sansevieria

The plant that I almost completely ignore is this Sansevieria. It sits in a corner of my kitchen where the tall, stripy pale-edged leaves make a nice statement. But it hardly ever needs water, and often gets bumped into when people scoot back their chairs at the kitchen table, or jostled by the blinds when I close them at night.

It seems happy enough, though. I looked closer today and it looks like a few new leaves are emerging at the base of the plant. I think it will be fun one day to try propagating from this plant- you take a leaf and slice it into horizonal segments and stick them in potting medium, and as long as they are planted right-side-up supposedly they'll grow. One day I'll do that.

stout jades

I am glad to see that my "original" Crassula plant, now divided into two, is growing beautiful new leaves again.

I think it it is finally going to take on the shape I've been wanting. It requires much pinching, and at least a years' growth first, for the thicker stem!

This one plant, which was a cutting given to me, has many many offpsring around my house- over a dozen pots at last count but most of those will be going out my door soon.

spring green

My Thyme plant certainly seems to think the warmth of inside equals spring. It's put out a bunch of tiny, bright new foliage. Leggy, but when it's warm enough to go back out on the balcony I'll just give it a trim.

seedling front

Snow drifts down outside and I do silly things like pot up seedlings. Too early still, but as long as they live I will keep these going. I have remaining from the first foolish sowing a bunch of vigorous Pea plants

a handful of young Dill

three Broccoli

a few of the tiniest Celery seedlings

and dozens of Lettuce. I forgot to mark the trays, so I don't know which are what variety of Lettuce.

Yesterday I moved the Broccoli and Lettuce seedlings out of their trays. As usual, I put them into cardboard toilet-paper rolls. Stuffed each with soil through cupped hands, made a hole down the center with an old chopstick

Gently wedge the biggest seedlings out with an old butter knife

Always careful to lift the baby plants by their leaves, as the stems and roots are too delicate.

Lower them into the individual cardpot holes, then firm in with fingertip. Bury their leggy stems entire.

Add a bit more soil on top to fill it up.

This time I also took the trouble to clean out the trays the cardpots sit in with a vacuum nozzle- I always spill soil down there and don't like how it looks dirty. Plus, I plan to water these from the bottom, and don't want it a muddy mess. You can also see here how they're secured with a rubber band around each group of cardpots- sometimes when I go to move the trays they can tip, top-heavy; this makes them steady.

The first time you always have to water from above, to settle the plants in. After the first watering, I'll just add water into the tray below. I've been doing sub-irrigated watering with the Peas...

I don't know if you can tell, but these seedlings are sitting in the plastic container a stick of shortening came in. They're exactly the right size for three cardpots, and fit nicely on even narrow windowsills. It's the only reason I buy shortening in those premeasured sticks, it's cheaper in the bigger tubs but I like these trays for cardpots. (I don't cook a lot with lard, it's mostly for the occasional pie crust).

I now have three Broccoli and nineteen Lettuce seedlings in cardpots.

They're all nestled into the plastic "greenhouse" box with the other young plants, so they can go outside during the day for winter sun.

It was nice to actually get my hands dirty!

okra stew

I finally tried to make something with my frozen, home-grown Okra. This was a few weeks ago. I thought I would make more dishes and have a post featuring several, but the first was not much success and hasn't encouraged me to try more.

The recipe I tried was for a shrimp-okra stew. The first step involved cooking the okra in a pot with some oil, when it got all glutinous and stringy. Did not look appealing. Addition of tomatoes, other vegetables and shrimp failed to make it more appealing. I think it might have been palatable with more spices, but as is

the older kid refused to touch it, the younger ate a lot the first day but refused it the second, and by the third time I pulled out leftovers (very little having been consumed the first two nights) I could only pick out the shrimp, sautee them afresh in butter, and discard the main bulk of the stew.

We don't like okra, sad to say. The taste, or the texture. I might try it once again simply breaded and fried this time, but don't have much hope for it.

new pothos

A while back I took a few cuttings of Pothos and stuck them in this little glass jar.

A week ago the roots just started to grow

and now they are even longer

curry plant

My established Curry Plant is full of new growth.

But of all the cuttings, only one is left alive. It's rather more than I expected, after realizing my mistakes!

meat pie

The other day I made a meat pie for dinner, with a new method. The base ingredients were ground beef (sometimes I use leftover steak diced up), an onion, one red potato, two carrots, a bay leaf and some Thyme.

