I got this little cactus back in November via mail order. I quarantined it in the window seed starting tray to be sure there were no mealies or other pests. There isn’t a lot of light there, since I didn’t point the LEDs directly on the cactus, but whatever the conditions, this little cactus seems happy and threw three buds out. One of them opened today!
We had a winter storm, or what I like to call “winter.” Since snow doesn’t fall in significant amounts in Seattle very often, it causes quite a stir and messes up traffic and work schedules–and gardening plans!
It started innocently enough, as an inch or so on one day.
The next day, the snow got a little more serious. We ended up with about eleven inches of snow over the course of a week.
I ended up at the office every day, even when it was closed, so I felt less guilty playing with my plants there and making plans for more of them. The miniature African violet is doing well. It keeps sending up flower spikes, but they don’t open properly. I assume it is too cold, so I cut the spikes all off, but within a week, it is sending up more–you can see one at about 11:00 on the photo below.
The African violet’s flowers have been disappointing, as they don’t open widely–just to a cup shape, but never a saucer. On the other hand, the Sinningia “Freckles” from the Violet Barn, purchased at the same time, has gorgeous flowers that last for weeks at a time. It has three buds coming on it, so I should have flowers on my desk for a month, at least.
I also have a Primulina tamiana, the Vietnamese Violet, on my desk that appears to be growing well. There is also a Parlor Palm, Chamaedorea elegans, that has only three fronds, but seems to be doing well. I have a terrarium with some strongly growing Polka Dot Plants, Hypoestes phyllostachya and a Euphorbia that is struggling with some mildew or something, and a tiny Senecio succulent cutting from a co-worker. The big plant in my office is a hand-me-down sad-looking Pachira aquatica that is about four feet tall. It is braided and needs a good repot and reboot.
My plans for the office are to move the Hypoestes to pots of their own and put something tiny and delicate in the terrarium–maybe a dwarf gensneriad. I have another couple of containers at home to maybe make into terrariums for my desk, as well.
Since this photo, I have taken cuttings from two of the stems, trimmed out the old dead stumps from the middle and removed a zip tie that was holding the braids together, but strangling the plant. I started to regularly water and feed it, too. My biggest concern is that the old wood may not leaf back out, so I’m waiting nervously until some buds start to swell on the trunks from which the cuttings were cut. The stems are interestingly hollow.
On the home front, I was worried about the greenhouse denizens when the temperatures dipped down into the teens one week. The worst feeling hit me when I went out BEFORE the really cold weather to check all the systems and there was frost all over the inside of the greenhouse door and it was frozen shut! But once Leon helped me break inside, I was relieved to find the temperature was fine and the heater and fans were working well. I did bump the thermostat up to 50 degrees to be sure the whole inside stayed above freezing through the cold snap. Luckily, we never lost power and everything appears to have survived, including the newly transplanted Australian seedlings.
And speaking of those, here are some seedling updates.
I transplanted three types of seedlings yesterday into 3-1/2″ round pots in trays that I sat in the greenhouse. This is a critical time for them all, so I’m hoping they are resilient and grow on without having any setbacks.
I picked the right weekend day, as this afternoon, just as I started to head outside to do a little gardening, there was snow!
Here is what the seedlings looked like prior to potting on.
Because so many of the seeds sprouted and survived, I decided to pot multiple seedlings per transplant pot–so I put 3 in most, and five in some. There ended up being about 36 Hakelia seedlings and 24 Hardenbergias.
I didn’t get a photo of them, but since I had some extra time, I decided to pot on the Anigozanthos seedlings, too. They were a lot smaller than I thought, so I hope it wasn’t a bad decision to pot them on so early. There were close to 100 tiny seedlings in that paper cup! I potted 5 to each transplant pot, and when the tray was almost full, I started planting clumps of a bunch of seedlings in the middle of the pots.
I also planted a few new seeds to fill the space vacated by the transplants. I planted Chamaescilla corymbosa. The seeds (and photos) are from australianseeds.com.
The last of the Australian seeds were Eremophila maculata. They arrived in three seed capsules with instructions on how to use a mechanical vice to break the capsules apart and get at the seeds. I just used pliers and they broke apart easily enough but there were no obvious seeds inside. I decided to just save everything and plant it all to see if maybe there were seeds I just couldn’t see. Seeds and photos from australiaseeds.com.
The last seeds planted this cycle were sold as Uniola latifolia, but has a new name, Chasmanthium latifolia. These seeds are from Chilterns in the U.K. There were only ten seeds, so I’m hoping for a high germination rate for this elegant grass plant, known as sea oats.
The other seedlings that are up, but slow to get going, are Acacia baileyana purpurea (4 seedlings), Daviesia latifolia (2 seedlings), Urodon dasyphyllus (8 seedlings), Acacia redolens prostrata (10 seedlings).
I took a walk around the garden and greenhouse with the camera on January 26th and found the following:
The Cymbidium orchid that we received from Karl Huffbauer years ago has three big spikes this year. It often gets aphids or mold and doesn’t put on much of a show, but I’ve got the Vornado fan blowing right on it this year, so I’m hopeful it will have cleaner flowers.
