and have something that will be relatively dry to walk on after heavy rains, not the soggy muck I get between the beds now. Phew! I'm guessing I can brick-edge two paths a day, and be done in a week.


The porch flowers are filling out nicely.


And I bought some Hostas the other day. Put them on the ends of front flower beds.

At the end of day, when cool again, pulling weeds and clearing litter from the walled bed. Isa discovered slugs- minute ones- all in the Lettuce leaves, and together we handpicked at least forty or fifty off of them. I moved on to inspect the Chard, Beets for slugs, then came back and immediately found one or two more slugs on each lettuce plant again- I had no idea there were so many!

I did manage to save some Cucumber seedlings- put cloches over spots where other seedlings had come up and got chomped, and went back end of day to check- another one had sprouted up next to the chomped one. Then remembered I'd planted two or three in small groups. Glad I did.

planting

Very nice and sunny so a lot of work outside. Turned over the compost pile. Mixed some of it into the bottom of porch pots, and potted Petunias and a new flower to me, Calibrachoa, in them. Look pretty sorry now, but soon they'll perk up and grow!

Planted a second set of Radishes, between the rows of S Lettuce in the raised bed. That one area of the bed the top of soil crusty and cracks. Why not the rest?

Transplanted the surviving three stalks of Basil into the garden, next to garlics. They look pretty sad this morning. Second thoughts, perhaps too cold still at night. Made a little cloche from plastic milk jug w/bottom cut out to cover them, keep warm at nights until recover.

Dug out new positions for the steps from driveway to our porch, so it meets the gate, now. Planted Nasturtiums in the nice, round patches left behind- two varieties. Planted Catnip, Mint, and more Nasturtiums in pots by the front door (one that the Basil vacated).

Nasturtium- Cherry Rose (7-10 days)
Nasturtium- Jewel (7-10 days)
Mint- Spearmint (12-16 days)
Catnip (14-21 days)
Radish- Crimson Giant (4-6 days)