Oh, and a can of vegetable beef soup. For the filling as usual I sautee the onion and carrot in butter, add and brown the beef, add the fresh veggies. Whisk a bit of flour into the filling to thicken it.and simmer with the soup and herbs while I make the crust.

The new part was baking it in a cast iron skillet put into the oven, instead of the usual glass pie pan. I adjusted my usual recipe a bit following this as a guideline. I baked it at 375° for 45 minutes and it came out perfect.

It came out looking wonderful and had a richer flavor than usual. I'm not sure if this is because I substituted a bit of butter in my crust, having run low on shortening, or if it's because the skillet seeped some flavor into the pie...

I can justify putting this on my garden blog because it had one ingredient from last years' garden: dried Thyme!

green leaves

Somewhat against my better judgement, I've continued to keep the Bell Pepper plant going. It's sitting in an opposite corner of the kitchen from the other plants. I keep thinking about what could be causing it to look so poorly. Something about the symptoms- slightly curled, spotty leaves- made me think it was a nutrient deficiency, I read somewhere made it sound like potassium so I actually chopped up some banana skin, soaked it in water, and gave the plant that. Then I noticed a few perfectly round holes in the center of leaves, which made me suspect a caterpillar but I never found it, or the frass. Next I suspected that whatever is apparently feeding on my plant and taking nutrients might be hiding in the convenient hollow of the bamboo pole staking up the plant!

So I plugged up the hole with a wad of playdoh. Figured either it would trap the insect, or I'd see evidence of it chewing its way out. Never saw any signs, but now for the first time in weeks the plant is putting out some fresh, new foliage.

Perhaps I did trap the culprit and now it will recover somewhat.

babies

Hm. My baby Spider Plants are not doing so well. The bigger one is getting some leaf-tip burn- I think from overwatering again- and the little one got accidentally jostled before it was well-rooted. I am watering them from below, now.

bright

The Stevia continues to delight me with its flush of new, bright green foliage.

kept in

A few of the plants I brought in momentarily have remained indoors. These include the Sage cuttings - which seem to be doing just fine-

The little Marjoram pot which looks nearly dead but upon inspection has little, new leaves growing. I don't have much hope for them, as when oreganos in the past began to resprout like this for me, they died.

I've also kept in the tree-like older Thyme plant. Just because I like to look at it, and since it already spent a few days inside here and there I'm wondering if I've already affected its ability to survive cold.

The rest of the plants outside remained tucked into boxes and under burlap. My toddler looks out the big window at them and says: "Plants sleeping!" which is what they should do, in the winter!

protection

Yesterday evening when I saw the temperature was eighteen degrees below freezing, and felt the icy draft near each window I remembered that houseplants need to be kept from the cold, too. This is something I've done in years past- either pull plants off the windowsill for the night (here my Jades that habitually sit behind the desk)

or put a layer of cardboard between the plants and the glass. If the days turn sunny, I'll pull the cardboard, then put it back at night. Keeps the worst of the chill off the plants.

bugs

Well, my little foray against the fungus gnats with a vacuum cleaner was ineffective. There are just as many as before, now. You can see quite a few under the leaves here. I am continuing to let the soil dry out - a few more are drowning in the bottles as a result- and might try some other measures soon. I've read on a forum that bounce dryer sheets repel them with the scent. Also considering spraying neem oil...

pink and pink

My African violet is full of flowers now! Some are starting to fade, but new buds already forming in the heart of the plant. It seems to be outgrowing its space and when I peer in under the leaves I can see it has two very distinct crowns.

So perhaps sometime soon I will divide this into two plants...

recovery?

It looks like my Avocado is reviving in its new, sheltered spot.

I am wondering if the Palms suffer from chilly draft, as well? Some of the foliage is curling under. However, the ones situated on my desk- near window- and in the kitchen- not drafty- have a bit of curl as well. So it might be something more generally wrong. Perhaps I have not got the watering regimen down correct for these yet?

I suspect the soil mix is too dense. I need to repot these yet again with new clean soil lightened with perlite (the mix I used for my Dracaneas and Avocado, which seems to work well for them). I did want to wait for warmer, spring weather to do this, afraid that repotting for the third time might be too much stress for their young root systems. They are all still growing new foliage, so not doing too badly.